Amory Lovins

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Amory Lovins

Amory Lovins
Born November 13, 1947
Washington, DC
Occupation environmentalist

Amory Bloch Lovins (born November 13, 1947 in Washington, DC) is Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a MacArthur Fellowship recipient (1993), and author and co-author of many books on renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Lovins has worked professionally as an environmentalist and been an influential American voice for a "soft energy path" for the United States and other nations. He has advocated energy-use and energy-production concepts based on conservation, efficiency, the use of renewable sources of energy, and on generation of energy at or near the site where the energy is actually used. His works include Winning the Oil Endgame, Factor Four with Hunter Lovins and Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, and Natural Capitalism with Hunter Lovins and Paul Hawken. In the 1990s, his work with the Rocky Mountain Institute included the design of an ultra-efficient automobile, the Hypercar.

Lovins has provided expert testimony in eight countries and more than 20 US states, briefed 19 heads of state, and published 29 books and several hundred papers.

Contents

[edit] Early history and personal life

Lovins spent much of his youth in Silver Spring, Maryland and in Amherst, Massachusetts. In 1964, as a former award-winning high-school science whiz, Lovins entered Harvard University. After two years there, he transferred to Magdalen College, Oxford, England, where he studied experimental physics. He became a Junior Research Fellow in Oxford’s Merton College, where he studied for two years and earned a master of arts (M.A.). He has received many honorary degrees recognizing his work.[1]

In 1979 he married L. Hunter Sheldon, a lawyer, forester, and social scientist. Hunter received her undergraduate degree in sociology and political studies from Pitzer College, and her J.D. from Loyola University's School of Law. They separated in 1989 and divorced in 1999.[2]

[edit] Work

[edit] Friends of the Earth

It was during his days in the UK that Lovin's career as a writer began. Having become a devotee of Snowdonia National Park, Lovins left academia. In 1971 he wrote about the endangered Welsh park in a book commissioned by David Brower, president of the environmental organization Friends of the Earth.[3] Lovins spent several years as British Representative for Friends of the Earth. He wrote a number of other books published by FOE. During this time his interests settled specifically into the area of resource policy, and most especially, energy policy. An essay that he originally penned as a U.N. paper grew into his first book concerned with energy, World Energy Strategies. His next major work was co-authored with John H. Price and titled Non-Nuclear Futures.

[edit] Soft energy advocacy

After returning to the United States, Lovins guided mountaineering trips in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The shock of the 1973 energy crisis helped create an audience for his ideas, and he appealed to this new audience with the publication of his 10,000-word essay "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?" published in Foreign Affairs, in October 1976.[3]

Lovins described the "hard energy path" as involving inefficient liquid-fuel automotive transport and centralized electricity-generating facilities. He saw these as giant facilities, often burning fossil fuels (e.g., coal or petroleum) or harnessing a fission reaction, that were greatly complicated by electricity wastage and loss. The "soft energy path" which he wholly preferred involves efficient use of energy, diversity of energy production methods (and matched in scale and quality to end uses), and special reliance on "soft energy technologies." Soft energy technologies are those based on solar, wind, biofuels, geothermal, etc. For Lovins, large-scale electricity production facilities had an important place, but it was a place that they were already filling; in general, more would not be needed. One of his main concerns, was the danger of committing to nuclear energy to meet a society's energy needs.[3]

[edit] Rocky Mountain Institute

By 1978 Lovins had published six books, consulted widely, and was active in energy affairs in some 15 countries, as synthesist and lobbyist. In 1982, he and his wife, Hunter, founded the Rocky Mountain Institute, based in Snowmass, Colorado. Together with a group of colleagues, the Lovinses fostered efficient resource use and policy development that they believed would promote global security.[3] During the mid 1980s, the Lovinses were featured on major network TV programs like "60 Minutes."

At RMI's headquarters, in Colorado, the south-facing building complex is so energy-efficient that, even with local -40° winter temperatures, the building interiors can maintain a comfortable temperature solely from the sunlight admitted plus the body heat of the people who work there. The environment can actually nurture semi-tropical and tropical indoor plants.

Working with many specialists, Lovins's more recent work at RMI has focused on efforts to transform sectors including the automobile (they designed a hydrogen-powered "hypercar"[4] to provide an example to Detroit), electricity, water, semiconductor, and real estate.

Lovins has briefed 19 heads of state, provided expert testimony in eight countries and more than 20 states, and published 29 books and several hundred papers. His clients have included Accenture, Allstate, AMD, Anglo American, Anheuser-Busch, Bank of America, Baxter, Borg-Warner, BP, Bulmer, Carrier, Chevron, CIBA-Geigy, CLSA, Coca-Cola, Corning, Dow, Equitable, GM, Hewlett-Packard, Interface, Invensys, Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi, Monsanto, Motorola, Norsk Hydro, Prudential, Rio Tinto, Royal Ahold, Royal Dutch/Shell, Shearson Lehman Amex, STMicroelectronics, Sun Oil, Texas Instruments, UBS, Wal-Mart, Westinghouse, Xerox, major real-estate developers, and over 100 utilities. Public-sector clients have included the OECD, UN, Resources for the Future, the Australian, Canadian, Dutch, German, and Italian governments, 13 US states, Congress, and the U.S. Energy and Defense Departments.[1]

RMI has grown into a broad-based institution with more than 60 staff and an annual budget of some $8 million.[1]

[edit] Awards

Amory Lovins has received many honorary doctorates and was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1984. He has received the World Technology Award, the Right Livelihood Award ("Alternative Nobel"), and the Nissan, Mitchell, Heinz, and Lindbergh awards. He is also the recipient of the World Technology and Time Hero for the Planet awards, the Benjamin Franklin and Happold Medals, and the Shingo, Mitchell, and Onassis Prizes. He has also received a MacArthur Fellowship and is an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).[1]

[edit] Quotes

 This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2008)
  • "Energy efficiency isn't just a free lunch, it's a lunch you are paid to eat."
  • "Phasing out nuclear power should make our electricity cost not more but less."
  • "I don't do problems, I do solutions," while being interviewed by Elizabeth Kolbert for a New Yorker article.
  • "What we thought of as isolated pathologies, scarcities of work or hope or security or satisfaction, are not isolated at all, in fact they're intimately related, they're all caused by the same thing, namely the interlocking waste of resources, of money, and of people."
  • "The average [television-program] viewer can save thousands of dollars a year added to your discretionary income by bringing the waste out of the energy and water you use in your house, how you travel, what you buy and you can do good for yourself and the Earth at the same time and improve your quality of life by making more careful choices."
  • "There are two kinds of micropower. One is co-gen and combined heat and power. That was about two-thirds of the new capacity and three-quarters of the new electricity last year. The rest was distributed or decentralized renewables, which was a $38 billion U.S. global market last year for selling equipment. That's wind, solar, geothermal, small hydro and biomass.... Micropower surpassed nuclear power in worldwide installed capacity in 2002, and surpassed nuclear in electricity generated per year just in the last few months." [5]
  • "...new nuclear plants are simply unfinanceable in the private capital market, and the technology will continue to die of an incurable attack of market forces—all the faster in competitive markets. This is true not just in the U.S., where the last order was in 1978 and all orders since 1973 were cancelled, but globally."[6]
  • "A widely heralded view holds that nuclear power is experiencing a dramatic worldwide revival and vibrant growth, because it’s competitive, necessary, reliable, secure, and vital for fuel security and climate protection. That’s all false. In fact, nuclear power is continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded, and obsolete—so hopelessly uneconomic that one needn’t debate whether it’s clean and safe; it weakens electric reliability and national security; and it worsens climate change compared with devoting the same money and time to more effective options."[7] (May 2008)
  • "Variable but forecastable renewables (wind and solar cells) are very reliable when integrated with each other, existing supplies and demand. For example, three German states were more than 30 percent wind-powered in 2007—and more than 100 percent in some months. Mostly renewable power generally needs less backup than utilities already bought to combat big coal and nuclear plants' intermittence."[8] (May 2008)

[edit] Publications

Books authored or co-authored by Amory Lovins:

  • Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profit, Jobs and Security (2005) ISBN 1-84407-194-4 (Available Online in PDF)
  • The Natural Advantage Of Nations: Business Opportunities, Innovation And Governance in the 21st Century (2004) ISBN 1-84407-121-9
  • Small Is Profitable: The Hidden Economic Benefits of Making Electrical Resources the Right Size (2003) ISBN 1-881071-07-3
  • Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (2000) ISBN 1-85383-763-6
  • Energy Unbound: A Fable for America's Future (1986) ISBN 0-87156-820-9
  • Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security (1982 re-released in 2001) ISBN 0-931790-28-X (Available Online in PDF)
  • Soft Energy Paths: Towards a Durable Peace (1977) ISBN 0-06-090653-7
  • Harvard Business Review on Business and the Environment
  • Factor Four: Doubling Wealth - Halving Resource Use: A Report to the Club of Rome
  • A Road Map for Natural Capitalism
  • World Energy Strategies: Facts, Issues, and Options
  • Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy Strategy
  • Energy/War: Breaking the Nuclear Link
  • The Energy Controversy: Soft Path Questions and Answers
  • The First Nuclear World War: A Strategy for Preventing Nuclear Wars and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons
  • Nuclear power: Technical Bases for Ethical Concern
  • Least-Cost Energy: Solving the C02 Problem
  • Openpit Mining

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d Lovins Bio
  2. ^ Iconoclast Gets Consultant Fees To Tell Big Oil It's Fading Fast
  3. ^ a b c d Profile of the 2007 Blue Planet Prize Recipient
  4. ^ What is a Hypercar® Vehicle?
  5. ^ An interview with Amory Lovins re: Nuclear Power
  6. ^ Winning the Oil Endgame, p. 258
  7. ^ The Nuclear Illusion p.1.
  8. ^ Missing the Market Meltdown

[edit] Bibliography

  • Cousineau; Danitz; Zelov Ecological Design: Inventing the Future (film/video), Knossus, Inc., 1994.
  • Kolbert, Elizabeth. "Mr. Green," [Profiles] The New Yorker, 22 January 2007, p. 34-40.
  • Lambert, Craig. "The Hydrogen-Powered Future," Harvard Magazine, January/February 2004.
  • Thomas, Kas. "Interview with Amory Lovins," The Mother Earth News, No. 48, November/December 1977.

[edit] See also

Energy Portal

[edit] External links

Papers, interviews and speeches: