Amory Lovins

Over Amory Lovins

Amory Lovins is renowned for his wide-ranging intellect and unique problem-solving approach, which he has used to make breakthroughs in fields ranging from automobiles to energy. His work has consistently focused on harnessing market forces to promote resource efficiency as a solution to a variety of economic, social, and environmental problems.

Mr. Lovins has briefed 18 heads of state, given expert testimony in eight countries, held several visiting academic chairs, authored or co-authored 29 books and hundreds of papers, consulted for scores of industries and governments worldwide, and received numerous major awards and honorary degrees. Dr. Alvin Weinberg, ex- Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has called him "surely the most articulate writer on energy in the whole world today"; Newsweek, "one of the Western world's most influential energy thinkers." Dr. John Ahearne, former Vice President of Resources for the Future, remarked that "Amory Lovins has done more to assemble and advance understanding of [energy] efficiency opportunities than any other single person." The Wall Street Journal's Centennial Issue named him among 39 people in the world most likely to change the course of business in the 1990s, and Car magazine called him "the 22nd most powerful person in the global car industry."

Trained as an experimental physicist, Mr. Lovins rose to prominence during the oil crises of the 1970s when, still in his twenties, he challenged conventional supply-side dogma by urging that the United States instead follow a "soft energy path." His controversial recommendations were eventually accepted by the energy industry, and his book Soft Energy Paths: Toward a Durable Peace (1977) went on to inspire a generation of decision-makers. A sampling of the other highly acclaimed books Mr. Lovins has authored or coauthored includes Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (1999), Factor Four: Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use (1997), Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security (1982), and Energy/War: Breaking the Nuclear Link (1980).

Mr. Lovins co-founded, with Hunter Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute, the Snowmass-based applied research center, in 1982. RMI is an independent, entrepreneurial, nonpartisan, nonprofit applied research center whose mission is to foster the efficient and restorative use of natural, human, and other capital to make the world more secure, just, prosperous, and life-sustaining. He continues to serve as CEO of the organization, whose 43 staff members research and consult in a variety of fields. Under the Lovinses' leadership, RMI spun off two pioneering enterprises: E SOURCE, now a $10 million for-profit electric-efficiency information service (founded in 1986 as COMPETITEK and sold to the Financial Times group in 1999); and Hypercar, Inc., an automotive technology-development startup (1998).