Amory B. Lovins

Amory B. Lovins, a 1993 MacArthur Fellow, is a consultant physicist and environmental scientist who advocates and analyses efficient energy use and “soft energy paths”– technologies based on solar, wind, biofuels, geothermal, etc. that are commensurate with their task.

Lovins has advised the energy and other industries as well as the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense for nearly four decades. He has promoted energy efficiency, the use of renewable energy sources, the generation of energy at or near the site where the energy is actually used, and is a designer of superefficient buildings and vehicles. Alvin Weinberg, the former director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, called him “surely the most articulate writer on energy in the whole world today,” and Newsweek described him as “one of the Western world’s most influential energy thinkers.”

In 1982 he co-founded the Rocky Mountain Institute, where he currently serves as Chief Scientist. The Institute’s goal is to transform global energy use to create a clean, prosperous, and secure low-carbon future. Partnering with industry and business has met with success in efforts to reduce energy use across the transportation, buildings, industrial, and electricity sectors.

Lovins’s numerous books include Natural Capitalism (1999), Small Is Profitable (2002), Winning the Oil Endgame (2004), The Essential Amory Lovins (2011), and Reinventing Fire (2011). He has received countless awards, prizes, and medals, including Hero for the Planet Award and the Alternative Nobel Prize.