29 Facts About Amory Lovins

Amory Lovins has written on energy policy and related areas for four decades, and served on the US National Petroleum Council, an oil industry lobbying group, from 2011 to 2018.

Amory Lovins has advocated a "negawatt revolution" arguing that utility customers don't want kilowatt-hours of electricity; they want energy services.

Amory Lovins has provided expert testimony and published 31 books, including Reinventing Fire, Winning the Oil Endgame, Small is Profitable, Brittle Power, and Natural Capitalism.

Amory Lovins is the brother of Julie Beth Amory Lovins, a computational linguist who wrote the first stemming algorithm for word matching.

In 1964, Amory Lovins entered Harvard College as a National Merit Scholar.

Amory Lovins left without a degree in 1971, because the university would not allow him to pursue a doctorate in energy.

Amory Lovins moved to London to pursue his energy work, and returned to the United States in 1981.

Each summer from 1965 to 1981, Amory Lovins guided mountaineering trips and photographed the White Mountains of New Hampshire, contributing photographs to At Home in the Wild: New England's White Mountains.

Amory Lovins spent about a decade as British representative for Friends of the Earth.

In 1982, he and his wife, Hunter Amory Lovins founded Rocky Mountain Institute, based in Snowmass, Colorado.

Amory Lovins clients have included many Fortune 500 companies, real-estate developers, and utilities.

Amory Lovins served in 1980 and 1981 on the US Department of Energy's Energy Research Advisory Board, and from 1999 to 2001 and 2006 to 2008 on Defense Science Board task forces on military energy efficiency and strategy.

Amory Lovins's visiting academic chairs most recently included a visiting professorship in Stanford University's School of Engineering.

Amory Lovins argued that the United States had arrived at an important crossroads and could take one of two paths.

The alternative, which Amory Lovins called "the soft path", favored "benign" sources of renewable energy like wind power and solar power, along with a heightened commitment to energy conservation and energy efficiency.

Amory Lovins has described the "hard energy path" as involving inefficient energy use and centralized, non-renewable energy sources such as fossil fuels.

Amory Lovins believes soft path impacts are more "gentle, pleasant and manageable," than hard path impacts.

Amory Lovins wrote that nuclear power plants are intermittent in that they will sometimes fail unexpectedly, often for long periods of time.

Amory Lovins argues that nuclear plants have an additional disadvantage: for safety, they must instantly shut down in a power failure, but due to the inherent nuclear-physics of the systems, they can't be restarted quickly.

Amory Lovins has advocated a "negawatt revolution", arguing that utility customers don't want kilowatt-hours of electricity; they want energy services such as hot showers, cold beer, lit rooms, and spinning shafts, which can come more cheaply if electricity is used more efficiently.

In 1994, Amory Lovins developed the design concept of the Hypercar.

Amory Lovins says the commercialization of the Hypercar began in 2014, with the production of the all-carbon electric BMW i3 family and the 313 miles per gallon Volkswagen XL1.

Amory Lovins does not see his energy ideas as green or left-wing, and he is an advocate of private enterprise and free market economics.

Amory Lovins was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1984, of the World Academy of Art and Science in 1988, and of the World Business Academy in 2001.

Amory Lovins has received the Right Livelihood Award, the Blue Planet Prize, Volvo Environment Prize, the 4th Annual Heinz Award in the Environment in 1998, and the National Design, Jean Meyer, and Lindbergh Awards.

Amory Lovins is the recipient of the Time Hero for the Planet awards, the Benjamin Franklin and Happold Medals, and the Shingo, Nissan, Mitchell, and Onassis Prizes.

Amory Lovins received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1993, and is an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects, a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, and an Honorary Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council.

Amory Lovins is on the Advisory Board of the Holcim Foundation.

In 1979 Amory Lovins married L Hunter Sheldon, a lawyer, forester, and social scientist.