Amory B. Lovins

Amory Lovins, a MacArthur Fellow and consultant physicist, is among theworld’s leading innovators in energy and its links with resources, security, development,and environment.

He has advised the energy and other industries for more than three decades as well as the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense. His work in 50+ countries has been recognized by the “Alternative Nobel,” Blue Planet, Volvo, Onassis, Nissan, Shingo, Goff Smith, and Mitchell Prizes, the Benjamin Franklin and Happold Medals, ten honorary doctorates, honorary membership of the American Institute of Architects, Foreign Membership of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, honorary Senior Fellowship of the Design Futures Council, and the Heinz, Lindbergh, Jean Meyer, Time Hero for the Planet, Time International Hero of theEnvironment, Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Leadership, and World Technology Awards.

A Harvard and Oxford dropout and former Oxford don, he advises major firms and governments worldwide and has briefed 19 heads of state. Mr. Lovins cofounded and is Chairman and Chief Scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute, an independent, market-oriented, entrepreneurial, nonprofit, nonpartisan think-and-do tank that creates abundance by design.

Much of its pathfinding work on advanced resource productivity (typically with expanding returns to investment) and innovative business strategies is synthesized in Natural Capitalism (1999, with Paul Hawken and L.H. Lovins). This intellectual capital provides most of RMI’s revenue through private-sector consultancy that has served or been invited by more than 80 Fortune 500 firms, lately redesigning more than billion worth of facilities in 29 sectors.

In 1992, RMI spun off E SOURCE, and in 1999, Fiberforge Corporation, a composites engineering firm that Mr. Lovins chaired until 2007; its technology, when matured and scaled, will permit costeffective manufacturing of the ultralight-hybrid Hypercar® vehicles he invented in 1991.

The latest of his 29 books are Small Is Profitable: The Hidden Economic Benefits of Making Electrical Resources the Right Size (2002), an Economist book of the year blending financial economics with electrical engineering, and the Pentagon-cosponsored Winning the Oil Endgame (2004), a roadmap for eliminating U.S. oil use by the 2040s, led by business for profit.

His most recent visiting academic chair was in spring 2007 as MAP/Ming Professor in Stanford’sSchool of Engineering, offering the University’s first course on advanced energy efficiency.