Amory Lovins

Amory Bloch Lovins is an American physicist and writer, born November 13, 1947 in Washington, D.C., who became one of the most influential advocates for energy efficiency as an energy resource in its own right. In 1982 he co-founded the Rocky Mountain Institute with his wife Hunter Lovins in Snowmass, Colorado, serving as its chairman and chief scientist, and through it promoted the soft energy path, an energy strategy favoring renewable sources such as wind and solar power combined with aggressive efficiency gains over continued reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear fission. He popularized the concept of the negawatt, treating electricity saved through efficiency as equivalent in value to electricity generated, and in 1994 developed the Hypercar concept, an ultralight, aerodynamically efficient vehicle built from advanced composite materials and paired with a hybrid drivetrain to cut fuel consumption sharply. He served on the United States National Petroleum Council from 2011 to 2018, received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1993 and Germany's Order of Merit in 2016 for his contributions to the Energiewende energy transition, and was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in 2009.