Amory Lovins

Amory B. Lovins (1947– ), an American consultant experimental physicist and 1993 MacArthur Fellow, has been active at the nexus of energy, resources, economy, environment, development, and security in more than 50 countries for over 40 years, including 14 years based in England. During 1979–2002, Mr. Lovins worked as a team with L. Hunter Lovins (his wife 1979–99). They shared a 1982 Mitchell Prize, a 1983 Right Livelihood Award (often called the “alternative Nobel Prize”), the 1999 Lindbergh Award, and Time’s 2000 Heroes for the Planet Award. In 1989 he won the Onassis Foundation’s first Delphi Prize for their “essential contribution towards finding alternative solutions to energy problems.” In 1982, the Lovinses cofounded Rocky Mountain Institute (www.rmi.org), an independent, entrepreneurial, nonprofit think-and-do tank. RMI’s ~80 staff drive the efficient and restorative use of resources to help make the world thriving, verdant, and secure, for all, for ever. Ms. Lovins left RMI in 2002; Mr. Lovins is now its Chief Scientist and Chairman Emeritus. The Institute’s ~$12-million annual revenue comes both from programmatic enterprise, chiefly private-sector consultancy, and from grants and donations. RMI’s balance sheet comes largely from Mr. Lovins’s having cofounded, led, spun off, and in 1999 sold (to the Financial Times group) E source, the premier source of information on advanced electric efficiency (www.esource.com).