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Amory B. Lovins Quotes

Amory Bloch Lovins is an American physicist, environmental scientist, writer, and Chairman/Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. He has worked in the field of energy policy and related areas for four decades. He was named by Time magazine one of the World's 100 most influential people in 2009.

Lovins worked professionally as an environmentalist in the 1970s and since then as an analyst of a "soft energy path" for the United States and other nations. He has promoted energy efficiency, the use of renewable energy sources, and the generation of energy at or near the site where the energy is actually used. Lovins has also advocated a "negawatt revolution" arguing that utility customers don’t want kilowatt-hours of electricity; they want energy services. In the 1990s, his work with Rocky Mountain Institute included the design of an ultra-efficient automobile, the Hypercar.

Lovins does not see his energy ideas as green or left-wing, and he is an advocate of private enterprise and free market economics. He notes that Rupert Murdoch has made News Corporation carbon-neutral, with savings of millions of dollars. But, says Lovins, large institutions are becoming more "gridlocked and moribund", and he supports the rise of "citizen organizations" around the world.

Lovins has received ten honorary doctorates and won many awards. He has provided expert testimony in eight countries, briefed 19 heads of state, and published 31 books. These books include Reinventing Fire, Winning the Oil Endgame, Small is Profitable, Brittle Power, and Natural Capitalism.

✵ 13. November 1947
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Amory B. Lovins: 8 quotes0 likes

Famous Amory B. Lovins Quotes

“If you ask me, it'd be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it.”

Amory B. Lovins

The Plowboy Interview with Amory Lovins, November/December 1977, Mother Earth News, 2010-01-05 http://www.motherearthnews.com/Renewable-Energy/1977-11-01/Amory-Lovins.aspx?page=14, (1977)

“A widely heralded view holds that nuclear power is experiencing a dramatic worldwide revival and vibrant growth, because it’s competitive, necessary, reliable, secure, and vital for fuel security and climate protection. That’s all false. In fact, nuclear power is continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded, and obsolete—so hopelessly uneconomic that one needn’t debate whether it’s clean and safe; it weakens electric reliability and national security; and it worsens climate change compared with devoting the same money and time to more effective options.”

Amory B. Lovins

The Nuclear Illusion http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E08-01_AmbioNuclIlusion.pdf p. 1. (May 2008)

“Variable but forecastable renewables (wind and solar cells) are very reliable when integrated with each other, existing supplies and demand. For example, three German states were more than 30 percent wind-powered in 2007—and more than 100 percent in some months. Mostly renewable power generally needs less backup than utilities already bought to combat big coal and nuclear plants' intermittence.”

Amory B. Lovins

Missing the Market Meltdown http://www.newsweek.com/id/137501 (May 2008)

“The markets make a good servant but a bad master, and a worse religion”

Amory B. Lovins

[This much I know: Amory Lovins, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/23/ethicalliving.lifeandhealth4, The Guardian, 2008-11-20]

“There are two kinds of micropower. One is co-gen and combined heat and power. That was about two-thirds of the new capacity and three-quarters of the new electricity last year. The rest was distributed or decentralized renewables, which was a $38 billion U. S. global market last year for selling equipment. That's wind, solar, geothermal, small hydro and biomass…. Micropower surpassed nuclear power in worldwide installed capacity in 2002, and surpassed nuclear in electricity generated per year just in the last few months.”

Amory B. Lovins

An interview with Amory Lovins re: Nuclear Power http://a4nr.org/news-and-events/10.22.2006-torontostar

“When asked if we have enough time to prevent catastrophe, she'd always say that we have exactly enough time -- starting now”

Amory B. Lovins

Amory Lovins' eulogy for Donella Meadows http://www.calcars.org/calcars-news/996.html

“…new nuclear plants are simply unfinanceable in the private capital market, and the technology will continue to die of an incurable attack of market forces—all the faster in competitive markets. This is true not just in the U. S., where the last order was in 1978 and all orders since 1973 were cancelled, but globally.”

Amory B. Lovins

Winning the Oil Endgame http://www.oilendgame.com/, p. 258

“Facts are more mundane than fantasies, but a better basis for conclusions.”

Amory B. Lovins

Salon.com, 05/26/05

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