Disruptive Energy Futures

Description

Half the world’s historic decarbonization came, and at least half of its future decarbonization can come, from using energy more efficiently. Yet “integrative design”—designing buildings, vehicles, and factories as whole systems, not as piles of isolated parts—can make efficiency’s potential severalfold larger, and with even greater profits. Meanwhile, astounding recent growth in solar and windpower, reinforcing plummeting costs, puts renewable energy on track to decarbonize the power sector timely and to electrify mobility and heat advantageously. Incumbent energy industries will struggle to catch up as linear thinking collides with exponential reality. The main challenge is to ensure policymakers enable the new energy system, not protect the old.  

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Speaker Name

Amory Lovins

Speaker Photo

Amory Lovins is a medium-light skinned male with short brown hair and bushy mustache. He smiles warmly and wears glasses and a blue shirt.

Speaker Bio

Physicist Amory Lovins is Cofounder and Chairman Emeritus of RMI (formerly Rocky Mountain Institute); author of 31 books and over 880 papers; a designer of super­efficient buildings, vehicles, and factories; and a half-century advisor to major firms and governments worldwide on advanced energy efficiency and strategy.

He received the Blue Planet, Volvo, Zayed, Onassis, Nissan, Shingo, and Mitchell Prizes, MacArthur and Ashoka Fellowships, 12 honorary doctorates, the Heinz, Lindbergh, Right Livelihood, National Design, and World Technology Awards, and Germany’s Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit. A Harvard and Oxford dropout, former Oxford don, honorary US architect, Swedish engineering academician, and 2011–18 member of the National Petroleum Council, he has taught at ten universities and is currently Adjunct Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford. In 2009, Time named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people, and Foreign Policy, one of the 100 top global thinkers. Stanford’s citation analysis lists him among the top 2% of the world’s scientists. His first professional paper on climate change was written in 1968.

Date

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