Cleaning Up: Leadership in an Age of Climate Change

Cleaning Up Redux: The Einstein of Energy Efficiency - Amory Lovins

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Dec 25, 2024

Amory Lovins, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute and an expert in energy efficiency, shares his insights on sustainable design. He discusses the urgent need to cut clean energy costs and highlights innovative building designs that promote energy efficiency. Lovins introduces the "3% Challenge" aimed at boosting global efficiency rates and debunks myths about nuclear power versus renewables. With his concept of 'applied hope,' he emphasizes how energy efficiency can drive economic growth and help achieve net-zero goals.

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ANECDOTE

Passive House

Amory Lovins joins the podcast from his passive solar banana farm in the Rocky Mountains.
The house maintains warmth without active heating, demonstrating energy efficiency.

INSIGHT

Reframing Energy

Amory Lovins's "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken" reframed energy problems by focusing on end-use efficiency.
This approach challenged the conventional focus on finding more energy regardless of cost or source.

ANECDOTE

Bangkok Professor

An architecture professor from Bangkok applied Lovins's integrative design principles to his own home.
He achieved 90% air conditioning energy savings with normal construction costs and improved comfort.

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Hello, I’m Michael Liebreich, and this is Cleaning Up.

I hope you are having a good break over the holiday season, and getting to spend some quality time with your family. I’m in Switzerland, where it has just snowed about a meter in 24 hours.

In case you’re missing your regular dose of climate content, we’re starting something new, which we’re calling Cleaning Up Redux. During the break between seasons, we’ll be republishing some gems from our back catalogue, which now covers nearly 200 episodes.

To kick us off, today we’ll be listening back to episode 68, from Season 4, released in December 2021. It’s a conversation with Amory Lovins, whom I dubbed the Einstein of Energy Efficiency. Amory is the co-founder and former chairman and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. He is also the author of more than 30 books and 700 papers, and now an Adjunct Lecturer in Atmosphere and Energy at Stanford University.

I first became familiar with Amory’s work even before I founded New Energy Finance journey, as a fierce promoter of the cause of energy efficiency by design, and equally fierce opponent of the idea of any role for nuclear power. Amory and I do not see eye to eye on everything, but we have become good friends and occasional sparring partners.

Amory joined me on Cleaning from his passive house high up in the Rocky Mountains, which is so warm despite not having any active heating that, at the time of recording, he had produced 78 crops of indoor bananas – a fact of which he is rightly proud.

The reason I chose this episode to kick off Cleaning Up Redux is that, in these very turbulent and politicised times, it has a refreshing back-to-basics feel. If you can save energy you save money, and that is always a good thing. If we all focused more on making clean energy cheaper for consumers and businesses, and a bit less on persuading politicians to do things that drive up energy costs, the transition might be moving a lot faster.

I hope you enjoy my December 2021 conversation with Amory Lovins.