03 September 2019
Gvishiani Room, IIASA
Most of the energy we use is wasted. Smarter technologies and designs that use energy more efficiently could provide the same or better services with far less energy, money, and risk. Moreover, the fossil fuels that provide most of our energy now generally cost more than the modern renewable sources that have already taken over two-thirds of the world’s power-plant market.
These profound shifts in both demand and supply set the stage for rapid change in almost everything we thought we knew about energy. Oil suppliers have more unsellable than unburnable oil: they are more at risk from competition than from regulation. Electricity suppliers too face a swarm of disruptors that are starting to transform their business beyond recognition. And meanwhile, Edison’s electric industry is merging with Ford’s auto industry to eat Rockefeller’s oil industry—while insurgents challenge incumbents in all three of these giant industries.
These transformations offer remarkable opportunities for informed citizens in every community to build a durable economy and to make energy supplies resilient, so catastrophic interruptions of supply shift from inevitable to impossible. Evidence is now emerging in such major economies as China, India, USA, and EU that if based on the lowest-cost available resources, ambitious global climate protection can be not costly but profitable.
Program
Tuesday, 3 September 2019 11:00
IIASA, Gvishiani Room
Welcome Remarks
Arnulf Grubler, Acting Program Director, Transitions to New Technologies (TNT) Program
Lecture and Discussion
Amory Lovins
Disruptive Energy Futures
Adjourn 12:30
Physicist Amory Lovins (1947), FRSA, is cofounder and Chief Scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute (www.rmi.org); energy advisor to major firms and governments in 65+ countries for 40+ years; author of 31 books and more than 600 papers; and an integrative designer of superefficient buildings, factories, and vehicles.
He has received the Blue Planet, Volvo, Zayed, Onassis, Nissan, Shingo, and Mitchell Prizes, the MacArthur and Ashoka Fellowships, the Happold, Benjamin Franklin, and Spencer Hutchens Medals, 12 honorary doctorates, and the Heinz, Lindbergh, Right Livelihood (“alternative Nobel”), National Design, and World Technology Awards. In 2016, the President of Germany awarded him the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz 1. Klasse).
A Harvard and Oxford dropout, former Oxford don, honorary US architect, and Swedish engineering academician, he has taught at ten universities, most recently Stanford’s Engineering School and the Naval Postgraduate School (but only on topics he’s never studied, so as to retain beginner’s mind). He served in 2011–18 on the National Petroleum Council. Time has named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people, and Foreign Policy, one of the 100 top global thinkers. His latest books include Natural Capitalism (1999, www.natcap.org), Small Is Profitable (2002, www.smallisprofitable.org), Winning the Oil Endgame (2004, www.oilendgame.com), The Essential Amory Lovins (2011), and Reinventing Fire (2011, www.reinventingfire.com).
His main recent efforts include supporting RMI’s collaborative synthesis, for China’s National Development and Reform Commission, of an ambitious efficiency-and-renewables trajectory that informed the 13th Five Year Plan; helping the Government of India design transformational mobility; and exploring how to make integrative design the new normal, so investments to energy efficiency can yield expanding rather than diminishing returns.
Please register before 25 August 2019. Participation is free of charge
CONTACT DETAILS
Distinguished Emeritus Research Scholar Transformative Institutional and Social Solutions Research Group - Energy, Climate, and Environment Program
Program and Project Officer Integrated Assessment and Climate Change Research Group - Energy, Climate, and Environment Program
Program and Project Officer Sustainable Service Systems Research Group - Energy, Climate, and Environment Program
Program and Project Officer Transformative Institutional and Social Solutions Research Group - Energy, Climate, and Environment Program
PUBLICATIONS
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
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