Cleantech Innovation and ‘Reinventing Fire’ with Amory Lovins

his latest book, Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era, which he co-authored with his fellow scientists at the Rocky Mountain Institute. (Lovins is the co-founder, chairman, and chief scientist of what he calls a “think-and-do tank” that is based in Snowmass and Boulder, CO.) He contends the United States can make this transition without oil, coal, or nukes—and by spending $5 trillion less than business-as-usual— and the result would be an economy that is 2.6 times bigger in 2050.

Lovins gained prominence in 1976 for his landmark essay, Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken, published in Foreign Affairs. He also preaches what he practices. At the Rocky Mountain Institute, he has spent the past 30 years working to realize his vision of an alternative energy strategy. His nonpartisan and economically based approach to energy policy has given him entre to numerous heads of state, and his long list of clients includes the Pentagon, Ford Motor Co., Wal-Mart, Corning, Monsanto, Ciba-Geigy, Texas Instruments, Unilever, and more than 100 utilities.

Throughout his career—and the 29 books he’s written—Lovins’s message has been remarkably consistent. Tapping market mechanisms to drive more efficient uses of resources isn’t simply a good thing for the global environment. It also generates greater employment, wealth, equality, and national security. Or as Lovins told us at an Xconomy event in 2008, it’s good for democracy and bad for tyranny and corruption.

After giving his keynote address, Lovins will sit down (on stage) with CleanTech CEO Jim Waring for a chat about the ways that San Diego’s entrepreneurs are applying green innovation in the energy-intensive sectors of transportation, buildings, industry, and electricity. The idea is to explore how clean technologies being developed in San Diego can be broadly applied to revolutionize markets around the world.

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.