Amory 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.

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

Today we have a temporary aberration called "industrial capitalism" which is inadvertently liquidating its two most important sources of capital, the natural world and properly functioning societies.
No sensible capitalist would do that.

By skimping on design, the owner gets costlier equipment, higher energy costs, and a less competitive and comfortable building; the tenants get lower productivity and higher rent and operating costs.

Any demanding high technology tends to develop influential and dedicated constituencies of those who link its commercial success with both the public welfare and their own. Such sincerely held beliefs, peer pressures, and the harsh demands that the work itself places on time and energy all tend to discourage such people from acquiring a similarly thorough knowledge of alternative policies and the need to discuss them.

I'm not an environmentalist. I'm a cultural repairman. It's all about efficient and restorative use of resources to make the world secure, prosperous and life-sustaining.

The barriers that renewables and efficiency face come less from our living in a capitalist market economy and more from not taking market economics seriously.

We've got 21st century technology and speed colliding head-on with 20th and 19th century institutions, rules and cultures.

I'm a practitioner of elegant frugality. I don't feel comfortable telling other people what to do, so I just try and lead by example.

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

I think along the way, as we treat nature as model and mentor, and not as a nuisance to be evaded or manipulated, we will certainly acquire much more reverence for life than we seem to be showing right now.

If you ask me, it'd be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other.

I am a man without a furnace. My windows are insulated by 19 sheets of glass which cost less than installing a heating system.

What if we could make energy do our work without working our undoing?

Energy-saving technologies keep improving faster than they're applied, so efficiency is an ever larger and cheaper resource.

Rely on renewable energy flows that are always there whether we use them or not, such as, sun, wind and vegetation: on energy income, not depletable energy capital.

The reason the U.S. lags so badly is that we have obsolete rules that favor big over small, supply over efficiency, and incumbents over new market entrants.

If you ask the wrong question, of course, you get the wrong answer.
We find in design it's much more important and difficult to ask the right question.
Once you do that, the right answer becomes obvious.

A package of 35 improvements to typical industrial motor systems can save around 50% of their metered energy ... with a simple payback under 16 months.

Our energy future is choice, not fate. Oil dependence is a problem we need no longer have-and it's cheaper not to. U.S. oil dependence can be eliminated by proven and attractive technologies that create wealth, enhance choice, and strengthen common security.