(212) 854-6580 April 1, 1999

rjn2@columbia.edu

Amory Lovins, the physicist-turned-environmentalist who has become a forceful proponent of energy efficiency, will speak on ãNatural Capitalism and Advanced Resource Productivityä at Columbia University April 8.

Dr. Lovinsâ talk takes place at 4 P.M. in the C.P. Davis Alumni Auditorium in the Schapiro Center for Engineering and Physical Science Research, 530 West 120th St. on Columbiaâs Morningside Heights campus. The event is sponsored by the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia and the Columbia Earth Institute and is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Nickolas Themelis, director of the Earth Engineering Center, at (212) 854-2138 or njt1@columbia.edu.

The subject of Dr. Lovinsâ talk is also the title of a book, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, co-authored by Paul Hawken, Dr. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, his spouse, and due from Little Brown & Co. next fall. A summary on the website of the Rocky Mountain Institute, the think tank the Lovinses founded in 1982 in Snowmass, Colo., says that the book ãdescribes how radically more efficient use of natural resources, and integrative design concepts borrowed from biology, are revealing winning business strategies that can solve most environmental and many social problems at a profit.ä

The first Industrial Revolution, according to the encapsulation, was built by increasing the productivity of people 100-fold, through the addition of machines, and exploiting natural resources that appeared to have no end. The pattern innovators face today is boundless human capital faced with limited resources, so

the next revolution will use resources ÷ energy, materials, water, land, etc. ÷from 10 to 100 times more productively, with new technologies and system design.

Radically increased resource productivity helps to protect ecosystem services such as fresh air and water. ãNatural capitalistsä have a financial incentive to eliminate waste by redesigning production with closed loops and no toxicity and to reinvest in sustaining natural capital. Dr. Lovins, in an interview with a British news service, cites as an example companies that used to sell industrial solvents, but now lease them, reclaim them after use, reprocess them and lease them to the next customer.

Shortages of work and work-related satisfaction, in this view, are not isolated pathologies, but result from the waste of resources, money and people. Protecting natural capital can also protect human capital and allow natural capitalists to make a profit at the same time, the efficiency proponent says.

Dr. Lovins has served as a consultant on energy policy and increased resource productivity for the last twenty-five years. A MacArthur Fellow, he has published and lectured extensively on the subject, has served as an advisor to businesses and governments and has written or co-authored dozens of papers and books. The headquarters of the Rocky Mountain Institute is a working example of renewable energy and has attracted some 40,000 visitors since 1984. The Institute is credited with modernizing electric utility policy on the West Coast and promoting to industry the development of ultra-efficient ãhypercars,ä ultra-light vehicles that utilize more than one source of power to attain longer driving ranges. A subsidiary organization, E-Source, Boulder, Colo., is a well-regarded source of technical information on advanced electric efficiency.

Dr. Lovins has received many awards, including the 1982 Mitchell Prize, for work on utility policy, the 1989 Delphi Prize, an environmental award from the Onassis Foundation, and the 1993 Nissan Prize at ISATA, the leading European car-technology organization.

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