Rocky Mountain Institute
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Rocky Mountain Institute is an organization in the United States dedicated to research, publication, consulting, and lecturing in the general field of sustainability and with a special focus on energy production, use, and conservation. The Institute is based in Snomass, Colorado.
By 1978 physicist Amory Lovins had published six books, consulted widely, and was active in energy affairs in some 15 countries, as synthesist and lobbyist. Lovins is a main theorist of the soft energy path.
In 1979 Lovins married L. Hunter Sheldon, a lawyer, forester, and social scientist. Hunter received her under-grad degree in sociology and political studies from Pitzer College, and her J.D. from Loyola University's School of Law. In 1982, along with Hunter, Amory Lovins founded the Rocky Mountain Institute, based in Colorado. Together with a group of colleagues, the Lovinses fostered efficient resource use and policy development that they believed would promote global security. RMI ultimately grew into an organization with a staff of around 50. By the mid 1980s, the Lovinses were being featured on major network TV programs like "60 Minutes."
On its web site, the Institute's mission statement is:
"Rocky Mountain Institute is an entrepreneurial nonprofit organization that fosters the efficient and restorative use of natural, human and other capital to make the world more secure, just, prosperous, and life-sustaining. We do this by inspiring business, civil society, and government to design integrative solutions that create true wealth."
At RMI's headquarters, in Snomass, CO, the south-facing building complex is so energy-efficient that, even with local -40° winter temperatures, the building interiors can maintain a comfortable temperature solely from the sunlight admitted plus the body heat of the people who work there. The environment can actually nurture semi-tropical and tropical indoor plants.
The Lovinses described the "hard energy path" as involving inefficient liquid-fuel automotive transport, as well as giant, centralized electricity-generating facilities, often burning fossil fuels (e.g., coal or petroleum) or harnessing a fission reaction, greatly complicated by electricity wastage and loss. The "soft energy path" which they wholly preferred involves efficient use of energy, diversity of energy production methods (and matched in scale and quality to end uses), and special reliance on "soft technologies" (a.k.a., alternative technology)such as solar, wind, biofuels, geothermal, etc. According to the Institute, large-scale electricity production facilities had an important place, but it was a place that they were already filling in the middle 1970s; in general, more would not be needed.
In recent years, the Institute has convened a team of designers and engineers to develop a super-efficeint prototype automobile, which they've dubbed the Hypercar.
External links
- Rocky Mountain Institute (http://www.rmi.org)