Nearly 50 years after Amory Lovins published his landmark Foreign Affairs article, “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?,” we have made enormous gains in efficiency. But we have barely scratched the surface of what better design can deliver.
Few people have shaped modern thinking about energy more than Amory. He co-founded Rocky Mountain Institute—known today as RMI—and has spent five decades helping companies and governments dramatically reduce energy use while improving performance and lowering costs.
At the center of Amory’s work is integrative design for radical efficiency—optimizing whole systems rather than individual components to use less energy, material, equipment, and capital and achieve far greater efficiency gains.
In this conversation, Amory explains how redesigning pipes, pumps, and motors could dramatically reduce global electricity use; why integrative design remains largely absent from engineering textbooks, government forecasts, and climate models; and how his home in the Colorado Rockies stays warm enough to grow bananas without any mechanical heating system.
The most overlooked climate solution may not be another breakthrough technology. It may be better design, and one of our most powerful tools for profitably solving climate change.
What is Supercool?
Supercool spotlights climate innovations that have moved beyond the lab and into the market.
Hosted by climate-tech founder and author Josh Dorfman, Supercool features CEOs, founders, and operators building businesses that are decarbonizing energy, transportation, food, materials, and buildings. Each episode explores the strategies, execution, and business models behind companies that cut carbon, grow profits, and redefine modern life.