Award-winning environmentalist, physicist Amory Lovins to visit Syracuse University Nov. 15

Award-winning environmentalist, physicist Amory Lovins to visit Syracuse University Nov. 15November 05, 2007Kelly Homan Rodoskikahoman@syr.edu

Amory Lovins, a renowned consultant experimental physicist and co-founder, chair and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, will visit Syracuse University on Thursday, Nov. 15, in a joint presentation of The University Lectures; the 2007 Syracuse Symposium, presented by The College of Arts and Sciences; the Geoffrey O. Seltzer Lecture Series; and the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems.

Lovins will speak on “Profitable Solutions to Climate, Oil and Proliferation Problems” beginning at 7:30 p.m. in Hendricks Chapel. The event is free and open to the public; parking is available in the Irving Garage for $3.50.

The lecture will examine modern efficiency techniques, as well as competitive alternative supplies that exist and cost less than obsolete technologies that cause these problems.

“Lovins’ visit will also underline SU’s expanding effort to measure and reduce its carbon footprint, owing to the University’s partnership in the President’s Commitment on Climate, a national project to thrust colleges and universities into leadership roles in building awareness of and promoting activities to enhance environmental sustainability,” says Vice Chancellor and Provost Eric F. Spina. “For example, student, faculty and staff members will be engaging in measuring their own carbon footprints in spring 2008.”

A MacArthur fellow, Lovins has advised the energy industry and other industries for more than three decades, as well as the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense.

With his work published in 29 books and hundreds of papers, Lovins has been recognized with the “Alternative Nobel,” Onassis, Nissan, Shingo and Mitchell prizes, the Benjamin Franklin and Happold Medals, nine honorary doctorates, honorary membership in the American Institute of Architects, and the Heinz, Lindbergh, Jean Meyer, Time Hero for the Planet and World Technology awards.

A Harvard and Oxford dropout and former Oxford don (receiving in consequence a master’s degree from Oxford by special resolution), Lovins advises industries and governments worldwide and has briefed 19 heads of state. He co-founded and is chairman and chief scientist of the Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Institute (http://www.rmi.org), an independent, market-oriented, entrepreneurial, nonprofit, nonpartisan think-and-do tank that creates abundance by design. Much of RMI’s pathfinding work on advanced resource productivity (typically with expanding returns to investment) and innovative business strategies is synthesized in natural capitalism. This intellectual capital provides most of RMI’s revenue through private-sector consultancy that has served or been invited by more than 80 Fortune 500 firms, lately redesigning $30 billion worth of facilities spanning 29 sectors.

RMI spun off E SOURCE in 1992 and Fiberforge Inc., a composites engineering firm that Lovins chairs, in 1999. Its technology permits cost-effective manufacturing of the ultralight-hybrid Hypercar? vehicles he invented in 1991.

The University Lectures is a cross-disciplinary lecture series that brings to the University individuals of exceptional accomplishment in the areas of architecture and design; the humanities and the sciences; and public policy, management and communications. The series is supported by the generosity of the University’s trustees, alumni and friends. For more information, visit http://lectures.syr.edu.

The Syracuse Symposium is a semester-long intellectual and artistic festival, hosted by SU’s College of Arts and Sciences, that celebrates interdisciplinary thinking, imagination and creation. The theme for the 2007 series is “Justice.” For more information, visit http://symposium.syr.edu.

The College of Arts and Sciences established The Geoffrey O. Seltzer Lecture Series in 2005 to honor the memory of one of its most distinguished and beloved faculty members. Seltzer was an influential member of the Quaternary science community who, for 11 years, served on the faculty of the Department of Earth Sciences. Seltzer’s commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration on environmental themes is reflected in a major lecture each fall, made possible by the college and his surviving family and friends.

The Syracuse CoE (http://syracusecoe.org) is a federation of more than 140 businesses and institutions that collaborate on sustainable innovations to improve built and urban environments. Partners in the Syracuse CoE work on research, development and educational projects relating to clean and renewable energy, indoor environmental quality and water resources.