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Amory Bloch Lovins (born November 13, 1947) is an American physicist, environmental scientist, writer, and Chairman/Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. He has worked in the field of energy policy and related areas for four decades. He was named by Time magazine one of the World's 100 most influential people in 2009.
Lovins worked professionally as an environmentalist in the 1970s and since then as an analyst of a "soft energy path" for the United States and other nations. He has promoted energy efficiency, the use of renewable energy sources, and the generation of energy at or near the site where the energy is actually used. Lovins has also advocated a "negawatt revolution" arguing that utility customers don’t want kilowatt-hours of electricity; they want energy services. In the 1990s, his work with Rocky Mountain Institute included the design of an ultra-efficient automobile, the Hypercar.
Lovins does not see his energy ideas as green or left-wing, and he is an advocate of private enterprise and free market economics. He notes that Rupert Murdoch has made News Corporation carbon-neutral, with savings of millions of dollars. But, says Lovins, large institutions are becoming more "gridlocked and moribund", and he supports the rise of "citizen organizations" around the world.
Lovins has received ten honorary doctorates and won many awards. He has provided expert testimony in eight countries, briefed 19 heads of state, and published 29 books. These books include Reinventing Fire, Winning the Oil Endgame, Small is Profitable, Brittle Power, and Natural Capitalism.
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Hermann Scheer (April 29, 1944 – October 14, 2010) was a Social Democrat member of the German Bundestag (Parliament), President of Eurosolar (The European Association for Renewable Energy) and General Chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy. In 1999, Scheer was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for his "indefatigable work for the promotion of solar energy worldwide".
Scheer believes that the continuation of current patterns of energy supply and use will be environmentally damaging, with renewable energy being the only realistic alternative. Scheer has concluded that it is technically and environmentally feasible to harness enough solar radiation to achieve a total replacement of the foclear (fossil/nuclear) energy system by a global renewable energy economy. The main obstacle to such a change is seen to be political, not technical or economic. In 1999 he was one of the initiators of the German feed-in tariffs that were the major source of the rise of renewable energies in Germany during the following years.
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Hans-Josef Fell (born 7 January 1952 in Hammelburg) is a member of the Green Party in the German Parliament. Fell framed the German Renewable Energy legislation, together with Hermann Scheer. He currently serves as spokesman on energy for the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary group.
Fell has travelled to many countries to discuss clean energy. Following his visit to Turkey, plans for a nuclear power plant at Akkuyu were stopped, and Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit declared that his government would foster renewable technologies. In Taiwan, following Fell's television appearances and talks with individual policy makers, the government announced the withdrawal of its plans to build the country's fourth nuclear power plant, and its intent to phase out nuclear power by 2020. The French government has also shown great interest in drafting a renewable energy law similar to the one in Germany.
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Rolf Disch is a German architect, solar energy pioneer and environmental activist who has contributed greatly to the advancement and efficiency of solar architecture internationally. Born in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, Disch has dedicated particular focus to regional renewable and sustainable energy.
As head of his own architecture firm, Rolf Disch Solar Architecture, Disch built the Heliotrope in Freiburg which was the world’s first home to create more energy than it uses; it physically rotates with the sun to maximize its solar intake. Disch then developed his PlusEnergy concept, by making it a permanent goal for his buildings to produce more energy than they consume in order to sell the surplus solar energy back into the grid for profit.
Rolf Disch’s biggest venture was completed in 2004 with the 59 PlusEnergy home Solar Settlement and the 60,000 sq. ft. PlusEnergy Sun Ship building. In June 2009, Disch launched the 100% GmbH organization, with the aim to make Freiburg and its surrounding district the first 100% sustainable renewable energy region in the world.
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Denis Hayes (1944– ) is an environmental activist and proponent of solar power. He rose to prominence in 1970 as the coordinator for the first Earth Day. Hayes founded the Earth Day Network and expanded it to more than 180 nations. During the Carter Administration, Hayes became head of the Solar Energy Research Institute (now known as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory), but left this position when the Reagan administration cut funding for the program. Since 1992, Hayes has been president of the Bullitt Foundation in Washington.
Hayes has received the national Jefferson Awards Medal for Outstanding Public Service as well as the highest awards bestowed by the Sierra Club, The Humane Society of the United States, the National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Council of America, the Global Environmental Facility of the World Bank, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, and the American Solar Energy Society. Time magazine named him as “Hero of the Planet” in 1999.
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Augustin Mouchot (April 7, 1825 – October 4, 1911) was a French inventor of the earliest solar-powered engine, converting solar energy into mechanical steam power.
Mouchot was born in Semur-en-Auxois, France on 7 April 1825. He first taught at the primary schools of Morvan (1845–49) and later Dijon, before attaining a degree in Mathematics in 1852 and a Bachelor of Physical Sciences in 1853. Subsequently, he taught mathematics in the secondary schools of Alençon (1853–62), Rennes and Lycée de Tours (1864–71). It was during this period that he undertook research into solar energy, which led eventually to his obtaining government funding for full-time research.
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David Faiman (born 1944 in the United Kingdom) is an Israeli engineer, physicist, and expert on solar power. He is the director of the Ben-Gurion National Solar Energy Center and Chairman of the Department of Solar Energy & Environmental Physics at Ben-Gurion University's Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research in Sde Boker.
He is Israel's representative to the Task 8 Photovoltaic Specialist Committee of the International Energy Agency and co-authored their book Energy from the Desert: Practical Proposals for Very Large Scale Photovoltaic Systems.
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Stefan Krauter is Professor and Entrepreneur in the area of Renewable Energies. His activities in research, teaching and business are directed to establish a global sustainable energy supply. He specialized in the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity - photovoltaics.
He initiated and organized in Rio de Janeiro several congresses (RIO 02/3/5/6/9 - World Climate & Energy Events) and the Latin America Renewable Energy Fair (LAREF), to sustain the vision of the UNCED Earth Summit of Rio 1992 in that area.
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Jeremy Leggett, a geologist by training, began his career as a consultant for the oil industry, while teaching at the Royal School of Mines. He later became an environmental campaigner for Greenpeace, before evolving into a social entrepreneur and author.
Jeremy Leggett is currently executive chairman of Solarcentury the UK’s largest independent solar electric company. He also serves as a founding director of the world's first private equity fund for renewable energy. From 2002 to 2006, Leggett was a member of the UK Government Renewables advisory board. He was the recipient of the President's Award of the Geological Society, and in 1987 the Geological Society's Lyell Fund.
In his 2009 book, The Solar Century, Leggett is critical of nuclear power, saying that investing in nuclear power would mean less money for other initiatives involving energy conservation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. Leggett also states that carbon capture and storage has a "substantial timing problem" as it will take fifteen to twenty years to introduce the technology.
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Benjamin K. Sovacool is Director of the Danish Center for Energy Technology at AU Herning and a Professor of Social Sciences at Aarhus University in Denmark. He is also Associate Professor at Vermont Law School and Director of the Energy Security and Justice Program at their Institute for Energy and the Environment. Sovacool's research interests include energy policy, environmental issues, and science and technology policy, and his research has taken him to 50 countries. He is the author or editor of sixteen books and 250 peer reviewed academic articles. Sovacool's work has been referred to in academic publications such as Science, Nature, and Scientific American. He has written opinion editorials for the Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle. Sovacool is an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Contributing Author.
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John I. Yellott (1908 – 1986) was a scientist internationally recognized as a pioneer in passive solar energy, and an inventor with many patents to his credit. In his honor the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (“ASME”) Solar Division confers a biannual "John I. Yellott Award" which "recognizes ASME members who have demonstrated sustained leadership within the Solar Energy Division, have a reputation for performing high-quality solar energy research and have made significant contributions to solar engineering through education, state or federal government service or in the private sector."
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