Stanford launches free website for public to learn about extreme energy efficiency

More than 80% of the energy that enters our modern energy systems is wasted before it delivers a useful service. We can change that by designing these systems to avoid waste from the start. Stanford University’s new Extreme Energy Efficiency Learning Hub can help anyone learn how to apply the practice of integrative design, sometimes called “whole systems thinking,” to deliver unchanged or improved energy services while spending less money and using a fraction of the energy. 

Free and open to the public, the website shares content from Stanford’s Extreme Energy Efficiency course, which Amory Lovins and Joel Swisher, PhD ‘91, PE, have been co-teaching since 2018 through the department of Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE). The class has attracted engineers, policy students, and sustainability leaders from across the university. 

Lovins is a physicist,  co-founder of RMI, (founded as Rocky Mountain Institute), and at Stanford a Precourt Institute for Energy scholar and lecturer in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. He has advised many governments and industries on how to cut waste, improve performance, and save money through better design, not bigger technology. Often called the “Einstein of energy efficiency,” Lovins has shaped the way the world understands energy since the 1970s. Swisher, an expert in energy efficiency technology and policy, has taught several graduate courses in CEE at Stanford since 2003 and is an RMI alumnus, having served as its managing director of research and consulting. He also designed the curriculum for Western Washington University’s Institute for Energy Studies, one of the nation’s first interdisciplinary energy programs for undergraduates.

“Integrative design for extreme energy efficiency is not a new technology. It’s a new way of thinking,” Lovins teaches his students.

The course is often described as a mind-expanding experience in rethinking how we provide energy services. Now, with the launch of the Extreme Energy Efficiency Learning Hub, the course material is available to all for free.

“The goal of the Extreme Energy Efficiency Learning Hub is to enable engineers, policymakers, and anyone interested in solutions with compounding benefits around the world to learn about integrative design for vast energy and resource savings in buildings, transportation, industry, and electricity,” said Jane Woodward, MS ’82, MBA ’87. Woodward is one of the instructors of the Understand Energy course and of the entrepreneurial Stanford Climate Ventures course. She is also a member of the advisory council for the Precourt Institute for Energy, which built the Extreme Energy Efficiency Learning Hub with her support.

When does energy efficiency become extreme?

Since 1950, energy efficiency has delivered more U.S. energy services than any other source, including oil, gas, and coal—cutting energy use per dollar of GDP by 70%. Still, most efficiency gains have focused on incremental upgrades, like better light bulbs or adding insulation, rather than rethinking the entire system. The Extreme Energy Efficiency Learning Hub invites learners to go further and use integrative design to achieve order-of-magnitude energy savings that are not just technically possible, but often cheaper and better. 

That leap requires a shift in mindset. “If you start by optimizing a component, you’re unlikely to optimize the system. But if you focus on optimizing the system, the right components often become obvious,” said Swisher.

These are not theoretical ideas. Real-world systems like buildings, vehicles, and industries redesigned using these principles use 50% to 90+% less energy while improving performance and cutting costs. Across the Extreme Energy Efficiency Learning Hub, case studies explain these processes in practice.

Pillars of integrative design

“Modern energy efficiency doesn’t deplete a concentrated resource like oil or copper. Made of ideas, it depletes nothing but stupidity,” said Lovins from his superefficient home at 7,100 feet elevation in Old Snowmass, Colorado, heated year-round only by passive solar gain.

That idea-driven approach is what the Extreme Energy Efficiency Learning Hub is built to cultivate. At its core are the pillars of integrative design, a framework for applying whole systems thinking to energy efficient design. These pillars help teams challenge conventional assumptions and consider entire systems rather than isolated parts.

Each pillar is accompanied by examples, design prompts, and guiding questions. Take vehicles: For every dollar spent on gasoline for today’s cars, less than 1 cent moves the driver and passengers. The rest is lost in heating air, tires, and road, and mainly in moving the heavy vehicle itself. “Efficiency isn’t about doing less, worse, or without,” Lovins says. “It’s about doing more and better with less—often in delightfully surprising ways.”

The Extreme Energy Efficiency Learning Hub is not just a technical resource. As Lovins and Swisher remind us, radical energy savings don’t require heroic new technology. Instead, this learning hub is a call to start with the end in mind about how and why we use energy. For example, why do we heat buildings? To keep air warm? Or to warm bodies? Framing the challenge as keeping people comfortable, rather than heating buildings, opens up a whole suite of new, innovative, and energy efficient solutions. 

The hub also explores technical and policy barriers, economic levers, and implementation strategies across sectors. In a world shaped by climate urgency, economic pressures, and rising energy demands, this is an invitation to redesign everything—from pipes to policies—to work better, waste less, and serve more.

Website structure

The learning hub is a guided route through the course topics. It starts with an introduction to extreme energy efficiency and integrative design. The course then takes users through each of the pillars of integrative design, providing an overview, key questions to ask, and examples. After completing those modules, users are prepared to explore where integrative design for extreme efficiency can be applied: buildings, mobility, transportation, and electricity. Each of those topics includes an introduction, a list of resources for possible review before the lectures, a lecture, and additional resources. 

The site includes pages on Lovins’ life and his approach to “applied hope,” a powerful strategy for tackling problems based on the belief that change is possible. And, recognizing that we all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, the site introduces an Energy Efficiency Hall of Fame.

The site is live. The water’s warm (though not too warm). We invite you to dive in.