Remembering Energy Guru Art Rosenfeld, Father of the 'Negawatt'

Listen to Andrea Kissack’s 2010 profile of Rosenfeld, produced for KQED’s Quest.

For decades, journalists couldn’t do a story on energy efficiency in California — or maybe anywhere — without somebody saying, “You really should talk to Art Rosenfeld.”

The physicist, who became known well beyond the confines of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as the “godfather” of energy efficiency, died Friday at the age of 90.

Rosenfeld’s obituary on the Berkeley Lab website credits him with creating the field of energy efficiency — something the state of California has taken to heart. Atop the enormous gains and “billions of dollars” in energy savings attained under Rosenfeld’s influence and leadership,  Governor Jerry Brown last year set a target of cutting energy use by  buildings in half by 2030 — a goal that legislators have since made law.

KQED’s Andrea Kissack interviewed Rosenfeld when, at 83, he stepped down from his post on the California Energy Commission. His very first comment for the story is memorable.

“I’ve often said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance but the price of energy efficiency is eternal nagging,” he told Kissack. (Follow the link above or use the audio player  to hear the entire story.)

Though he could have eased into retirement at that point with a stellar career behind him, instead Rosenfeld returned to Berkeley Lab to work on the challenge of urban “heat islands” and to study ways to create “cool cities” in the face of global warming.

Rosenfeld attained that rare pinnacle of achievement where people start naming things after you. There was a “Rosenfeld effect,” a “Rosenfeld’s Law,” and even a proposed unit of measure known as the Rosenfeld.

In the 1970s, Rosenfeld’s counsel is famously credited with the scrapping of plans for a nuclear power plant, after he advised Brown during his first stint as governor, that tightening efficiency standards on home appliances would obviate the need for it. With that, it may have been Rosenfeld who first introduced the concept of “negawatts” — the value of the energy we never use — championed by author Thomas Friedman and others.

In 2012 President Barack Obama awarded Rosenfeld the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.