Soft energy path

The soft energy path is an energy use and development strategy delineated and promoted by some energy experts and activists, such as Amory Lovins.

As physicist/consultant/lobbyist Lovins desribes it, the "hard energy path" (with which the soft path contrasts) involves inefficient liquid-fuel automotive transport, as well as giant, centralized electricity-generating facilities, often burning fossil fuels (e.g., coal or petroleum) or harnessing a fission reaction. The hard path is not simply a matter of energy sources, though, because it is greatly augmented and complicated by wastage and loss of electricity and other common, directly usable forms of energy.

The "soft energy path" wholly preferred by its advocates involves efficient use of energy, diversity of energy production methods (matched in scale and quality to end uses), and special reliance on "soft technologies" (a.k.a., alternative technology) such as solar energy, wind energy, biofuels, geothermal energy, etc.

In Lovins' analysis, large-scale electricity production facilities have an important place, but it is a place that they were already filling by the mid-1970s. At that time, Lovins felt that more centralized, large-scale "conventional" energy production facilities would not generally be needed.

Lovins argued that besides environmental benefits, global political stresses might be reduced by Western nations commiting to the soft energy path.