Leon Jay "Lee" Schipper (April 7, 1947 – August 16, 2011) was a physicist and energy efficiency expert who authored more than 100 technical papers and a number of books on energy economics and transportation. He was "often a critic of the conventional wisdom."
He was remembered by climate scientists as "a giant" who "was brilliant at articulating the connections among technology, economics, culture, policy and politics."
Education
Schipper attended the
University of California at Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...
. He earned a bachelor's degrees in Physics and Music in 1968, and a Ph.D. in astrophysics.
Career
Schipper worked at the
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, the United States Department of Energy. Located in ...
(LBNL) for more than 20 years. In addition, he worked at th
Energy and Resources Group at UC BerkeleyShell Internationalin London, as well as being
Fulbright Scholar
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...
at th
Beijer Institute of Ecological Economicsin Stockholm. He was a guest researcher at the
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...
, VVS Tekniska Foereningen, the
OECD
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate e ...
, and the
Stockholm Environment Institute
The Stockholm Environment Institute, or SEI, is a non-profit, independent research and policy institute specialising in sustainable development and environmental issues, with seven affiliate offices around the world. SEI works on climate change ...
. He worked closely with the
Global Business Network and
Cambridge Energy Research Associates Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) is a consulting company in the United States that specializes in advising governments and private companies on energy markets, geopolitics, industry trends, and strategy. CERA has research and consulting s ...
.
He served on the editorial boards of five major journals and was a member of the Swedish Board for Transportation and Communications Research. For four years he was a member of the U.S.
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
'
Transportation Research Board
The Transportation Research Board (TRB) is a division of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, formerly the National Research Council of the United States, which serves as an independent adviser to the President of the Unite ...
's Committee on Sustainable Transport and Committee on Developing Countries.
At the time of his death, Schipper was a senior research scientist at bot
University of California Berkeley’s Global Metropolitan Studiesand at th
Precourt Institute of Energy Efficiency at Stanford Universityconducting research and policy analysis on efficient energy use in transportation systems.
Energy Efficient Housing
Schipper's first seminal contribution came in 1976, when he published an influential paper in ''Science'' pointing out that Sweden consumed far less energy per unit of economic activity than the United States did. His work on the energy efficiency of Swedish housing culminated in his 1985 book ''Coming in from the Cold'' with Stephen Meyers and Henry Kelly. Schipper testified before Congress on this subject in March 1984.
Transportation
Schipper shifted his primary attention to transport in the 1980s and started the Berkeley Lab's International Energy Studies group with
Jayant Sathaye
Jayanta ( sa, जयन्त, "victory"), is a character who appears in Hindu literature. He is the son of Indra, the king of the devas (gods), and his wife, Shachi (Indrani). He has a sister called Jayanti.
He appears in various Hindu scr ...
, and the two co-led the group for many years.
He was co-founder o
EMBARQ the World Resources Institute Center for Sustainable Transport, and remained as a senior associate emeritus.
Climate Change
From 1995 to 2001, he was a senior scientist at the
International Energy Agency
The International Energy Agency (IEA) is a Paris-based autonomous intergovernmental organisation, established in 1974, that provides policy recommendations, analysis and data on the entire global energy sector, with a recent focus on curbing carb ...
in Paris.
He contributed to the Second and Third Assessment Reports of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations. Its job is to advance scientific knowledge about climate change caused by human activities. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) a ...
, which was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Chemi ...
in 2007. He was due to act as Review Editor for the chapter on Transport in Working Group III's contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report, released in April 2014.
Legacy
John Holdren
John Paul Holdren (born in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, March 1, 1944) is an American scientist who served as the senior advisor to President Barack Obama on science and technology issues through his roles as Assistant to the President for Science and ...
, later to become Science Advisor to President
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
, was the first person to hire Schipper as an energy specialist, at Berkeley in the early 1970s. He said ‘‘Lee was one of the first people to point out that people don’t want to consume energy, but they want to consume energy services, like transportation, comfortable rooms, cold beer and so forth. And that there was an enormous variation in the amount of energy needed to perform those services.’’
Mark Levine, who was Schipper’s superviser for most his career at LBNL, said: "Lee was the founding father of a school of energy analysts, a tradition carried on with vigor in the Energy Analysis Department at LBNL.... The work he did has been carried on here. He created an important tradition of understanding energy by studying it from the bottom up, which means by end user." Schipper broke new ground by analyzing energy data sector by sector and end-use by end-use in various countries and comparing them. He demonstrated that energy intensity did not correlate with GDP in any simple way and was able to show why.
Personal
He was described as being an irrepressible iconoclast
with a wonderful knack of turning a phrase to excellent effect. Evidence for this was publishing 15 letters to the editor in the ''New York Times'' on energy efficiency. For example, in his view the "cash for clunkers" program—which offered rebates to people who bought a new car with better mileage than their old one—did little to save energy, although it may have reduced air pollution. In many cases, buyers used the rebate to buy something bigger and more high-powered than they would have otherwise. "The effect is inverse of what we were hoping for" he said.
Schipper was also an accomplished musician. He was the leader of the University of California Jazz Quintet in 1968.
"Lee Schipper, leader of the University of California Jazz Quintet"
interview, 27 May 1968. As a UC Berkeley student and vibraphonist, he led his jazz group to victory at the Notre Dame Jazz Festival in 1967. In 1969 Danish saxophonist Carsten Meinert invited him to record on his album "C.M. Musictrain" in Denmark (Spectator Records). In 1973 he recorded "The Phunky Physicist" with Swedish guitar player Janne Schaffer. He would reprise the role as band leader with an ad hoc jazz group, Lee Schipper and the Mitigators, who performed primarily in conjunction with energy-related conferences.
He was also one of the world's experts on Wilhelm Furtwangler
Wilhelm may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* William Charles John Pitcher, costume designer known professionally as "Wilhelm"
* Wilhelm (name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or surname
Other uses
* Mount ...
, a 20th-century symphonic and operatic conductor, and collected one of the most complete sets of his recordings.
Publications
*1985: (lead author) ''Coming in from the Cold: Energy-wise Housing in Sweden'' (American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy)
*1992: (lead author) ''Energy Efficiency and Human Activity: Past Trends, Future Prospects'' (Cambridge University Press)
*1992: (co-author
"Environmentally Benign Automobiles"
''Access Magazine''
*1993: (lead author
"Mind the Gap: The Vicious Circle of Measuring Automobile Fuel Use"
''Energy Policy''
*2001: (co-author
''Transportation in Developing Countries: Greenhouse Gas Scenarios for Delhi, India''
(Institute for Transportation Studies, UC Davis)
*2005: (co-author
''Growing in the Greenhouse: Protecting the Climate by Putting Development First''
(World Resources Institute)
*2006: (co-author
''Measuring the Invisible: Quantifying Emissions Reductions from Transport Solutions - Querétaro Case Study''
(World Resources Institute)
*2008: (lead author
''Measuring The Invisible: Quantifying Emissions Reductions From Transport Solutions - Hanoi Case Study''
(World Resources Institute)
*2009: (lead author
''Transport and Carbon Dioxide Emissions: Forecasts, Options Analysis, and Evaluation''
(Asian Development Bank)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schipper, Lee
Energy economists
2011 deaths
People from Santa Monica, California
University of California, Berkeley alumni
1947 births