—Choices that countries make about energy supply commit them to those choic-
es for decades, because power plants and other energy facilities typically last for 40 years or more and are too costly to replace before they wear out. This is one of the reasons it is imprudent in the extreme to wait for even more evidence than we already have before letting climate-change risks start to influence which energy options we choose.
—Energy technologies that exist or are under development could greatly increase energy efficiency in residences and businesses, reduce dependence on oil, accelerate the provision of energy services to the world’s poor, increase the reliability and resilience of electricity grids, and shrink the impacts of energy supply on climate and other environmental values. The most promising of these options include renewable sources of a variety of types, advanced fossil-fuel technologies that can capture and sequester carbon, and hydrogen-powered fuel cells for vehicle propulsion and dispersed electricity generation.
—These prosperity-building, stability-enhancing and environment-sparing options will not materialize in quantity matching the need unless and until three conditions are met: The massive subsidies favoring continuation of energy business as usual are ended.
The massive risks of greenhouse gas-induced climate change are at least partly internalized with a carbon tax or its equivalent. And the industrial nations commit to helping the developing ones “leapfrog” past the inefficient and dirty-energy technologies that fueled the industrialization of the former but mortgaged the environ-
ment in the process.
There are a few small technical slips in the elaboration of all this, but not many, and none that matter to the thrust of the argument.
Written for the intelligent layperson, Vaitheeswaran’s book is by far the most helpful, entertaining, up-to-date and accessible treatment of the energy-economy-environment problematique available. Its title, Power to the People, might strike some at first as too cute or too presumptuous. By the time I finished the book, though, I thought the title was apt, and in more ways than one. One must hope that knowledge translates to power in the political sense and that the knowledge to the people conveyed here will help lead to the political outcomes needed to bring the book’s optimistic vision into being.
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Add Commentwhen they get through, most people won't even be able to afford electricity!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishydrogen powered vehicles are a red herring, wishful thinking put forward by the oil industry because it would make it possible for them to keep, more or less, the same business model as before.. Electricity on the other hand, we already have an infrastructure for it and updating electric power plants is easier than updating millions of cars when new technology becomes available.. as for efficiency, hydrogen, because we have to create it and can't just pump it out of the ground, is basically a battery anyway.. why not actually use.. a battery instead?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for electricity generation, i'll put my money on (non tokamak) fusion. Anything else just requires too much work to be done in a very very short time..
As for Holdren as pick for Secretary of Energy the jury’s out and will be for a long time. There is no doubt that as a Nobel Laureate he is ahead of the curve in raw intelligence and several steps ahead of pure political appointees of the past.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have reservations about his application of specialized knowledge and thought process into the broad arena of energy policy. I had plenty of highly gifted engineering professors in college who were helpless outside their own world when common sense was required.
It will take more than credentials make serious inroad into the energy problems facing the world. Jimmy Carter was a degreed nuclear engineer, the only president in recent history with a technical background and even he was unable to make a dent into the enormity of the energy issues that the world is facing – economically, environmentally or politically.
Well here’s to hope!
I like the notion of localized power sources; those that best match a regions specific resources. Some occasional, large centralized project are always going to be necessary.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you have lots of sun, use it; if you have lots of water, hydroelectric is great. Let's disconnect from those large sovereign nation driven energy solutions, and go towards locally based solutions that keep the money and power, likewise local.
Perhaps the biggest progress in energy use will be the war on waste. By definition we need an economy based on economies of energy. Less doing more.
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