Which is a beautifully straight forward book, written by a physicist who deeply understands the field but is writing for the general public. It tallies up methods of energy production, and breaks down current consumption, as well as providing multiple plans for generating that much energy.
My only complaint is that it largely ignores energy efficiency gains (check out some Amory Lovins lectures for instance[1]) - though the Jevon's paradox may suggest that's the right thing to do.
Frankly, if the book indeed focuses on electricity generation only, it misses out on a big chunk of the problem. Electricity is NOT going to be a major issue. We could go on with non-CO2 producing nuclear power plants for another 100 000 years with the amount of fissible material on Earth. The big issue is going to be "how can we replace gas/fuel" ? If I remember correctly, 70% of the oil is the US is used to power cars only. We can have natural gas combusting engines for a while, as a replacement, but what's after? Bio-Fuels won't work: you have to put more energy to produce them than what you get out of it. It has a negative yield. Wind power is not transportable. There's no way you can make a normal car move with solar panels. How about electric cars ? Well, it's going to be massively expensive, unpractical to recharge, and there's nothing indicating you can effectively use it to power heavy trucks needed for goods transportation.
Of course, the issue will not come up suddenly. It's all going to be progressive, and when the petrol prices rise to very high levels and stay there, there will be running innovation to provide good alternatives. I'm not too worried. Market will adapt.
If we weren't constrained by how few reactors we've built, we'd probably store electrical energy as fuel using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process to create liquid ammonia from hydrogen (electrolyzed water) and nitrogen (distilled air). Batteries may eventually become competitive in recharge rate and useful lifetime, though.
"This sets the tone for the whole book: let’s skip the reasons and just focus on the solutions and hard choices that need to be made."
vs.
"I won't be buying this book if the opening premise is that the US electric grid is in crisis. This Ars article surely didn't give any justification for that. Must be sensationalism for the purpose of selling books. I've been an engineer in the US electric business for 20 years. It's not in crisis."
In this review, at least, there's no claim the grid is in crisis. The book's title claims there's an energy crisis. Apparently the book also claims the grid is inefficient, and fixing it up would help address the energy crisis.
That comment sounds like a knee-jerk reaction from somebody who didn't even bother reading the review carefully. If he can't even get through a review of the book without flying off the handle over something that wasn't there, it probably isn't any loss if he doesn't read the book itself.
The point is that it would be a rare reader indeed who doesn't believe in one or more justifications for increasing our energy efficiency. The country is so polarized that people from different sides of the aisle won't agree on the color of the sky for fear that the other side will gain some partisan advantage. The concrete issue here is that conservatives have many, many reasons for addressing the energy crisis, but they will not join any fight that requires them to admit the existence of human-caused global warming or admit the validity of any motives couched in environmental language. Those two issues are the kiss of death for any nationwide cooperation on energy issues.
Not that there aren't troublemakers on the left as well. Any talk of reducing dependence on other countries is liable to rile up people who think more and more interdependence is the cure to everything. If we all drink from the same well, then nobody will poison it, right? Right. And how dare we treat other countries as scary and unreliable; how offensive is that? If only we were more dependent on them, we would be forced to give up our xenophobia. Discussing motives is a non-starter on either side of this cursed issue.
Hell, willingness to set aside that discussion won't be enough; it will take discipline and determination, because opportunistic blowhards will speculate about motives simply to derail any bipartisan cooperation. "Are you sure you want to collaborate with those people? You don't share their kooky, immoral motives, do you?" Energy efficiency has so much polarizing baggage, yet such a broad appeal for a variety of reasons, that setting justifications aside is like declaring a cease-fire. Without it, nobody will stick their heads up and accomplish anything. I'm very happy to see people yadda-yaddaing the justifications. It's the first step towards cooperation.
Is this such a book? Or is it discussing implementation issues? There's a very big difference. I read books and articles talking about approaches and likely pitfalls. Of course I also read things that are advocacy. Some are both.
It's possible the book is just discussing implementation issues. But if it's implementation issues for something that has not been convincingly established to be a problem, it seems like putting the cart before the horse. Why discuss hard choices that need to be made before establishing need? What is the point of such a work?
The point was that there are so many reasons. Besides climate change a number of issues were brought up such as energy security, conservation, and nationalism. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of books that discuss these reasons. Should this book be forced to repeat the same things that have been said over and over again just for the sake of doing it?
Really? There are still many town in Mexico that do not have reliable electricity. Mexico's electric grid is far behind where ours is right now, much less where ours needs to be.
they built a lot of power plants in the last years, from hydroelectric to natural gas ones, they make roads all across mexico, built up a refinery for oil and gas, drilled a lot of new oil wells, and a lot more great infraestructure investment... I'm not talking about little towns getting clean water and electricity, I'm talking about the entire countre... about 8 years ago, Mexico had no oil left, the oil wells where exhausted, the roads where insufficient, the refineries too old, the power grid was overcharged. Now we have a lot of new highways between cities, water treatment plants, power plants, even a couple new deepwater seaports...
http://www.withouthotair.com/
Which is a beautifully straight forward book, written by a physicist who deeply understands the field but is writing for the general public. It tallies up methods of energy production, and breaks down current consumption, as well as providing multiple plans for generating that much energy.
My only complaint is that it largely ignores energy efficiency gains (check out some Amory Lovins lectures for instance[1]) - though the Jevon's paradox may suggest that's the right thing to do.
[1] http://youtu.be/O5txQlEI7bc