I’m an energy researcher and energy industry strategist who has worked in academia, government, and the private sector for almost fifty years. I became fascinated with the importance of energy in planetary sustainability as an undergraduate engineering student in the 1970s and have been working in the field ever since. I’ve been fortunate to see how the energy system works from the standpoint of academic researchers, private companies, regulators, Wall Street, consumers, and government policymakers, and this gives me a broad perspective.
I wrote...
Power after Carbon: Building a Clean, Resilient Grid
I recommend this book because it is one of the most creative, well-prepared, and thorough discussions of how to achieve net zero carbon across the entire U.S. economy, not just across the power grid.
The book is extremely wide-ranging and creative and is especially unique in its coverage of decarbonizing the industrial and transportation sectors.
Oil and coal have built our civilisation, created our wealth and enriched the lives of billions. Yet their rising costs to our security, economy, health and environment are starting to outweigh their benefits. Moreover, the tipping point where alternatives work better and compete purely on cost is not decades in the future - it is here and now. And that tipping point has become the fulcrum of economic transformation. In Reinventing Fire, Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute offer a new vision to revitalise business models and win the clean energy race - not forced by public policy but…
I recommend this book because it focuses on a fascinating, unique, and very important topic: truly integrating urban design with nature.
With 80% of the earth’s population soon to be urban, making cities sustainable is essential, but this book goes beyond traditional sustainability to examine how the energy and material flow in cities can mimic nature itself–biophilic cities, in the words of the authors.
I recommend this book because it chronicles an aspect of climate change that has received too little attention so far–the less catastrophic but equally deadly effects of long-term gradual warming and weather volatility.
Park argues carefully and persuasively that, while we focus so much attention on climate-driven weather catastrophes, the effects of global warming on everyday health and productivity are much higher.
Although I don’t agree with everything in this book, I highly recommend it because there are very few writers who write as eloquently and passionately as Joe and a lot (if not all) of what he says about hydrogen is very insightful.
Joe has encyclopedic knowledge of climate change science and energy technology and he demonstrates this while focusing on one particular decarbonized fuel option.
"The Hype About Hydrogen" offers a hype-free explanation of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, takes a hard look at the practical difficulties of transitioning to a hydrogen economy, and reveals why, given increasingly strong evidence of the gravity of climate change, neither government policy nor business investment should be based on the belief that hydrogen cars will have meaningful commercial success in the near or medium term. Romm, who helped run the federal government's program on hydrogen and fuel cells during the Clinton administration, provides a provocative primer on the politics, business, and technology of hydrogen and climate protection.
I recommend this book because Michael Webber is a superb communicator and has focused this book on a topic most other climate and energy books (including mine) pay too little attention: the need for water as an input to many decarbonization technologies.
Professor Webber explains the looming shortages of planetary water and the different uses of water in energy technology in clear, lively prose.
This book explains how the power system will evolve to become 100% carbon-free in a very thorough yet accessible manner. The first section of the book examines how large a grid we will need to decarbonize the U.S. economy and why. This includes a discussion of the amount of power we can get from rooftop solar panels.
The second section discusses large-scale power alternatives and transmission systems, and the third section discusses how markets and grid-edge technologies will serve consumers. No other book integrates the discussion of the technological, economic, and regulatory aspects of the complete decarbonization of the grid.
