I recently finished The Quest – Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, by Daniel Yergin. I would recommend it for anyone wanting a comprehensive overview of energy and willing to commit to a long, but well written 720 pages. The book is quite comprehensive, dealing with oil, natural gas, coal, electricity, renewables, nuclear, efficiency – with multiple chapters providing both the history, the early inventors, the geopolitics and very recent events.
Big recent developments are covered – the opening of Canadian tar sands, fracking and horizontal drilling rapidly increasing US natural gas supplies, the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the break-up of the Soviet Union and resulting oil and gas fracas, hybrid and electric cars, and China’s rapid acceleration into clean energy manufacturing while rapidly building coal plants. Yergin also shares fascinating stories of the early innovators of energy – Edison, Westinghouse, Tesla, Mitchell, Insull, Einstein, Ford – and how shifts of supply and demand for energy changed their fortunes. For example, Ford winning with gas-fueled internal combustion engines for the Model T (instead of electric vehicles with batteries designed by Edison) resulting in rapid demand growth for Rockefeller’s oil just as lighting transitioned from oil to electricity.
Yergin provides the definitive science of climate change and carbon and efforts from Rio to Kyoto to Durban to address these challenges. However, especially in this odd age of climate science denial, he does not highlight sufficiently the risks of continuing on a mostly fossil fuel energy path. Given how comprehensive the book is, I did find some other omissions notable – such as the potential for LED lighting, for solar thermal, for efficiency innovation and finance, for reducing energy intensity of manufactured products via reuse, recycling and collaborative consumption. Perhaps most disappointing was the lack of a ‘moral’ to the multiple energy ‘fables’ Yergin tells. That is, how will we transition more rapidly to a sustainable energy future — putting a price on carbon and pollution, accelerating cleantech innovation, fostering a more efficient consumption model for the emerging middle class in China, India and the developing world?
Perhaps I will have to move on the Amory Lovins’ latest book, Reinventing Fire, for more of the solutions I am looking for… and models for the types of companies SJF Ventures can invest in and the SJF Institute and Investors’ Circle can help accelerate in 2012 and beyond. — David Kirkpatrick
