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21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A tremendously important book, July 13, 2009
This review is from: Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis (Paperback)
Subtitled Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis,the author presents every bit of information we need in order to understand the policy and life conduct decisions we will make in the very near future concerning decline in available energy resources, and then details three scenarios, and shows us, again based on facts, where each choice will lead us. Two out of three scenarios lead inexorably to the title of the book, Blackout, in all its finality. The third leads to a much leaner society, but one in which greater human values take precedence over the crass materialism of our age,a scenario in which humankind survives and flourishes.
Compared to his previous, wonderful book Peak Everything, Blackout is not an easy read. The extreme seriousness of our predicament in coming to the end of the age of fossil fuels makes it a very solemn read, but urgently necessary if we care at all how our grandchildren will live out their lives.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Technical Analysis of Coal Reserves and Comsumption, November 30, 2009
This review is from: Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis (Paperback)
The book begins by exposing the flaws of using R/P ratios to forecast future supplies of coal, which ironically is the most common method used to estimate how much coal we have. The author instead lays out a thorough argumnet that coal supplies must be estimated using a Hubbart-curve type of analysis, similar to that used to forcast future oil supplies. Different types of coal, and a history of their uses are also discussed in the early pages.
The bulk of the book (more than half of it) is structured as a review/summary of several recent studies of coal supplies in different regions all around the globe. The author presents a balanced set of studies, summarizes their findings and forecasts, and then critiques them. The author does not simply state which study is correct, but rather points out the robustness and validity of each study, slowly building a body of evidence and a conclusion about the future of coal in a given region. These pages were surprisingly technical and were a bit of a chore to read at times, but the presentation of hard facts builds a more credible position on future coal supplies and is valuable to the book.
The book continues by briefly discussing coal and how its use relates to climate change. New coal technologies are discussed, such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC). The current status of these technologies is presented along with some discussion of their future role in coal usage. Although IGCC can improve the efficiency of coal-fired electricity, it also greatly increases the cost, as does CCS. It is a good summary of new coal technology, and disects facts from hype.
The book concludes with three potential scenarios in which our usage of coal is very different. They range from the collapse of industrial society to the transition of a low-energy, sustainable future. They are interesting and thought provoking.
Overall this book is well-researched, logically-presented, and well-explained. If you are interested in a realistic analysis of coal, a resource on which our dependency will only grow, read this book. You will also learn how much our future depends on how we choose to use (or not use) coal.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
read it before the lights go out, April 5, 2010
This review is from: Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis (Paperback)
Regardless of the consequences of peaking oil extraction rates, coal is the often overlooked driver of global economic growth. Coal provides the majority of the electricity responsible for our way of life and for consistent industrial production, around 49% of the electricity generated in the US comes from coal. When I worked for a coal-based electric utility company, one of the larger stations burned 18,000+ tons a day. And every bit of that coal was mined using oil based machinery, which required personnel using oil to drive to work every day. The relationship between coal and oil is rarely clear or explicit but easily and cheaply extracted oil provides a significant subsidy to coal used for electricity generation. As oil prices climbed in 2007 and 2008, Europeans and Americans have been immune to the idling plants and intermittent blackouts of China, South Africa and the rest of the world.Despite increasing fossil station efficiencies and the abundance of oil over the last 100 years, we use more coal now than ever and our rate of coal use is rapidly accelerating.
Energy analyst Richard Heinberg's latest book, Blackout provides an in-depth review of why we should be concerned about coal and what we can expect as the peak energy output of coal continues to decline. Even if coal supplies can continue to fuel the growth of economies in developing nations, the environmental costs of such a result would be tremendous. CO2 emissions threaten to make the earth inhospitable to life and toxic ash residue is becoming a growing storage problem as exemplified by recent spills in Tennessee and Alabama. Heinberg uses Blackout as an in-depth literature review summarizing the known work in the field (which there isn't much of) and takes the results of several studies to indicate that coal reserves are not as abundant as they may seem. In 1864 Edward Hull foretasted that 900 years of British coal remained, in 1984 estimates were down to 90 years and now the British coal industry has almost entirely disappeared. This is a common story in the history of coal reserve estimates because rates of consumption are never constant and resource extraction rates tend to peak and then decline. This has been the history of coal in every nation.
Surprisingly few studies have been undertaken to accurately assess coal reserves and the six that have been released recently indicate that we are headed towards a serious shortage in the net energy available from coal. The highest energy density anthracite coal has been used up leaving bituminous and sub-bituminous coal to burn. The lower energy densities of these coals mean that even more energy must be expended to transport the same amount of energy between its point of extraction and its point of eventual burning, i.e. the same amount of energy takes up a far greater volume. Heinberg uses these recent coal surveys to look at the coal supply situations of the United States, China, Russia, India, South Africa, Europe and others in subsequent chapters before detailing the impacts of burned coal on climate. Climate impacts of burning coal claim to be mitigated by technologies like integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC), coal-to-liquids, underground gasification and carbon capture-storage (CCS) but all these approaches look to significantly increase the cost of burning coal and are not applicable to most situations for numerous reasons.In summary, there is no technology that can keep coal from harming the climate, clean coal is an absolute myth.
At the end of the book, Heinberg uses all of this information to outline three possible scenarios for dealing with the reality of the situation. A maximum burn rate scenario devestates the climate and the economy when coal supplies run thin. A "clean" scenario devestates the economy and distracts attention from the problem of coal energy scarcity. A post carbon transition provides the least amount of pain but with a slightly lower standard of living. Blackout is a brilliant and concise book adding to the growing evidence that business as usual is no longer possible for a number of reasons.
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