Customer Reviews

Crossing the Energy Divide: Moving from Fossil Fuel Dependence to a Clean-Energy Future

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Energy is critical to the functioning of any economy, but it is particularly important to an economy as large as that of the United States. For decades, Americans have relied on imported energy to satisfy our needs and many leaders have come forward, advocating a move toward cleaner energy and greater self- sufficiency. Crossing the Energy Divide is here to help make this transition as smooth as possible, covering topics such as renewable power, energy recycling, alternative modes of transportation, and more.

Crossing the Energy Divide takes a decidedly pro- efficiency, pro- change stand that encourages businesses and governments to work together, embrace technology, make sacrifices where necessary, and solve the energy crisis. The book places blame on both sides: Businesses are criticized for not recognizing the importance of energy in the formation of official policy and government is criticized for not eliminating some of the mindless regulations that stifle energy competition and prop up prices. Regulation of utilities is well known, but few people are aware of the extent of these regulations and how they are often detrimental in the long run- both to businesses and to individuals. This book talks at length about these needless regulations and how they hinder the move toward energy independence. The authors do not recommend eliminating all regulation of utilities. Rather, they recommend a reexamination of the regulations, the phasing out of those that are harmful to business and households, and the establishment of new regulations if they have efficiency and independence as their bottom- line goal.

One fact about this book that may surprise some readers is that it doesn't devote time or space to individual energy conservation. Instead, it spends its time talking about energy issues from a macroeconomic and government perspective because it is here where the greatest changes need to take place. Like the authors point out, individual energy conservation is already well- publicized and the green movement has a large following. To make a real dent in the problem for the nation as a whole will require cooperation from businesses and governments and these are the areas where the book focuses almost all of its energy.

As for the writing, Crossing the Energy Divide is very academic. It is written like an official research paper and thus is it will not earn many points among those who enjoy creative non- fiction. It is the type of book that would make a good reading choice for students of environmental engineering, geology, political science, or similar disciplines. The lack of creativity or entertainment value could lead some to label the book as a tad boring, but one must realize that the authors intend this as an educational volume. Their concerns are serious, and they dedicate the book to information and learning about energy production and use.

Energy is an important topic of political discussion and, in spite of the coverage it has already received, it isn't going to go away. Yes, energy prices have fallen in the past year or two but it is only a matter of time until finite resources become low in supply and prices rise once again. Crossing the Energy Divide is a very good book about the topic of energy and how we must embrace change for the betterment of all Americans. The book could use a little more length and deeper discussion of its key point, but it is still very good nonetheless; offering advice, presenting anecdotes, and summarizing its positions well. The authors feel that a change in energy policy and attitude is long overdue and the book presents many compelling reasons and good energy alternatives that will help stave off future shortages and pave the way to a more energy efficient tomorrow.

I've read a lot of books on energy, sustainable energy, urban planning, and so on. Somehow, this was the first book that ever even mentioned energy efficiency in terms of how much output we get per unit of input. I chalk it up to the writer being an economist and a physicist, and the interesting way he has melded the two topics together to discover the true needs for our energy future.

I applaud this books level headed, data driven decisions, and especially the framework of "girders" they've built to describe the methodology of moving into a clean energy future. Rather than relying on a magic bullet or massive investment, this book proscribes a theory of delivering small scale, affordable (even cost reducing) changes to business, utilities, and policy, in order to promote a path to the future. Rather than assuming we can move directly to the clean energy future, it discusses the gap between where we are now, and where we want to be in the future.

Overall, it's well written, easy to understand, and kept me engaged all the way through. At around 200 pages, it was pretty straightforward and quick to read, but contained some very powerful topics. Highly recommended.

This book is a great economically oriented dossier on macro-level changes - some which we have heard a lot about, and others which are presented in more nuance. Robert and Edward Ayres do an excellent job of conveying that America is only 13% energy efficient and this has widespread implications to our future economic growth.

The Ayres brothers bring a needed view about technologies which could help bring about change as well as speak to the challenges - often regulatory that need to be stirred up to help generate change. I think their conclusion that growth in the US is generally focus on short-term profits rather than long-term investments is accurate... but alas it seems inevitable in our business climate to change this.

I'm not going to rehash what other fine reviewers have mentioned above but rather add my own 2 cent and opinion to this much needed book on one of the most important topics confronting the nation.

Whether or not you agree with the "green" movement, this book provides a solid overview of the issues as well as prospective alternatives. Unfortunately, it also seems to have a bit of built-in bias when it comes tp presenting both sides of the story. Despite what appears to be a "no brainer", there are plenty of people that take issue with the basic premise surrounding clean energy and alternative fuels. From the title, I expected/hoped for a complete break down of pro/con to answer/respond to these assertions. That is not to say there was not discussion of this type...there was...just not quite sufficient to respond to critics.

Now, beyond the above point, the author does a good job of balancing the hope versus reality - something desperately needed on both sides of the debate.

Crossing the Energy Divide makes a strong case that getting from our current level of energy consumption to a future based upon alternative energy is going to be one of the gravest challenges for policymakers, businesses, and individuals all over the globe. The authors, Robert and Edward Ayres, advocate an increase in energy efficiency as a sensible bridge to tomorrow's energy future, taking current levels (13%) to somewhere north of Japan's 20%. I was especially impressed that the authors devoted an entire chapter to the Water-Energy Connection, an issue that few people think about although the implications of intensive water use for many energy applications are startling.

Since I am a Peak Oil advocate, I did enjoy this work, although I was disturbed by the environmental rants from the authors. This merely confuses the issue. Does energy really need to be clean, as long as it's there?

Leaving aside the issue of whether we agree on WHY we need to cross the energy divide, we can agree that it must be crossed. For that reason, I would recommend this book to both the Peak Oil crowd and the Greenies.

Here's the main thesis: green/alternative fuels aren't going to do much heavy lefting for at least 2 or 3 more decades. So we need a bridge to get over the divide. Thus, this book looks to a very different future of energy technology and policy while confronting the fact that we need to squeeze every little bit of "juice" out of our fossil fuels for the near future.

I might be the ideal audience for this book since I have adopted that viewpoint for a while. Nonetheless, I found this quite compelling. The tone of the writing here is refreshingly dry and organized -- no chest-thumping politicizing here from these two scientists. Ultimately, the book is more optimist than it is dire in that the Ayres' maintain that the changes that need to be made now -- right now -- are already being implemented with a fair amount of success.

However, like a lot of nonfiction books written for a wide audience, this book tends to restate itself, perhaps in an attempt to bulk up the page count.

Authors Robert Ayres, professor of economics and Edward Ayres former editor of World Watch tackle the energy crisis of relying on the ever depleting fossil fuel model to a more sustainable clean- energy future. From urban development and the re-wiring of how we operate our day to day lives to improving our electrical infra -structure through innovative methods stimulated by capitalism.

There is no need for a "New think tank " according to the authors to coming up with new ways of becoming more effient with our fuel needs- there are companies right now implementing methods for better productivity in fossil fuel usage and reduction of our carbon foot print at the same time.

This book offers a strategic guide to solving our future energy needs by mixing science and business know how, investors in sustainable energy sources can speed the process up to resolving the ever dark cloud looming over our heads of fossil fuel dependence.

Highly recommended reading for science and business majors in college and anyone else interested in learning about energy use and improvement.

I'm not a fan of reading many books like this because it's difficult to discern the audience for many of these works: some of these works are aimed at the mass market and intend to be primers while others are written strictly for energy professionals.

This book fits somewhere in the middle. It's not written by investigative journalists but rather by Physicist/Economist PhDs so their approach to the subject matter is forthright and very well organized.

I would not be surprised if this book winds up being a supplementary text to 400 or 500 level Energy Policy Seminars at major universities.

In short, this work is about "efficiency" and about counting the energy that is used in everything that we produce and consume, from products to transportation. The authors content that efficiency in using energy will play a key role in transitioning to new forms of energy. They include some sober thinking on the end of oil, but they're not alarmists about it (just hard truths).

Overall, it was an enjoyable, well thought out read. If there's one energy book you read (on crossing the divide from fossil hydrocarbons to post-hydrocarbons)...it would be this book.

There are two strong approaches to discussing energy and that's via science or via business. The two approaches have their own merits and their own intrinsic audiences. As a scientist, I'd like to believe that a technical discussion can win the day, but the minds that need to be won over in order for the West to transition to a post-fossil-fuel economy are fundamentally business-minded folks. This sort of discussion reminds me strongly of the excellent book Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming which takes on energy and global warming from a business perspective. This book, Crossing the Energy Divide, is more focused on the transition away from fossil fuels. And its core argument is one of efficiency. The current energy economy is inefficient. Businesses have been able to recover enormous sums from improving efficiencies in other areas (let's ignore the off-sourcing, downsizing, and loss of R&D departments in that process) so what about in energy?

The book is a good attempt to make energy and the environment issues morally neutral and simply push ahead on the business and financial merits. If good energy policies are good business, then we'll follow them independent of other arguments for those policies. The subtext is that fuzzy-headed environmentalists are irrelevant, the hard-headed capitalists will do the same things, but for different reasons.

So it's not a book aimed at me, but I also can't find much to criticize in it. If the business or financial arguments are of interest to you, then this well could be the energy book for you.

The central argument of this authoritative and painfully realistic tome is that we cannot meet our energy needs for the next couples of decades (or more) through the development of green sources. Messrs. Ayres argue quite persuasively that regardless of how much money the government and private enterprise put into the development of green alternatives, those sources of energy will not be developed fast enough.

They write: "Recent progress in these [green] industries has been dramatic. However, even with a crash effort comparable to the U.S. mobilization for World War II, or the Apollo program to put a man on the moon, it will take decades for these new energy industries to reach the necessary scale." (p. 2)

Instead the authors believe the solution "is to radically reform our management of the existing fossil fuel-based system so that we essentially double the amount of energy-service we get from each barrel of oil (or 'oil-equivalent' of coal or natural gas) during the years it takes to bring carbon-free renewables to the point at which they can truly begin to take over." (p. 2)

In this regard they give the example of a couple of steel companies in Indiana that captured waste heat from their operations in 2005 equivalent to a combined 190 megawatts of carbon-free energy--"more than the entire U.S. production of solar-photovoltaic electricity that year." (p. 4)

The authors reckon that the US energy economy creeps along at about 13 percent efficiency. They compare that to the 20 percent efficiency that Japan gets. They believe we can double our efficiency to something like 26 percent. They note "by using less fuel to do more work, this strategy will sharply reduce carbon emissions." (p. 5) My question is, where were these guys when everybody in the energy business was making fun of Jimmy Carter's cardigan sweaters?

Okay, the times have changed and the energy crisis has grown more acute. However, you don't have to be a professional historian to notice that World War II was fought primarily because both Germany and Japan wanted access to oil fields, the Germans in the east and the Japanese in southeast Asia. So the crisis has been coming for a long time, and so we can be pleased with this, however tardy, realpolitik contribution to a solution.

But I am not so sure that the authors are correct with their dismissal of our ability to go green quickly. No doubt the challenge is enormous, and there is little doubt that the political will to put the money into research and development is sorely lacking. This tome, despite the enthusiasm that the authors show for eventually going green, could actually put a drag on current efforts. I hope not. Nonetheless, and over and above that consideration, I agree with them that it is crucial that we increase the efficiency of our energy use.

Here are a couple of other interesting points the authors make.

(1) Increasing the efficiency of our energy use reduces the cost of energy-dependent products and services (which includes most of the economy) and thereby encourages economic activity which will drive economic growth.

(2) Increased energy efficiency will help us to maintain our high standard of living and, I would add, possibly avoid another recession or depression. Note that energy efficiency works against an increase in the price of oil, and not at all incidentally, slows the shrinkage of world-wide oil reserves in the ground.

Lest it appear that our authors are not as green friendly as perhaps we'd like, consider this from their chapter entitled "Liquid Fuels: The Hard Reality": "There's no future in spending a large part of our limited...resources...in the obsolescent technologies of the internal combustion engine, the two-ton personal vehicle it powers, and the gasoline that fuels it." (p. 101).

Or this: "...if the Chinese get anywhere near the U.S. ratio of cars to population, with anything near the same rates of fuel use and carbon emissions, they won't have enough land for the highways or fuel for the engines. Even if they did...the impact on climate would be unthinkable." (p. 102)

Furthermore in the same chapter the authors point out that corn ethanol and biodiesel from soy beans will not work as economic solutions to our dependence on fossil fuels. Additionally they point out how inefficient airplanes are. There is more than a hint here that we need to return to the use of more efficient trains to more people and goods. Perhaps this is why Warren Buffet is buying railroads.

I've only hinted at the range of expertise and knowledge that the authors bring to the problem of energy and possible solutions. The book is engagingly and energetically written (pun intended), and absolutely vital to an understanding of just what it is we are up against in terms of the possible energy crisis to come. Energy is what runs the modern economy. Without ample, relatively inexpensive energy, the world may very well turn to chaos as nations fight over supply while all the soccer moms of the developed world return to a subsistence life style resembling that of the undeveloped countries--and this possibly after a horrendous world-wide conflict.

I'm not an alarmist, and certainly neither are the authors. Nonetheless I hope that our political and corporate leaders read this important book and heed its advice.

(Note: Thirteen of my books are now available at Amazon including "Hard Science and the Unknowable.")