Solar Revolution: The Economic Transformation of the Global Energy Industry [Hardcover]

Travis Bradford (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 21, 2006 | ISBN-10: 026202604X | ISBN-13: 978-0262026048 | Edition: 1

In Solar Revolution, fund manager and former corporate buyout specialist Travis Bradford argues--on the basis of standard business and economic forecasting models--that over the next two decades solar energy will increasingly become the best and cheapest choice for most electricity and energy applications. Solar Revolution outlines the path by which the transition to solar technology and sustainable energy practices will occur.Developments in the photovoltaic (PV) industry over the last ten years have made direct electricity generation from PV cells a cost-effective and feasible energy solution, despite the common view that PV technology appeals only to a premium niche market. Bradford shows that PV electricity today has become the choice of hundreds of thousands of mainstream homeowners and businesses in many markets worldwide, including Japan, Germany, and the American Southwest.Solar energy will eventually be the cheapest source of energy in nearly all markets and locations because PV can bypass the aging and fragile electricity grid and deliver its power directly to the end user, fundamentally changing the underlying economics of energy. As the scale of PV production increases and costs continue to decline at historic rates, demand for PV electricity will outpace supply of systems for years to come.Ultimately, the shift from fossil fuels to solar energy will take place not because solar energy is better for the environment or energy security, or because of future government subsidies or as yet undeveloped technology. The solar revolution is already occurring through decisions made by self-interested energy users. The shift to solar energy is inevitable and will be as transformative as the last century's revolutions in information and communication technologies.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Everyone who wants to understand the permanent energy answer that can reverse climate change, eliminate oil shocks, and avoid future Chernobyls should read this book. Bradford builds a compelling business case that solar energy is the most disruptive technology in history."--Denis Hayes, Former Director, U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory

"Deeply researched... hopeful." Bill McKibben New York Review of Books

"Every American who pays or knows someone who pays an electric bill should read Solar Revolution." Cecil Johnson "Business Bookshelf, " Fort Worth Star-Telegram

" Solar Revolution is an essential read because it analyzes the transformation of the global energy economy. The market will drive the new energy economy, and solar is already a growing and influential player. This is a positive vision of a sensible, practical, sustainable energy future." Bill Richardson , Governor of New Mexico and former U.S. Secretary of Energy

" Solar Revolution makes a powerful case for a disruptive shift in the energy marketplaceushering in a post-fossil-fuel age. Where others despair in the face of "peak oil" and out-of-control climate change, Travis Bradford sees a unique opportunity to create a clean new energy economy." Christopher Flavin , President, Worldwatch Institute

"While the book is a bit technical, even a solar-novice can learn plenty about the past and present of solar energy, and what may be in store for the future." E-The Environmental Magazine

"*Solar Revolution* makes a powerful case for a disruptive shift in the energy marketplace -- ushering in a post-fossil-fuel age. Where others despair in the face of 'peak oil' and out-of-control climate change, Travis Bradford sees a unique opportunity to create a clean new energy economy."--Christopher Flavin, President, Worldwatch Institute

"*Solar Revolution* is an essential read because it analyzes the transformation of the global energy economy. The market will drive the new energy economy, and solar is already a growing and influential player. This is a positive vision of a sensible, practical, sustainable energy future."--Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico and former U.S. Secretary of Energy

About the Author

Travis Bradford is President and Founder of the Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development, a nonprofit organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts, focused on using the power of the business and financial sectors to deploy cost-effective and sustainable technologies.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; 1 edition (July 21, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 026202604X
• ISBN-13: 978-0262026048
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.5 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #973,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 72 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Revolution for whom? February 9, 2007

By Stephen C. Baer

Format:Hardcover

This is a clearly written short book with good news about photovoltaics by someone familiar with economics and business. Although its title is Solar Revolution, there are many aspects of solar energy in which he shows little interest and this makes the prospects for his revolution depressing. Here are the basics of the solar revolution as he sees it.

The revolution's goal is to overthrow the use of fossil fuels and nuclear power, but all without returning to any of the traditional uses of solar energy that supported mankind through history. We abandoned Mother Nature's solar teat to suckle on giant bottles of fossil fuels. Now the bottles are going dry and we want to return to solar, but it's got to come in bottles, be electric, be synthetic. Bradford's concern is the preservation and continued growth of our use of electricity. When you stop to consider that electricity is a means to an end and not an end in itself - as, for example, water or food - this is a puzzle.

Our appetites expressed through the market place are too slack for Bradford, the revolutionary. Although he claims to wish an end to subsidies, it is hard to believe him. He greatly admires Japan and Germany for their fanatical government-directed drive for photovoltaics. On September 1, 2006 Sharp electronics, a company singled out for special praise by Bradford, ran full page color picture ads in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. They boasted that their Kameyama plant "features the world's largest solar energy system".

A glance at their building shows they use no skylights. They cover every inch of roof with PV panels. The walls have few if any windows. The building looks like a giant sealed-off, above ground termite nest.

The Japanese and Bradford are confused.... Skylights and windows are much better at providing light than PV panels wired to light bulbs indoors. Bradford drives on saying (page 175) that "R&D funding by industrialized countries' governments for renewable energy is crucial for market growth because it helps resolve a commonly observed market failure in economics - that is, that businesses collectively underinvest in R&D and basic science compared to what a socially optimal level would be." How does he know? Who is to decide what is socially optimal?

If you look at the fate of daylight, foot travel, bicycles, clotheslines and other traditional solar powered ways, you see that we are giving up genuine, tested effective uses of the sun at the same time as we are urged to adopt synthetic hi-tech solar energy.

Bradford gives only lip service to passive solar, about 1 page out of 200. . On page 187 he writes the ominous sentence, "solar power will be increasingly big business because it will be increasingly good business". Yet traditional and passive uses of solar energy are the most cost effective

As this reader has come to expect from the MIT Press, there are a number of typos and confused mistakes such as on page 200, "1 kWh equals 3.4 Btu" and on page 187, "in 2003 some 10% of new electric generation capacity installed worldwide was non-hydro renewable".

I found the sun, but no clouds in Bradford's book. PV panels can supply megawatts of power one minute and when clouds arrive, almost nothing a few minutes later. How do utilities fill in? He glosses over this.

Bradford's study is part of a spell we have fallen under where we confuse consumption of electricity with success.

Steve Baer
Zomeworks Corporation
Albuquerque, New Mexico USA Read more ›

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Better titled "The Estimated Rough Economics of Photovoltaics" June 19, 2009

By Tom D VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This should have been a magazine article in the Economist, not a book. As other reviewers have explained, this is about photovoltaics and only photovoltaics (PV) and even at that it's limited. True, other energy sources are mentioned, such as hydrogen fuel cells, but they get about half a page.

It would be better titled "The Estimated Economics of Photovoltaics." But even at that it's weak. Photovoltaics come in many forms from rigid structures to concentrators to flexible fabrics. Only round numbers are used, such as, "In the case of photovoltaic modules, the cost to produce them in the late 1970s was around $25 per watt but has since dropped to less than $3.50 per kW,..." (p, 109) But there's no mention of the applicable configuration.

Some things are footnoted, like "Various forms of solar energy have been used since prehistoric times." But others, like Figure 7.2 where today's PV costs are shown at $6 per watt are not. And the $6 per watt in Figure 7.2 hardly correlates with the $3.50 quoted above for production costs. Yes, I know one is production cost, the other presumably installed cost, but even that isn't clear and an installed cost that's 1700 times production cost deserves some explanation.

I couldn't find one reference to actual PV conversion efficiency, yet there are statements such as "Even at today's efficiency of PV cells, the land required would be 10 million acres, or 0.4 percent of the total land area of the United States." Perhaps the efficiency assumption is buried in the primary documents but it should be shown here since it's pivotal. I didn't notice any reference to the fact that today's PV's degrade over time. PV efficiency and life is fundamental to PV economics....

There are few diagrams, all economics and order of magnitude.

It is clear that a lot of work went into preparing and documenting the book, but in the end you can't do much with what's here. If you wanted, for example, to crudely estimate say the cost of a megawatt of photovoltaic power so you could compare it to say Nevada Solar One, the solar concentrator facility outside Boulder, NV, you only have the $6 per watt from the chart quoted earlier and that gets you to $6 million/megawatt. But you don't know what PV efficiency that's based on. (Solar One's cost is about $4 million/megawatt)

From this book you'd think PV's were the future. But the Europeans are moving ahead with solar thermal at the bulk stage. Do PV's make sense for example on say roof tops and solar thermal makes more sense at the utility level? From this book, you can't even begin to answer that question, or know if a breakthrough in PV efficiency would make a difference.

I liked one of the reviews on the back cover..."deeply researched and hopeful." Says it all, and says nothing.

Wish I could refer you to a better book, but haven't found one yet. There's material on the net. Scientific American's September 2006 and March 2009 issues cover the technologies briefly, but are weak on the economics. There's an absence of clear economic data on solar energy sources. Read more ›

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Read On Solar's Potential November 4, 2006

By W. Nichols

Format:Hardcover

Excellent overview on economic potential of Solar. This book is optimistic that Solar's inherent scalability...low maintenance and power will make it the choice to replace much, it not all fossil fuels in a few decades. The devil is in the assumptions, the reader must assess if they agree. The next several years will confirm or disprove the assertions. Note: Figure 5.6 on page 111 is actually 5.5.

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Objective analysis based on sound economics December 5, 2006

By D. Miller

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

A great look at the actual costs of electricity generated and delivered through a wide range of channels. Based on sound economic principles, the book illustrates how solar power will become competitive in price to fossil fuel-generated electricity in the near future (years, not decades).

Is it convincing? Suprisingly, yes. The reasons why the #'s fall in favor of solar in the near future have a lot to do with the distributed nature of solar power (no added transmission infrastruture costs), and the fact that solar power is generated most easily during the time of day when electric loads peak.

Check it out and see if you agree with the author's analysis. If so, our future is going to be a lot greener than many of us would have thought.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars compelling September 2, 2006

By White

Format:Hardcover

The Solar Revolution makes an incredibly compelling argument for the future of solar energy. The author does this in a way that takes the emotions out of the argument and gives us straight talk about how solar makes economic sense. The writing is really superb and I highly recommend it if you want deep understanding about the inevitability of solar energy.

Sam