The Unpopular Truth about Electricity and the Future of Energy

Anyone who is interested in the energy debate should read this book. From an electrical engineering perspective I can say it explains the issues in simple terms. Backs up it's arguments with empirical data and totally destroys the large scale renewable energy ideology without stooping to ridicule or onerous arguments.Highly recommended for anyone interested in thus issue.

No matter where you stand about climate change and reducing our carbon footprint, the fundamental economic, physics, and engineering realities are explained clearly and precisely. Terms are precisely defined and a full life cycle of energy embedded, consumed, transported, and used is developed into a complete end to end energy systems model for the developed world . Their full systems economic analysis, constrained by real physics and engineering provide a new model for thinking about our energy future, one that maintains the standard of living for the developed world.Probably best to watch Schernikau on youtube to grasp where he is going in the book which is much more rigorous but readable.My copy was printed properly (9x5.5" format) but some charts need close eyesight.

Good backup of statements with references; perhaps a bit too many repetitions. Although graphics are not well seen on small devices, the previous criticisms of this aspect are a bit overdone. By using the horizontal view and finger stretch on my old I phone 8 plus, most are reasonable. The article is very pertinent for today: our local newspaper today had a plea for our area power provider to replace coal generators with wind and solar using price data that totally ignored the lack of time unreliability of the proposed sources and the cost of providing backup power. It is this sort of nonsense that needs to be called out.

The standard of living and prosperity in the rich nations of the modern world relies on the intensive use of energy. The rise from poverty and the improvement in living standards of hundreds of millions of people in the third world in the past decades was made possible by a dramatic increase in energy use in these societies.To keep improving our living standards, especially in poorer nations, the world will need more cheap, reliable and abundant energy. Not less.It is possible to achieve this goal with modern technologies and at the same time to preserve a livable environment as we can observe in modern societies.The book approaches the questions of Energy policy from 3 fundamental principles:1. A focus on human well-being as the cornerstone of any policy analysis.2. The recognition that energy choices are constrained by the laws of thermodynamics, chemistry, geography, meteorology, and economics.3. The evaluation of energy options requires a review of the complete supply chain from beginning to end, considering the full life cycle of materials.This approach differs strongly from what we hear in mainstream media. There, the energy debate has been wrongly influenced by some environmental movements and activists. Worse because of demagoguery and virtue signaling, most political institutions let the debate of energy policies be politicised with serious consequences for our prosperity.Therefore most of the ongoing energy policy debate follows completely different principles, in a pernicious way.They treat Humans as outsiders and not part of the biomass. They consider our influence on Nature as always bad, and ignore the positive impact of human activities in making our planet more livable, especially by humans.They tend to ignore the more basic scientific principles when evaluating energy policy. And they focus only on the end point of energy extraction and use, ignoring other massively important steps in the supply chain.If you follow the writings of authors like Bjorn Lomborg and Michael Shellenberger, you will notice they arrive at somewhat similar conclusions. But they approach this topic from an environment focused perspective, whereas this book provides a massive collection of data, facts and analysis on the hard science and technology of the energy supply chain, including the nature limiting factors of geology and weather.In conclusion this book is a must read for anyone interested in understanding what is at stake in the Energy Policies of our governments, one of the most critical topics for the future of our societies.

"Positive effects of electrification certainly exist, but electricity produced by 'renewables' still needs to be created in accordance with the laws of thermodynamics. 'Renewable' energy, be it wind, solar, hydro-, or geothermal, is remarkably capable when efficiently transformed into electrical energy for powering our lives... but it is not magic. A clear account of the advantages as well as the limitations of the 'renewable' energy used to create electricity is essential in order to make correct and sustainable choices that will allow us to meet our civilization's future energy demands."That mid-book quote from the authors of this incredibly well-researched and informative book spells out their purpose well, and the authors deliver against it superbly. They document exhaustively the realities of efficiencies and reliabilities of our various electrical power generation technologies, and they detail the complete environmental effects of each. They explain how current cost comparisons are flawed and how we are neglecting to consider the true complete costs of each technology. They then provide a much better picture of those costs, with compelling explanations of why our present mad rush to hurriedly install wind and solar willy-nilly is just plain wrong."All energy consumption requires taking resources from our planet and processing them, thus negatively impacting the environment," conclude the authors. "It must be humanity's goal to minimize negative impacts in a meaningful way through investment rather than divestment, and increasing rather than decreasing energy and material efficiencies."This book will give you a much greater understanding of the smartest ways to do that. Highly recommended!

The book presented an analysis of the data that was also presented with the methodology supporting the analysis. I would have preferred just the analysis.

This book focuses on the production of electricityOil, coal and gas make up 80% of global primary energy which provides 24/7 power to electrical systems. Wind and solar cannot compete because they are intermittent.Costs of production, transportation and storage are covered. Also mentioned are the lithium-ion batteries for EV vehicles, heat pumps, energy storage, and the future of energy needs to 2050.It seems that humanity will be on the fossil fuel path for some time unless a so-called "New EnergyRevolution" comes about.This book sets out the facts of electricity and I highly recommend it.

The book gives a comprehensive and detailed description of the present energy market/situation, without following easy solutions. Warmly recommended

This book is quite short, about 120 pages, clearly written and without an agenda that I could detect other than the facts, which are copiously referenced with many diagrams. The book examines whether renewable fuels can replace fossil fuels and still provide the energy we need. The book's conclusion is negative, i.e., renewables cannot replace fossils because will prove to be technically impossible, and electric vehicles cannot replace internal combustion vehicles because the minerals used in battery technology cannot be provided 'at scale.’ Those metals include copper, lithium, nickel, manganese, cobalt, chromium, molybdenum, etc., the supplies of which cannot be scaled to supply tens of millions of car batteries, and the costs of which are destined to become prohibitive. The book explains eROI, meaning energy return on energy invested. Apparently the Roman Empire achieved a 2:1 eROI, meaning they put in 1 and got out 2; with this they were able to sustain cities of a million people but no larger. Key sentence in this book, page 94: “Dr. Evan Mearns 2016, based on Kiefer’s work, explains eROI and points out that modern life requires a minimum eROI of 5-7, while most solar and many wind installations have an eROI below 5, depending on location, and are therefore inherently energy insufficient when it comes to supporting society at large.” This compares with coal and gas at around 30, which the authors consider too optimistic though they cite it, and nuclear energy is by far the most energy-dense at around 75:1. I finished this book in a sombre frame of mind. I presume its thesis can be challenged but that will require a presentation of other facts at least as thorough and objective.

I can recommend this book to people interested in environmental risks related to climate change, especially people interested in viable solutions to climate related risks. The book is not about climate change, but energy. The book title is a pun on Al Gore’s “inconvenient truth” and in my bookshelf will sit next to Gregory Wrightstone’s “inconvenient facts”.Energy is part of the climate related problems, but energy is also part of the solutions. The book is recommended for people interested in solutions, rather than all the hyperbole around climate change. The book is for people who already spent some time thinking about climate change, the human footprint, and various solutions to tackling risks related to climate change.My favourite sentence in the book is the following (page 128): “Energy policy and investors should not favor wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, hydro, nuclear, gas, or coal but should support all energy systems in a manner which avoids energy shortages and energy poverty, including variable ‘renewable’ energy systems where they make sense.”The book is well balanced. This means it’s not all alarmist like “The Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells and it is also not fossil-energy glorifying as “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” by Alex Epstein. It’s somewhere in between these extremes, perhaps comparable to “Apocalypse Never” by Michael Shellenberger, but without Shellenberger’s preference for nuclear energy. Or comparable to “Unsettled” by Stephen Koonin. The strongest part of the book I found was elaborating on the different methodologies of calculating power generation efficiency.The writing style is more academic than “story telling.” This means it is data and concept-heavy. It’s for readers with an analytical bent who like all the facts and data sourced. It’s not at all a bla bla book targeted at teenagers from Sweden who don’t like schooling.

A must read book on needs for future sensible energy policy requirements. Unfortunately it makes too much factual sense in terms of physics, chemistry and economics for our current lefty politicians to read, understand and implement.