The Quest for Affordable Energy

By John P. Holdren

In his book, Power to the People, Vijay Vaitheeswaran deals with hard questions at the core of society’s energy dilemmas with style, balance and insight. The style is entertaining and accessible. Among the critically important points the book convincingly conveys that civilization is in no immediate danger of running out of energy or even just out of oil. But we are running out of environment and our dependence on oil in particular involves not only environmental but also economical and political debts. Choices that countries make about energy supply commit them to those choices for decades, because power plants and other energy facilities typically last for 40 years or more and are too costly to replace before they wear out. Energy technologies that exist or are under development could greatly increase energy efficiency in residences and businesses, reduce dependence on oil, accelerate the provision of energy services to the world’s poor and shrink the impacts of energy supply on climate and other environmental values. The most promising of these options include renewable sources of a variety of types, advanced fuel technol ogies, and hydrogen-powered fuel cells for vehicle propulsion and dispersed electricity generation. There are a few small technical slips in the elaboration of all this, but not many. Written for the intelligent layperson, this book is by far the most helpful, entertaining, up-to-date and accessible treatment of the energy-economyenvironment

problematique available.

(SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, Dec. 2003, p.91/92)

John Holdren thinks the book .