not exist three decades ago—from personal computers and DVD players to smart phones and tablets— all require increasing supplies of electricity—what might be called “gadgiwatts.” Meeting future needs for electricity means facing challenging and sometimes wrenching decisions about the choice of fuel that will be required to keep the lights on and the power flowing.
Part IV tells the little-known story of how climate change, a subject of interest to a handful of scientists, became one of the dominating questions for the future. The study of climate began in the Alps in the 1770s out of sheer curiosity. In the nineteenth century, a few scientists began to think systematically about climate, but not because they were worried about global warming. Rather, they feared the return of an ice age. Only in the late 1950s and 1960s did a few researchers begin to calculate rising levels of carbon in the atmosphere and calibrate what that might mean for rising temperatures. The risk, they concluded, was not global cooling but global warming. But it was only in the twenty-first century that climate change as an issue started to have major effects on decisions by political leaders, CEOs, and investors—and even became a subject to be ruled upon by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Part V describes the new energies—the “rebirth of renewables”—and the evolution of technology. The history of the renewable industries is one of innovation, entrepreneurial daring, political battles, controversy, disappointment and despair, recovery and luck. They have become large global industries in themselves, but they are also reaching a testing point to demonstrate whether they can attain large-scale commerciality.
There is one key energy source that most people do not think of as an energy source. Sometimes it is called conservation; sometimes efficiency. It is hard to conceptualize and hard to mobilize and yet it can make the biggest contribution of all to the energy balance in the years immediately ahead.
The themes converge in Part VI on transportation and the automobile. It had seemed absolutely clear that the race for the mass-market automobile was decided almost exactly a century ago, with an overwhelming victory by the internal-combustion engine. But the return of the electric car—in this case fueled not only by its battery but also by government policies—is restarting the race. But will all-out electrification win this time ? If the electric car proves itself competitive, or at least competitive in some circumstances, that outcome will reshape the energy world. That is not the only competitor. The race is also on to develop biofuels—to “grow” oil, rather than drill for it. All this sets a very big question: Can the electric car or biofuels depose petroleum from its position as king of the realm of transportation?
We can be sure that, in the years ahead, new “surprises” will upset whatever is the current consensus, change perspectives, redirect both policy and investment, and affect international relations. These surprises may be shocks of one kind or another—from political upheavals, wars or terrorism, or abrupt changes in the economy. Or they could be the result of accidents or of nature’s fury. Or they could be the consequence of unanticipated technological breakthroughs that open up new opportunities.
But of one thing we can be pretty certain: The world’s appetite for energy in the years ahead will grow enormously. The absolute numbers are staggering. Whatever the mix in the years ahead, energy and its challenges will be defining for our future.
PROLOGUE
I raqi troops and tanks had been massing ominously for several days on the border with Kuwait. But Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s dictator, assured various Middle Eastern leaders that they need not worry, that his intentions were peaceful, and that matters would get settled. “Nothing will happen,” he said to Jordan’s king. He told Egypt’s president that he had no intention of invading Kuwait. To the U.S. ambassador, summoned on short notice, he raged that Kuwait, along with the United Arab Emirates, was waging “economic warfare” against Iraq. They were producing too much oil and, thus, driving down the price of oil, said Hussein—the results for Iraq, he added, were unbearable, and Iraq would have to “respond.” The U.S. ambassador, citing Iraqi troop movements, asked “the simple question—what are your intentions?” Hussein said that he was pursuing a diplomatic resolution. The ambassador replied that the United States would “never excuse settlement of disputes by other than peaceful means.” At the end of the meeting, Saddam told the ambassador that she should go on vacation and not to worry.1
However, a week later, in
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