A passionate, valuable, and detailed blueprint for remaking the shape of everyday energy production.
An energy book discusses the many possible alternatives to fossil fuels.
At its heart, Nussey’s wide-ranging work on the renewable and alternative energy possibilities is about disruption—of the status quo and the complacency of the fossil fuel industry. He cites a well-known series of such disruptions even from comparatively recent technological history: The internet decimated newspapers; email and services like FedEx largely replaced snail mail as a means of communication and delivery; electric lights displaced gas lamps; and so on. “In each case, existing market structures were upended,” the author writes. “Enormous new companies emerged as incumbents became less relevant.” His book presents a wide array of possible disruptors to those existing market structures, fuels like “green hydrogen” and of course the ubiquitous “super-abundant electricity” designed to free millions of people living without access to cheap, easy energy. Nussey refers to this group of alternative sources as “fuels 2.0,” and he stresses that he’s talking about local energy: individuals, communities, and area businesses finally taking control of “one of the most essential parts of our lives—energy.” This small-scale, local focus stands in contrast to the current situation, where, as the author points out, energy is exclusively controlled. In most parts of the world, electricity services are monopolies, with only one company allowed to sell kilowatt hours. “With no competition,” he writes, “innovation is stifled and often non-existent.” Hence, the disruption represented by rooftop solar panels and “microgrids.”
Nussey writes engagingly, and he’s strongest in the most crucial element of a book like this: lucidly and vigorously explaining the science and technology behind fuels 2.0. He’s interviewed many key players in the potential energy revolution, which he characterizes as both top-down and bottom-up: “The power industry is slowly (very slowly) shedding its roots as a fuel-driven, asset heavy, top-down business into something that is increasingly defined by the economics of technology.” He’s clear that one of the key aspects of that revolution is the refinement and widespread deployment of batteries and storage systems for the power generated by renewables. Batteries and storage systems are going to be a core part of the future of electric power, he writes, “be it a grid-scale wind farm, a community solar project, a solar rooftop, or a tiny system that can power a few LED lights in Africa after the sun goes down.” The author is passionate in advocating for change, but he’s also unfailingly realistic. Skeptics wary of overly idealistic daydreaming on the subject of clean energy will find Nussey a doggedly cleareyed guide to what he rightly calls “the treacherous divide between wild-goose-chases and billion-dollar opportunities.” He tackles the implementation of these alternatives on every level of manufacture and production, and his emphasis on individual options will deeply engage readers who feel trapped on the treadmill of big energy.
A passionate, valuable, and detailed blueprint for remaking the shape of everyday energy production.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7325446-3-5
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Mountain Ambler Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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