Energy policy is one of the most important topics for the future prosperity of our societies and one where the debate has been politicised in the wrong way.
The Unpopular Truth about Electricity and the Future of Energy, is a recent book by Lars Schernikau and William Hayden Smith.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5188786911
Lars is an INSEAD MBA alumnum, like me, although a bit more than a decade younger. I was happy to find him as author of this excellent work.
Here is the book review that I posted on Goodreads:
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.
This 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.
Video of a conference by the author that covers the essence of the subject in 20′: