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Today, Swift Press publishes my book The Energy Trap: Why the renewable energy transition can't work — and what can. It distils my knowledge of the physics, engineering, and economics of how energy systems and the transitions between them work, gained as an electrical engineer, a petroleum engineer, and an energy economist.
It grew out of an alarm, now bordering on fear, at the risks that people with few qualifications in the subject are imposing on us through their reckless teardown of our energy system, with nothing in place remotely capable of replacing it.
It is a book for the kitchen table, because the reader I have in mind is the one that government and the media systematically underestimate: intelligent, unspecialised, and entirely capable of following a chain of reasoning if someone will show them the links. They should be able to sit down with the book, three cups of tea, and half a packet of chocolate Hobnobs, and get up able to go from the gut feeling of 'that can't be right' to 'that isn't right, and here is why' the next time an energy minister emits a whopper.
Matt Ridley calls it 'the best book on energy you will ever read. Superbly written, thrillingly argued and utterly terrifying.' The terror is optional. The physics is not.
I didn't write it to persuade the persuaded, and I didn't write it to win a shouting match with the committed. I wrote it because the sceptical public has spent twenty years arguing with one hand tied behind its back: convinced that something is wrong, but rarely equipped to show what on the spot. Take one example: to run Britain on wind and sun through years of weak wind, the Royal Society reckons we would need 60,000 to 100,000 gigawatt-hours of stored electricity. We have about 37. Read the book and you will have dozens of facts like that at your fingertips: for the pub, the dinner table, and the council committee meeting.
My goal? To put those facts in your hands, so that you can cut through the spin, understand what is at stake, and challenge those currently in charge of energy policy.
And then, together, to demand an energy system that works for us and for our children. I hope you'll join me.
The Energy Trap: Why the renewable energy transition can't work — and what can is out today from Swift Press. Buy it on Amazon here: amazon.co.uk/dp/1800757352 If you read it and think it worth it, an honest review there helps other readers find it. Thank you.
It grew out of an alarm, now bordering on fear, at the risks that people with few qualifications in the subject are imposing on us through their reckless teardown of our energy system, with nothing in place remotely capable of replacing it.
It is a book for the kitchen table, because the reader I have in mind is the one that government and the media systematically underestimate: intelligent, unspecialised, and entirely capable of following a chain of reasoning if someone will show them the links. They should be able to sit down with the book, three cups of tea, and half a packet of chocolate Hobnobs, and get up able to go from the gut feeling of 'that can't be right' to 'that isn't right, and here is why' the next time an energy minister emits a whopper.
Matt Ridley calls it 'the best book on energy you will ever read. Superbly written, thrillingly argued and utterly terrifying.' The terror is optional. The physics is not.
I didn't write it to persuade the persuaded, and I didn't write it to win a shouting match with the committed. I wrote it because the sceptical public has spent twenty years arguing with one hand tied behind its back: convinced that something is wrong, but rarely equipped to show what on the spot. Take one example: to run Britain on wind and sun through years of weak wind, the Royal Society reckons we would need 60,000 to 100,000 gigawatt-hours of stored electricity. We have about 37. Read the book and you will have dozens of facts like that at your fingertips: for the pub, the dinner table, and the council committee meeting.
My goal? To put those facts in your hands, so that you can cut through the spin, understand what is at stake, and challenge those currently in charge of energy policy.
And then, together, to demand an energy system that works for us and for our children. I hope you'll join me.
The Energy Trap: Why the renewable energy transition can't work — and what can is out today from Swift Press. Buy it on Amazon here: amazon.co.uk/dp/1800757352 If you read it and think it worth it, an honest review there helps other readers find it. Thank you.
