I read this book at the same time as Smil's Energy and Civilization. It proved to be a good compliment to Smil's book but left me feeling pretty disappointed at the same time. I wanted more from this book than it had to offer. Maybe I would have favored it more if I had not read at the same time as Smil's masterpiece.

At least in terms of existential crisis of global warming, both approaches arrive in overall agreement at the same present situation. Rhodes, in my estimation, has more to offer in terms of possible futures from this point forward. Every drop of water, every particle of energy build up that ocean. Everything you think, do and feel is reflected in your life because energy flows within and without. There are consequences to what we do, and there is no way for us to know what those consequences are yet. Rhodes, best known for his histories of the atomic bomb, here turns his attention to the history of energy sources and how humans have developed and transitioned between them. Beginning with wood, Rhodes documents the development and transition to coal, steam, whale oil and other "burning fluids", electricity, oil, nuclear energy, and renewable sources. Our body is not a separate island in the ocean, separate from everything… Our body is part of the ocean. The body is a small Universe in bigger Universe.

This book is a masterpiece, written by experts in the field of probability, risk management, statistics, electrical engineering, and economics. Being a multidisciplinary volume, the book is a perfect source of reference on the topic “renewable energy risk management”. I wanted to conclude by breaking the rules and talking briefly about a sixth text. This is not a book but a recent academic article. I’ve included it both because it is an absolutely superb piece of writing and also because it was written by a woman. All the rest of the works in this list are by men. That troubled me. Climate change already disproportionately affects women. In many places, for example, they have to travel further for water and for wood as a result of temperature and rainfall change. However the world of energy production and energy research, as well writing about energy, is wholly dominated by men. This has to change. In The Switch, you present the astonishingly rapid fall in the cost of solar but you also say that it’s not the only part of the equation. To some extent other renewable energy technologies must play a role. And, crucially, even in the brightest scenario — to coin a foolish phrase — the sun only shines some of the time. So, you’ve got to have storage technologies, particularly in northern and extreme southern latitudes I suppose. Even in India, the sun doesn’t shine at night. In discussing the modern preoccupation with clean and renewable energy sources, particularly in response to environmental impacts in the developed nations, Rhodes is pessimistic about the ability of these sources to augment and supplant existing dependency on coal, oil, and natural gas. Perhaps due to his past research and writing on atomic weaponry and its civilian application, he believes political and environmentalist objections to nuclear power are either honestly misguided or intentionally dishonest. Renewable energies do not lend themselves naturally — or are not thought to lend themselves naturally — to exploitation by big centralised multinational behemoths.”

I say that solar photovoltaics will form, for the majority of the world, the bulk of energy supply in fifty years – both electricity and other fuels that have been manufactured using solar energy. That’s an entirely beneficial transition both because solar will be cheap and because it is relatively easy to give people in poorer countries access to electricity that’s from PV — compared to setting up huge power stations and taking networks of electricity cables thousands of kilometres. Although still very much a minority view, I think it is a much less unconventional opinion than it was when I started writing the book in 2015. But the oil picture has changed, hasn’t it? Now the great majority of the world’s oil is not owned by private corporations but by states, notably Saudi Arabia and Russia and a few others. Bearing in mind the concept of a major transition away from oil, does Yergin take account of a topic beloved of some environmentalists: the idea of a carbon bubble, that is, the idea that we actually now have more oil that we can safely use? We here in the UK have a different perspective, of course. When we need energy, the sun generally isn’t shining. For the bulk of the world, solar is pretty good. But, everywhere is going to need storage. It’ll either be storage in the form of things like concentrating solar power, which is where the sun heats a liquid or fluid of some form during the day and that heat — we’re talking about hundreds of degrees centigrade here — is used at night to create steam to drive a turbine. That is being taken up in various parts of the world, such as Morocco, South Africa, China, Saudi Arabia, and Dubai. That’s a way of capturing the sun’s energy during the day and using it at night. Renewable energy sources can be used for electricity generation, heating (like solar thermal systems), transportation (like electric cars), or even cooking food (like wood stoves).A good overview of the changes in human energy use from the Elizabethan period through to the present. Rhodes surveys the rise and fall of muscle, water, steam and electricity, of wood, coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, wind and solar in turn. Each gets capsule histories of varying lengths, summarizing the circumstances of their rise and the major figures and events involved in the major inventions. More and more people are becoming aware that there is more to life than the physical appearances… There is more to our existence than the skin, bones and muscles… Even scientific thoughts tend to confirm that energy flows behind events whether they are physical or emotional. A lot is being said about our body and life using the word ‘energy’, and yet often the word remains a buzzword more than an inherent understanding of what it actually means. He definitely didn’t project that. He also didn’t project that mainstream commercial solar panels would become as efficient at collecting sunlight as they are today. He told us what the absolute maximum efficiency could be because that’s set by physics, but what he wasn’t able to do was to predict the way in which solar power would come down in price worldwide. He also didn’t want us to put large amounts of solar panels in fields. In a sense, he was an unashamed romantic and wanted the English countryside to stay as it was and thought it would be better to have fifty nuclear power stations dotted around the country rather than perhaps 10 to 15 percent of the country given over to renewable generation of one form or another. I think he was probably wrong but I understand his reluctance to change the landscape. Credit must be given to the narrator Jacques Guy, who has a wonderful voice and an astounding ability to relate the direct quotes with convincing accents to represent the original speaker’s voices. (He even captures the nuances between different English and Scots speakers.) The text helps to keep our focus on risk management applications and forecasting problems that are arising or may arise in the field of renewable energy. By reading these contributions, one can easily understand all the major aspects associated with the energy production chain. These aspects include:

Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America’s Power by Meghan L. O’Sullivan As sensible human beings, we need to think about what happens if we cannot pull down our fossil fuel use fast enough. ” Are you curious about dark feminine energy? It’s a powerful force that has been explored in literature and psychology for decades. In this section, we’ll explore the origins and history of dark feminine energy, as well as some psychological perspectives that shed light on its meaning and significance. Origins and History Rouge’s book, “The Dark Feminine Energy Bible”, is a five-in-one guide to unleashing your inner strength. She covers topics such as freedom, pleasure, seduction, truth, and intuition, and provides practical exercises for developing each of these qualities. Rouge believes that by embracing your dark feminine energy, you can become a powerful, confident woman who is capable of achieving anything. Start reading Books

History of the Statistical Review of World Energy

Renewable Energy offers a comprehensive look at the renewable energy industry -while focussing on wind power, solar and tidal power.