Public Energy

In this user-friendly and informative audiobook, prolific author and academic Vaclav Smil provides an introduction to this far-reaching term and gives the reader a greater understanding of energy's place in both past and present society. Starting with an explanation of the concept, he goes on to cover such exciting topics as the inner workings of the human body, and the race for more efficient and environmentally friendly fuels.

Bestselling author and renowned economic and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin delivers the political narrative, technical framework, and economic plan for the debate now taking center stage across America. The concurrence of a stranded fossil fuel assets bubble and a green political vision opens up the possibility of a massive global paradigm shift into a post-carbon ecological era, hopefully in time to prevent a temperature rise that will tip us over the edge into runaway climate change.

On June 21, 2016, Pacific Gas & Electric Company announced a plan to shutter California’s last nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon, in 2025. The plan was hailed by environmental groups and politicians around the country. Then, suddenly, the state’s Democratic establishment reversed the decision, and in 2024 the Biden-Harris administration awarded the plant $1.1 billion in credits to extend its life. What happened in between? In Atomic Dreams, journalist and lifelong environmentalist Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow unearths the surprising answers—and the deep-seated conflicts behind them.

The definitive account of India’s energy journey and a blueprint for an energy-efficient future. The historic oil crisis of 1973, which permanently altered significant economic policies worldwide, marked a turning point in India’s energy odyssey, putting the country on the path towards energy efficiency. A young energy researcher at the National Productivity Council at the time, Padu Padmanabhan soon found himself at a juncture that would lead him to the many watershed moments of this journey.

Griffith paints an inspiring yet practical picture of empowered local communities acting collectively when it comes to renewable energy, and benefiting financially. He considers both equity and security – an end to dependence on foreign oil, for instance. He explores the rejuvenation of regional Australia, as well as the rise of a new populist movement driven by Australian women. And he explodes once and for all the trees v. jobs binary. This is an electrifying essay about building a better world, one community at a time.

Although it is widely understood that energy and water are the world’s two most critical resources, their vital interconnections and vulnerabilities are less often recognized. This farsighted audiobook offers a new, holistic way of thinking about energy and water - a big picture approach that reveals the interdependence of the two resources, identifies the seriousness of the challenges, and lays out an optimistic approach with an array of solutions to ensure continuing sustainability.

In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada's petroleum industry and America's biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration—the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina—John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world.

Professor of environmental engineering Daniel Cohan argues that escaping the gravest perils of climate change will first require American diplomacy, technological innovation, and policy to catalyze decarbonization globally. Combining his own expertise along with insights from more than a hundred interviews with diplomats, scholars, and clean-technology pioneers, Cohan identifies flaws in previous efforts to combat climate change.

In BOOM, prize-winning reporter Tony Horwitz takes a spirited road trip through the wild new frontier of energy in North America. His journey begins in subarctic Alberta, where thousands of miners labor in an industrial moonscape to extract the region's oil-rich tar sands. Horwitz then follows the route of the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline that may carry tar-sands oil from Canada across Montana, the Dakotas, and Nebraska en route to Gulf Coast refineries.

In Fueling Freedom, energy experts Stephen Moore and Kathleen Hartnett White make an unapologetic case for fossil fuels, turning around progressives' protestations to prove that if fossil fuel energy is supplanted by "green" alternatives for political reasons, humanity will take a giant step backwards and the planet will be less safe, less clean, and less free.

Die Nutzung fossiler Energieträger wie Kohle und Öl verschärft den Klimawandel, und wir müssen sie so schnell wie möglich ersetzen. Nur, was sind gute Alternativen? Und schaffen erneuerbare Energien es, unseren Energiehunger in Zukunft zu stillen? Sind sie so verlässlich wie die alten Energielieferanten? In diesem gemeinsam mit Studierenden gestalteten Hörbuch untersuchen die Autoren kurz, anschaulich und verständlich, was erneuerbare Energien aus Sonne, Wasser oder Erdwärme energietechnisch schaffen und wie sie sich im Vergleich untereinander bewerten lassen.

After 1991, international organizations from the Red Cross to Greenpeace sought to help the victims, yet found themselves stymied by post-Soviet political circumstances they did not understand. International diplomats and scientists allied to the nuclear industry evaded or denied the fact of a wide-scale public health disaster caused by radiation exposure. Efforts to spin the story about Chernobyl were largely successful; the official death toll ranges between 31 and 54 people. In reality, radiation exposure from the disaster caused between 35,000 and 150,000 deaths in Ukraine alone.

Step into the world where robust infrastructure ignites economic prosperity with "Infrastructure Wins.” This compelling eBook delves into the pivotal role of infrastructure in booming markets, unraveling the intricate connections between strategic development and unprecedented economic growth. Start your journey with a profound introduction to the relationship between infrastructure and economic expansion. Explore fascinating historical case studies that reveal insightful lessons from past successes, providing a solid foundation for understanding today’s infrastructural dynamics. ...

Two opposing narratives vie to explain the strategic future of Europe, one geopolitical and one economic, and both center on the same resource: natural gas. In The Bridge, Thane Gustafson, an expert on Russian oil and gas, argues that the political rivalries that capture the lion's share of media attention must be viewed alongside multiple business interests and differences in economic ideologies. With a dense network of pipelines linking Europe and Russia, natural gas serves as a bridge that unites the region through common interests.

The United States is addicted to crude oil. In this book, Andrew Price-Smith argues that this addiction has distorted the conduct of American foreign policy in profound and malign ways, resulting in interventionism, exploitation, and other illiberal behaviors that hide behind a facade of liberal internationalism. The symbiotic relationship between the state and the oil industry has produced deviations from rational foreign energy policy, including interventions in Iraq and elsewhere.

Everything you've been told about being green is wrong. The quest for a breakthrough battery or a 100-mpg car is a dangerous fantasy. We are consumers, and we like to consume greenly and efficiently. But David Owen argues that our best intentions are still at cross-purposes to our true goal: living sustainably while caring for our environment and the future of the planet. Efficiency, once considered the holy grail of our environmental problems, turns out to be part of the problem - we have little trouble turning increases in efficiency into increases in consumption.

In a world where oil-rich states are more likely to start war than their oil-dependent counterparts, it's surprising how little attention is still paid to these so-called petrostates. These states' wealth props up the global arms trade, provides diplomatic leverage, and allows them to support violent and nonviolent proxies. In Oil, the State, and War, Emma Ashford explores the many potential links between domestic oil production and foreign policy behavior and how oil production influences global politics.

Imagine one day you receive a letter in the mail that informs you that a large energy company is planning to build a massive pipeline through your property. That they have the legal right to do so, whether you like it or not, because this project is in the "public interest"-because the pipeline will be carrying natural gas, the so-called "bridge fuel" that politicians have been peddling for decades as the path to a clean, green energy future.

Two decades of negotiating African oil and gas deals have given NJ Ayuk a grasp of the continent's energy landscape that few can match. The American-educated African energy lawyer serves up generous doses of that insight in his second book, Billions at Play: The Future of Africa Energy and Doing Deals.

Best-selling author Chris Turner brings listeners onto the streets of Fort McMurray, showing the myriad ways the oil sands of Alberta impact our lives and demanding that we ask the question: To both fuel the world and to save it, what do we do about the Patch? This is no conventional story about the oil business. Rather, it is a portrait of the life cycle of the Patch, showing just how deeply it continues to impact the lives of everyone around the world.