Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1357671 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-05
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .95" h x 5.50" w x 8.20" l, .71 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In the wake of this summer's failure of the aging power grid, Vaitheeswaran, the author of this timely book, highlights the trends he believes will transform the energy game: liberalization of the energy markets, the increasing influence of the environmental movement and recent innovations in hydrogen fuel-cell technology. In short essays, he covers many of today's energy problems, such as reliance on oil, global warming, air pollution and the dangers inherent in nuclear power. Micropower from fuel cells-big batteries that produce electricity by combining hydrogen fuel and available oxygen-will be our salvation, he asserts, because this technology makes possible small, clean power plants that can be located close to homes and factories, enabling power to flow not from on high but from the grassroots. Vaitheeswaran, an Economist correspondent, profiles some of the energy visionaries he reveres, such as Amory Lovins, a pioneer in the field of micropower, and Firoz Rasul of Ballard Power Systems, a Canadian fuel-cell firm. He also attempts to debunk some of the "truisms" currently spouted on both the left and the right, arguing, for example, that deregulation is not the problem, and that the Kyoto treaty is flawed and would not have solved global warming problems even if the U.S. had signed it. His lucid and entertaining book is informative and insightful, but his prediction that hydrogen fuel-cell technology will take off in a decade or so will strike some as overly optimistic.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Should the goals of environmentalism be advanced by governmental dictate or by market forces? Both should be used, concludes this survey of energy production and pricing by the Economist's beat reporter. Accepting the premise that injecting carbon into the atmosphere is too dangerous to countenance, Vaitheeswaran took to the field to interview executives of oil and utility companies, regulators, chiefs of environmental groups, and techno-proselytizers, such as the advocates of hydrogen fuel cells. He also breaks down topical events, such as California's fiasco of partial electricity deregulation or the global emissions-control treaty (the Kyoto Protocol of 1997), arenas where the regulation-versus-pricing approaches to energy and environmentalism played out. To these discussions, Vaitheeswaran brings both journalistic pizzazz and a commonsensical questioning of the claims of those vested in the oil-consuming status quo and of moral preeners among environmentalists. Polemically-minded readers will pass this work by, but solution-oriented ones will read it with optimism. Gilbert Taylor
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