Table of Contents
Table of Figures
Praise for Power Hungry
Bryce douses the green energy movement with a cold shower of facts and figures, ones that collectively remind us that a transition to wind and solar power would take decades, that it would be astronomically expensive, that it would make the U.S. reliant on China for turbines, and that it would lead to energy sprawl. For all the intuitive appeal of renewable energy, Power Hungry makes a convincing case that decarbonizing the worlds primary energy use will mean letting the sun shine and the wind blow while embracing natural gas as a bridge to nuclear energy.
James McWilliams, Freakonomics Blog
Bryce has compiled a catalogue of hard facts and statistics that puncture just about every myth you will read in breathless accounts of the coming Green Economy.
William Tucker, The American Spectator
Bryce deftly sets out to debunk the myths of the ever-popular going green campaign and answers more specific technological difficulties and cost containment issues.... His views will undoubtedly be rejected or disbelieved, but he backs up those views with hard evidence provoking readers to do the math for themselves, verify statistics, and basically, check up on him with more than ninety pages of references, statistical appendixes, and energy data notes. This is the must-read book for the twenty-first century.
M. Chris Johnson, San Francisco Book Review
[S]hould be mandatory reading for U.S. policymakers.... The promise of renewables has consistently been oversold by the political class. Solar and wind energy both suffer from major structural deficiencies.... Our current national energy debate is heavy on passion and hyperbole; it could use a sizable dose of historical perspective and empirical reality.
Duncan Currie, The National Review
I have long known that there is nothing remotely green about putting wind farms all over the countryside, with their eagle-slicing, batpopping, subsidy-eating, rare-earth-demanding, steel-rich, intermittentoutput characteristics. But until I read Robert Bryces superb and sober new book Power Hungry, I had not realised just how dreadfully bad for the environment nearly all renewable energy is....
Bryces book is more than a demolition of renewable energy. It contains a fascinating and detailed account of the shale gas revolution and of the latest developments in modular nuclear technology. It makes a persuasive case that this century will be dominated by N2N energynatural gas to nuclearand that the consequence of the rise of both will be continuing steady decarbonisation of the economy. This is the best book on energy I have read. It confirms my optimismand my rejection of the renewable myth.
Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist
Bryce is especially good at explaining why fossil fuels have become entrenched as our main energy sources.
Philadelphia Inquirer
A brutal, brilliant exploration.... If Power Hungry sounds like a supercharged polemic, its shocks are delivered with forensic skill and narrative aplomb.... It is unsentimental, unsparing, and impassioned; and, if youll excuse the pun, it is precisely the kind of journalism we need to hold truth to power.
Wall Street Journal
His magnificently unfashionable, superlatively researched new book dares to fly in the face of all current conventional wisdom and cant.... I have never yet found any book or author who does a more thorough, unanswerable job of demolishing universally held environmental myths than Mr. Bryce does.... Mr. Obama is reputed to be an omnivorous reader of serious intellectual volumes. He should drop everything else and put Robert Bryces invaluable book at the top of his list. So should every senator and Congress member and every self-important, scientifically illiterate pundit in America, right and left alike. They will all learn a lot.
Washington Times
Bryce uses copious facts and research to make a compelling case that renewable sources have their place in our energy future but they arent the viable panacea were led to believe.
Library Journal
[A] terrific buy for anyone with a strong interest in the nations energy supply.... A full 54 pages devoted to references illustrate the comprehensive research Bryce has done, as well as the quality of his sources. He is at his best destroying many of the myths regarding renewable energy, providing powerful mathematical proofs that anyone can understand.... The primary theme of this book is the importance of power density. As Bryce thoroughly documents, coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power provide such power density while wind, solar, and biofuels do not. You will not find a book on energy that makes this important point more strongly than this one.
Jay Lehr, Heartland Institute
Power Hungry provides a grand tour of our energy landscape in the best journalistic tradition of serving the public good, exposing the cant of received wisdom and using the authority and weight of good numbers to put ideas into proper perspective. Bryces numbers provide giant shoulders upon which to stand, allowing us to see farther and better, increasing our knowledge and improving the odds for institutional wisdom. There are few things more important to the worlds life, liberty, and happiness than an enhanced ability to convert abundant energy into high power at affordable cost. Robert Bryce, with buoyant bonhomie, marks the way.
Jon Boone, MasterResource.org
Robert Bryce is an energy realist. So reading him is refreshing. First, because most people when discussing matters of energy are either ill- or misinformed, nave, liars, or have a personal stake in the policy outcomes. Second, because every time I read something by Bryce, I learn something new.... Power Hungry [is a] laser-like dismantling of the myth that so-called green energy can displace fossil fuels anytime in the near future.
Sterling Burnett, National Review Online
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
JOHN McCARTHY
computer pioneer, Stanford University
AUTHORS NOTE
My daughter, Mary, has many favorite authors. One of them is Shannon Hale, a successful writer of novels for young adults. A while ago, Mary quoted Hales writing advice: Write what fascinates you.
Hales advice reminds me of just how lucky I am. There is no more complex or more fascinating topic than energy. We use that wordbased on the Latin energiato describe a myriad of different forces, substances, and ideas. These many meaningswhether its the chemical energy in a chunk of coal in a Chinese power plant or the kinetic energy in a baseball thats been tagged for a quick ride into the cheap seats by Bo Jacksons batare too numerous to be encompassed by a single word.
In addition, the scale of energy use and the complexity and importance of the energy business are unmatched by any other industry. The study of energy includes physics, geology, chemistry, engineering, metallurgy, telemetry, seismology, finance, politics, religion, biology, genetics, botanythe list goes on and on. The energy sector has captivated me since I was a child growing up in Tulsa, and no matter how much I study it, I still feel like a rank amateur. And yet, if we are to make wise choices about energy policy, it is essential for all of usas voters, as owners and managers of businesses, and as policymakersto understand what energy is, what power is, how they are measured, and which forms of energy and power production make the most sense environmentally and economically.
