The Great Transition: Shifting from Fossil Fuels to Solar and Wind Energy

by Lester R. Brown

The great energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy is under way. As oil insecurity deepens, the extraction risks of fossil fuels rise, and concerns about climate instability cast a shadow over the future of coal, a new world energy economy is emerging. The old economy, fueled by oil, natural gas, and coal is being replaced with one powered by wind, solar, and geothermal energy. The Great Transition details the accelerating pace of this global energy revolution. As many countries become less enamored with coal and nuclear power, they are embracing an array of clean, renewable energies. Whereas solar energy projects were once small-scale, largely designed for residential use, energy investors are now building utility-scale solar projects. Strides are being some of the huge wind farm complexes under construction in China will each produce as much electricity as several nuclear power plants, and an electrified transport system supplemented by the use of bicycles could reshape the way we think about mobility.

Genres: Science, Environment, Nonfiction, Climate Change, Sustainability, Politics, Business

194 pages, Paperback

First published October 13, 2014

About the author

Lester Russel Brown is an American environmentalist, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, and founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C. BBC Radio commentator Peter Day calls him "one of the great pioneer environmentalists."

In the mid-1970s, Brown helped pioneer the concept of sustainable development, during a career that started with farming. As early as 1978, in his book The Twenty-Ninth Day, he was already warning of "the various dangers arising out of our manhandling of nature...by overfishing the oceans, stripping the forests, turning land into desert." In 1986, the Library of Congress requested his personal papers noting that his writings “have already strongly affected thinking about problems of world population and resources.”

He has been the recipient of many prizes and awards, including, the 1987 United Nations Environment Prize, the 1989 World Wide Fund for Nature Gold Medal, and the 1994 Blue Planet Prize for his "contributions to solving global environmental problems."

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Athena · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a utterly stunning disappointment.

I picked this up to garner some facts on the positive realities of shifting from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources but this isn't a demonstrably fact-based book. It is a long editorial from the Earth Policy Institute that provides absolutely no supporting evidence whatsoever, aside from 'see our website.'

Seriously!? Any book taking on this dense topic and claiming to provide 'facts' needs to be footnoted and needs a bibliography: in short, it's a tough, much-contested, science-based topic and sensible discussions of such require vigorous scientific objectivity and common scientific formatting. My kids' high-school papers were better presented than this!

For example, the authors oppose nuclear power, clearly. They provide many health statistics about the Chernobyl nuclear accident to 'prove' that nuclear power is Bad. There are several problems with this approach, chief among them is that governments of both the then-Soviet Union and the Ukraine have made finding health statistics extremely difficult by mis-classifying much of the actual data available. By not identifying any sources the authors effectively negate their argument, turning it into mere propaganda.

These authors baldly state that "it may take another 100 years" to clean up the area around Chernobyl, a mathematically fascinating assumption given that the relative gamma dose of a person in the immediate vicinity was earth-normal within 1,000 days and the four most harmful radionuclides released during the accident, iodine-131, caesium-134, caesium-137 and strontium-90 have half-lives of 8 days, 2 years, 30 years and 28 years, respectively. So, 100 MORE years, making 130 years total? Why? Based on what, precisely? Not to mention what a surprise this will be for the several hundred persons living in the evacuation zone who never evacuated and who aren't suffering from the levels of radiation poisoning expected from their proximity to such an event. None of that is mentioned, just that random "another 100 years." Bangs-head-on-desk.

Badly written books like this do far more harm than good to the movement for clean energy sources.

[Cheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short book did something I did not think was possible -- it gave me a sense of hope, even cautious optimism, about the future. The Great Transition describes the world's current energy status, what changes are already happening, and what actions can help bring positive changes more quickly.

[Adam McPhee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe the one bit of good news about climate change is that we're quickly transitioning to an electrical grid that's far more efficient in terms of carbon emissions.

Available free online here: http://www.earth-policy.org/books/tgt...

[Jocelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great, fast read that is meant to give a basic history and glimpse of the future for coal, nuclear, natural gas, geothermal, solar, and wind energy. Highly recommend reading it if you use electricity ever.

[Christopher May · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too much of a propaganda piece and not enough detailed discussion about how renewables actually work. The author spends the majority of the book citing new projects that are installing a 3000Mw wind project here and a 500Mw project there and this country is aiming for 50% renewables by 2020 and that city is going completely green by 2035, etc. etc.

I get it. It’s an exciting time with the costs of renewables dropping ever lower. But just a little bit of information about how they actually work would have really benefited the text.

Additionally, the author doesn’t do a very good job of discussing the challenges and the negative aspects of each renewable. The closest he gets is with hydropower and he’s even careful to be gentle about criticism there. I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but no power source is 100% good or bad. There are certainly some that are very good and some that are really bad. Failing to address the whole picture does a disservice to the cause, I think.

It’s really a shame because it comes off as a cheerleading piece without any real substance. If one is trying to convince Joe Maga why solar/wind/geothermal/etc. are better than natural gas/oil/nuclear and the all powerful King Coal, it would be far more useful to engage in a complete discussion rather than what boils down to “Yay solar! Boo coal!”

All in all, I don’t regret taking the time to read the book and I’m really glad to learn that there are some exciting projects and technologies currently being implemented and more on the horizon. I just wish that the author had fleshed out his text a little more.

[John Szalasny · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Great Transition is a good, no-nonsense primer for those who want to know about the rapid change in our energy production. Each chapter goes through the pros & cons of each power source. With the price of wind and solar generated electricity already below the prices of coal, natural gas or nuclear, the author makes clear that renewable energies have already won the battle. And in the transition phase, the ease of installation for wind and solar, compared to the long construction cycles (and inevitable cost overruns) to build a dam or a power plant double downs the advantages for wind and solar.

Before reading, I would have expected the final chapter, The Accelerating Transition, to be the base of this book. It is rather short, although in reading, it is more like an epilogue to the book as the author has made his case in each of the preceding chapters. Overall, this is an easy read, written for the non-scientist. No charts, graphs, etc. to spoil the narrative, but written with enough concrete examples to prove his point.

[Lee Shaver · Rating 3 out of 5]

Long sections are simply statistics spelled out with minimal context. And, as a book about the bleeding edge of grid technology, it's now four years old. But, it paints a compelling picture of the future of renewable energy, and the decline of fossil fuels. The chapter on nuclear power is particularly compelling -- 20 years ago, if the world had been fully aware of the dangers of climate change, nuclear likely would have been our best option. Today, the rapid cost decline of wind and solar, combined with the evolution towards a smarter, decentralized grid, means that nuclear is hard to recommend on any broad scale.

[Jeff Moss · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overly optimistic analysis with lots of poorly cited "facts" crammed into a short book. Given the length of the book and the topic this should have been a quick easy read. I gave up. Perhaps reading this book over a decade after it was written and knowing that a lot of the goals and ideas outlined in the book haven't really been met, aside from the price of wind and solar becoming dramatically cheaper, made it a more difficult read. Had to put this book back on the shelf before it was finished.

[Rick N. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book makes a lot of good points and captures the essence of the overall trend in the energy sector, but it doesn't present the full picture of all of the forces that are acting that are resisting the shift to renewable energy sources. It's also a bit dated as this rapidly changing issue needs to be updated at least annually to reflect the latest developments.

[Christian Selmek · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to give up on this one. Another book shoving “facts” into your eyeballs that reads like a dictionary. Kind of like the author just crams so much BS into the book and never made a legit point. As a reader I felt so inundated i could not possibly research the truth in any of it. Break up the pages of words with some graphs that may convey a better overall message.

[Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good quick read about different sources of energy. Reading it a decade after it was published is probably a fair amount different than reading it right when it came out to be fair. I like how each chapter was about a different fuel and explained which countries are leading in capacity and share of total energy. Learned a good amount, good overview, I’d be curious for this to be rewritten now.

[Madison Griffin · Rating 3 out of 5]

i read this immediately after reading plan b (i had to read both for school) and it honestly just felt like the exact same book but shorter and updated stats. needs stronger environmental justice component (so did plan b)

[Kelsey Breseman · Rating 2 out of 5]

file next to Lovins: interesting, full of facts, optimistic to the point of credulity

[Ben Horne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid summary of the energy landscape both domestically and abroad. Each type of technology has a chapter associated with it. Good, quick read for anyone more interested in the industry. Go green!

[Caroline Lieu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite informative, but a bit dry at times.

[Frederick Rockett · Rating 4 out of 5]

A somewhat outdated and overly optimistic overview of the alternatives to fossil fuels. Chock full of data.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Because this book is a year old, and since it's based on lots of current facts and percentages, I desperately want an update. It discusses a breadth of topics for an energy transition away from fossil fuels and all of the current (or then current) plans for achieving this around the world. With some attention to improving energy efficiency, it primarily has sections on oil, coal (including a bit on natural gas), nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro solutions. These seem fair in describing the benefits and disadvantages of each, but concentrate more on where the world stands and efforts to +/- each of these. While it's a small book, it's a good overview - that could have been helped with a few charts and graphs - but whose topics could have taken a full bookshelf. Still a very worthwhile read... especially for recognizing how much more our country could be doing now.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well-written, fast-reading summary of the crucial efforts to phase out coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants & replace them with solar, wind and geothermal projects. As with Lester Brown's other books, this book did an impressive job of providing lots of information without assuming I already had a deep background or condescending to a lay person. I was especially pleased to see the detailed coverage of China's efforts to convert to renewable energy sources.

I hope this book is so seriously out of date within the next 4 to 5 years that we will need a thorough revision.

[Charles Inglin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clearly written and concise, tis book presents mostly information that would be familiar to anyone who follows renewable energy issues on the Internet. Nothing really new or surprising here, but it does assemble information about various aspects of renewables in one place and for someone not overly familiar with the progress that's been made in the field this book is a good place to get p to speed. Worth the read.

[A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Covers surface level facts which point to the high growth (from a very small base) of renewables. Yet, does not address the full cost burden of renewables (intermittency, storage requiremen, tax incentive) when comparing to conventional FFs which also receive the benefit of externalities.

Overall a good descripion of the progress being made on the renewable front, which is a positive development, though it reads (to me) more as a pro-industry sales piece.

[Aniruddh Mohan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Essentially just a paean to renewable energy without any examination of the challenges and technical difficulties which make a large scale decarbonisation of the global energy system unlikely in the short term.

[Kelly White · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative but reads like a textbook with lots of numbers that could have been better conveyed with some graphs or charts. That said, it is a quick read and worth your time if you are wondering about the movement to green energy, just keep your expectations of this book modest.

[Samuel Lubell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wasn't convinced by the book.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for class. One of the most enjoyable reads on global climate change I've ever read! I would definitely recommend this to people interested in science!

[Diego Pagura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clear and concise book. Well explanations of most items. Good for an entry-level reader to the subject.

[Myra Scholze · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting book, accessible to all audiences. Perhaps a bit optimistic, but good for feeling hopeful in the uphill battle for widespread renewable energy.

[Olzhas Suleimenov · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars for timeliness- an early attempt to predict the possibility of green energy development.
Should have been reading it 1 year ago.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars