Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #573704 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 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 Scientific American
Energy is the lifeblood of industrial civilization and an absolutely necessary (albeit certainly not sufficient) condition for lifting the world's poor from their poverty. But current methods of mobilizing civilization's energy are more disruptive of local, regional and global environmental conditions and processes than anything else that humans do. This dichotomy defines the core of the energy challenge in the century before us: How can we supply enough affordable energy to permit the billions who are currently poor (and the billions more who will be added to their numbers in the decades ahead) to attain prosperity--and to sustain and expand the prosperity of those already rich--without suffering intolerable damage to the environmental dimensions of human well-being in industrial and developing countries alike? How difficult will meeting this challenge be? Is the "business as usual" approach--subsidizing fossil-fuel supply and nuclear energy and large hydro projects, maintaining low energy prices to consumers by keeping environmental and political costs "external," propping up oil supply by every available means--part of the solution or part of the problem? Can the privatization of energy sectors in the developing countries and the restructuring and deregulation of energy sectors in industrial countries be accomplished in ways that provide the economic benefits of competition while still preserving essential public benefits such as the reliability and resilience of the electricity system? In his book, Power to the People, Vijay Vaitheeswaran tackles these and the other hard questions at the core of society's energy dilemmas with style, balance and insight. The style is entertaining and accessible. The balance is impeccable--Vaitheeswaran generally lets the most forceful and effective exponents on different sides of the major issues state their case in their own words--but after ventilating the various positions he is not afraid to let the reader know where he comes out. And this is where the insight comes in. Vaitheeswaran brings to these questions the respect for markets and marketlike mechanisms of a writer for the Economist, the understanding of technology of an M.I.T.-trained engineer, and the sympathy for the plight of the world's poor of an individual born in India--all of which he happens to be. He also happens to have, in my judgment, a good sense of how to think about--and convey--the interplay of the economic, technological, environmental and sociopolitical dimensions of the energy issue as well as the reasons that the uncertainties afflicting our knowledge of all the dimensions do not add up to a good reason for inaction. Among the critically important points about all this that the book convincingly conveys: * Civilization is in no immediate danger of running out of energy or even just out of oil. But we are running out of environment--that is, out of the capacity of the environment to absorb energy's impacts without risk of intolerable disruption--and our heavy dependence on oil in particular entails not only environmental but also economic and political liabilities. * Choices that countries make about energy supply commit them to those choices for decades, because power plants and other energy facilities typically last for 40 years or more and are too costly to replace before they wear out. This is one of the reasons it is imprudent in the extreme to wait for even more evidence than we already have before letting climate-change risks start to influence which energy options we choose. * Energy technologies that exist or are under development could greatly increase energy efficiency in residences and businesses, reduce dependence on oil, accelerate the provision of energy services to the world's poor, increase the reliability and resilience of electricity grids, and shrink the impacts of energy supply on climate and other environmental values. The most promising of these options include renewable sources of a variety of types, advanced fossil-fuel technologies that can capture and sequester carbon, and hydrogen-powered fuel cells for vehicle propulsion and dispersed electricity generation. * These prosperity-building, stability-enhancing and environment-sparing options will not materialize in quantity matching the need unless and until three conditions are met: The massive subsidies favoring continuation of energy business as usual are ended. The massive risks of greenhouse gas-induced climate change are at least partly internalized with a carbon tax or its equivalent. And the industrial nations commit to helping the developing ones "leapfrog" past the inefficient and dirty-energy technologies that fueled the industrialization of the former but mortgaged the environment in the process. There are a few small technical slips in the elaboration of all this, but not many, and none that matter to the thrust of the argument. Written for the intelligent layperson, Vaitheeswaran's book is by far the most helpful, entertaining, up-to-date and accessible treatment of the energy-economy-environment problematique available. Its title, Power to the People, might strike some at first as too cute or too presumptuous. By the time I finished the book, though, I thought the title was apt, and in more ways than one. One must hope that knowledge translates to power in the political sense and that the knowledge to the people conveyed here will help lead to the political outcomes needed to bring the book's optimistic vision into being.

John P. Holdren is Teresa and John Heinz Professor and director of the Program on Science, Technology and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

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
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Wrong about Electric cars, half right about fuel cells, interesting about micropower plants. Free Energy will be the next boom.
The next big boom will be free energy. Vijay, people want free energy and not cheap energy. Tesla proposed free wireless energy for the world which never happen. Micropower offers cheap distributed energy, not free energy. The motionless Electromagnetic Generator is a technology makes possible distributed free energy in massive quantities. Alternatives like ethanol, solar, wind, and fuel cell are expensive and produce insignificant amounts of energy. Why offer a marginal increase in available energy? People want free energy. The usage of this energy would be limited to their creativity, boundaries of logic, and available capital. Image a world where the consumer uses a 1,000 fold more energy and higher quality energy producing higher quality standards of life. People want more control of the energy generation and consumption behaviors. Technology stagnation can no longer be an adequate reason for high energy prices. Nuclear power will provide more energy. Utility companies had wait for regulatory permission to build the plant, factor in costs to finance monies, billions of dollars borrowed that raised the rates. Between 1969 and 1984 the rates rose 60 percent.

"Small is profitable", by Amory Lovins, is quoted, "Thus the grid linking central stations to remote customers had become the main driver of thoses customer's power costs and power-quality problems-which became more acute as digital equipment required extremely reliable electricity. The cheapest, most reliable power, therefore, was that which was produced at or near the customers..." Fuels cells have niched in reliable electricity near the customer, small power plants located near the customer. Fuel cell technology has been used to provide megawatt power for companies, provide backup power for computers, and small electronic devices. Fuel cell technology for automobiles, buses, and trucks remain cost prohibitive until the cost per kilowatt drops below 30 cents a kilowatt, it will be infeasible. Fuel cell technology for transportation does not make sense. "Progress has come only in fits and starts, but the trend is clear: the era of monopolization, centralization, and overregulation has started to give way to market forces in electricity." Micropower has been given a chance to blossom, prices are determined by markets not monopolies, and energy is serve the needs of ordinary people. "Forward -looking firms are already developing microgrids that can electronically link together dozens of micropower units, be they fuel cells or wind turbines." For example, Hydrogren uses 400 kilowatt, air-cooled phosphoric acide fuel cells to generate multi-megawatt systems, 6 - 30 megawatts.

However, centralized power production failed in providing free energy. Decentralized power produce is the solution either in the form of local community energy production using power micro generators or off the grid power generation, such as, home generators or home power plants.


Providing internet to poor nations does not remove poverty. Free energy removes poverty but providing increased mechanical work and logic to grow food, manufacture products, and entertain. Over a half a billion people have no access to electricity. Micropower is an attractive option, in such places. "One significant advantage of micropower is that is call allow generator owners to become producers as well as consumers- selling surplus electricity back to the grid when they do not need it."

Electric vehicles make the car an appliance. "Who killed the electric car" is a compelling story about how GM distorted customer demand statistics to scrap the EV1. Consumers wanted the EV1. The EV1 used Ovonic advanced battery technology to provide cruising speeds for adequate distances. EV hybrids could combine hydrogen reforming, battery, and an combustible engine. Even more significant are cars that run on water or air. EV1 cost 60 cents a mile to operate.


Vijay's book suggests that modern cars emit less population; gas will be the preferred choice of fuel for the next fifty years; energy is the biggest market in the world; fuel cells are doomed; electric vehicles failed to create customer demand; environmental green house crisis emphasis will emerge in politics and in the media; and micropower will not mean the end of giant power plants, instead, it will mean cheap power to areas without power. Vijay sees super Enron, "As energy markets liberalize, on-line energy-trading markets develop, and individual consumers win the right to select their energy suppliers, some people even see the emergence of virtual utilities. Microgrids would allow such firms to combine the individual efficiency of the micropower plants with the market power that is gained by bundling together their collective generating capacity."

Excellent writing from one point of view
Power to the People does present a particular point of view. Many people do not like to read books on very political topics like this unless it matches their view. I guess I'm that way as much as anyone, maybe more than most.

But while I do not agree with all that Vijay Vaitheeswaran says, I did enjoy this book. It's thoughtful, but entertaining. Cleverly written, but perceptive. Some of the comments that stick in my mind may not be the most important points in the book. (Vaitheeswaran's account of when he met Cindy Crawford and she said "the three words men most want to hear" was pretty funny.) But the thoughts in the book as a whole all hang together. They persuade, if not necessarily convince.

Contrast this with Internal Combustion, by Edwin Black, a book that I also read recently. His book draws on a wealth of research. And I agree with many of the principles he builds up from the facts. But Black's book ultimately does not hang together. Black draws basic conclusions from the facts that the facts do not support. The book's faults pull it down.

All in all, while I agree with much of what others see as faults in Power to the People, my opinion of the book as a whole could not be higher. It's a gem.

Has no solutions
I expected something completely different when I read this book. I was expecting that this book would tell about different ways that the future would get energy to the people.

This book is nothing like that the first two thirds of this book is a diatribe on how everybody is using energy the wrong way. It tells that innovation and micro power is the wave of the future and condemns all government subsidies for energy. He does not explain why we will be going to micro power but says that's the way it is going to be.

I have to say I started reading this book and put it down for a while for the racist remarks throughout the book. It is told from an Indian viewpoint where he makes snide remarks about the British saying that the British East Indian Company was the ultimate in evil. He makes condescending remarks about the Americans not being smart enough to have back-up generator in Silicon Valley whereas in Bangalore India they have them.

He is obviously against nuclear power by making outrageous remarks about nuclear wastes not being safe for 100,000 years. I read nuclear renewal and the waste from the newer breeder reactors is a couple of 100 years and they will reduce that as time goes on.

He is all for the fuel cell and the book is very well written. He doesn't say how we are going to get the hydrogen that we will need and talks endlessly about the Kyoto Protocol like it was the only peace of legislation that mattered on global warming.

I thought there would be new ideas and processes for the future like biomass or solar chimneys. There is nothing new or insightful this book seems more like a list of grievances.