The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World

by Daniel Yergin

  5 Isabel Hinton, “In India, A Clear Victor on the Climate Front,” Yale Environment 360, March 1, 2010 (“kiss of death”); Jairam Ramesh, speech to Parliament, December 3, 2009; Wall Street Journal, March 8, 2010 (“bread-and-butter”).

  6 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, “Draft Decision: Proposal by the President, Copenhagen Accord,” December 18, 2009 (“international measurement”); William Antholis and Strobe Talbott, Fast Forward : Ethics and Politics in the Age of Global Warming (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2010), ch. 5 (“variable geometry”); interview with David Sandalow; Eric Pooley, The Climate War: True Believers, Power Brokers, and the Fight to Save the Earth (New York: Hyperion, 2010), pp. 423–41.

  7 Pennsylvania State University, “RA-1O Final Investigation Report Involving Dr. Michael E. Mann,” June 4, 2010.

  8 Hindu, January 19, 2010 (many glaciers, “iota”); Guardian, November 9, 2009 (“standstill,” “arrogant”); Isabel Hinton, “In India, A Clear Victor on the Climate Front,” Yale Environment 360, March 2, 2010 (“copied”); Times (London), January 21, 2010 (“astrologer”); Bloomberg, January 20, 2010 (“pathetic state”).

  9 Dmitry Medvedev, speech, August 4, 2010; Reuters, August 23, 2010 (Vladimir Putin).

  10 New York Times, December 16, 2010 (“command-and-control”); Associated Press, January 3, 2011 (“unable to legislate”); New York Times, December 9, 2010.

  Chapter 27: Rebirth of Renewables

  1 Jimmy Carter, White House Diary (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), p. 332; New York Times, June 21, 1979; Time, July 7, 1979.

  2 The White House, “Fact Sheet: President Obama Highlights Vision for Clean Energy Economy,” April 22, 2009; Evan Osnos, “Green Giant: Beijing’s Crash Program for Clean Energy,” New Yorker, December 21, 2009 (Hu Jintao); Guardian (London), May 14, 2010 (Cameron).

  3 Harvey Strum, “Eisenhower’s Solar Energy Policy,” Public Historian 6, no. 2 (1984), pp. 37–55.

  4 Interview with Denis Hayes; New York Times, April 23, 1970 (“speech somewhere”); Time, January 4, 1971 (“issue of the year”).

  5 Interview with Scott Sklar.

  6 New York Times Magazine, March 16, 1975 (“eco-freaks”); interview with Denis Hayes; Amory B. Lovins, “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?” Foreign Affairs, October 1976; Denis Hayes, Rays of Hope: The Transition to a Post-Petroleum World (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977).

  7 Jimmy Carter, speeches, February 2, 1977, and April 18, 1977; Carter, White House Diary, p. 41; interview (sweater).

  8 Interview with Denis Hayes; BusinessWeek, October 9, 1978 (“public imagination”).

  9 BusinessWeek, September 8, 1980.

  10 Jimmy Carter, speech, July 15, 1979 (“crisis of the American spirit”); Wall Street Journal, December 11, 2008 (“gnawing on a rock”).

  11 Robert W. Righter, Wind Energy in America: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), p. 222 (white elephants); interview with Denis Hayes; discussion.

  12 Interview with A. L. Shrier.

  13 Washington Post, May 14, 2008 (“joke”); Economist, September 25, 1993 (“graveyard”); Wall Street Journal, December 11, 2008; interview with Scott Sklar.

  14 Interview with Taichi Sakaiya (Kotaro Ikeguchi).

  15 Business Japan, February 1978 (“bureaucrat-novelist”); interview with Taichi Sakaiya.

  16 Rolf Wustenhagen and Michael Bilharz, “Green Market Development in Germany: Effective Public Policy and Emerging Customer Demand,” Energy Policy 34 (2006), pp. 1681–96 (“almost accidental”).

  17 Interviews with Gerhard Schroeder, Hermann Scheer, and Hans-Josef Fell; Time, August 26, 2002 (“solar crusader”).

  18 Interview with Gerhard Schroeder.

  19 New York Times, May 16, 2008 (“turbocharger”).

  20 Interview with Hans-Josef Fell; Ministry for Environment, Conservation, and Nuclear Safety, “Development of Renewable Energy Sources in Germany in 2009—Graphics and Tables,” Federal Republic of Germany, September 2010; “Renewables Support Policies in Europe: 2011 Country Comparisons,” IHS Emerging Energy Research, 2011.

  21 New York Times, April 22 and April 23, 1990 (Earth Day); interview with Scott Sklar.

  22 Barry G. Rabe, Statehouse and Greenhouse: The Emerging Politics of American Climate Change Policy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), pp. 49–62; “North American Renewable Power Outlook, 2010–2015,” IHS CERA, November 2010; Sacramento Bee, April 13, 2011 (“can’t be afraid”); Los Angeles Times, April 13, 2011 (“didn’t get my name”).

  23 Interview with Michael Eckhart.

  24 “Green Tech” blog at CNET News, March 5, 2008.

  25 Interview with Takayuki Ueda.

  26 Huang Liming, “Financing Rural Renewable Energy: A Comparison Between China and India,” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 13, no. 5 (2009), pp. 1096–1103; Yingqi Liu and Ari Kokko, “Wind Power in China: Policy and Development Challenges,” Energy Policy 38, no. 10 (2010), pp. 5520–29.

  27 Interview.

  28 “Renewable Energy Law” People’s Republic of China, February 28, 2005; “Medium- and Long-Term Development Plan for Renewable Energy,” People’s Republic of China, September 2007.

  29 Wen Jiabao, speech, World Economic Forum, January 28, 2009; New York Times, September 8, 2010.

  30 International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2010 (Paris: International Energy Agency, 2010).

  31 Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, January 27, 2010.

  32 REN21, Renewables 2010 Global Status Report, September 2010, pp. 13–30.

  33 Interview with Denis Hayes.

  34 Christian Science Monitor, September 10, 2010; New York Times, October 6, 2010.

  Chapter 28: Science Experiment

  1 Clay Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003).

  2 Steven Chu autobiography, Nobel Prize Web site.

  3 Interviews with Raymond Orbach and John Tully.

  4 Chu autobiography, Nobel Prize Web site.

  5 Vernon W. Ruttan, Is War Necessary for Economic Growth?: Military Procurement and Technolog y Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 21–27.

  6 Robert Solow, “Growth and After,” Nobel Prize lecture, November 18, 1987; Steven Koonin, “From Energy Innovation to Energy Transformation,” pp. 4, 8–10 (scrubbers); MIT Energy Initiative, The Future of Natural Gas: Interim Report (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2010) (coal bed methane).

  7 DOE, “DOE Nobel Laureates” and “Laboratories,” U.S. Department of Energy.

  8 Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, Task Force on Strategic Energy R&D, Energy R&D: Shaping Our Nation’s Future in a Competitive World (Washington, DC: GPO, 1995), p. 1 (“deficit”); Kelly Gallagher, Ambuj Sagar, Diane Segal, Paul de Sa, and John P. Holdren, “DOE Budget Authority for Energy, Research, Development, and Demonstration Database,” Ending the Energy Stalemate: A Bipartisan Strategy to Meet America’s Energy Challenges (Washington, DC: National Commission on Energy Policy, 2004) (low point).

  9 Interview with William Draper III, Commanding Heights, PBS; New York Times, June 26, 1989 (“adventure capital”).

  10 Spencer E. Ante, Creative Capital: Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2008), pp. 80–88, 198.

  11 Interview with Samuel Bodman; Ante, Creative Capital, pp. 109, 126 (“peaceful life”), 198; Charter of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/mithistory/charter.html.

  12 David Packard, The HP Way (New York: Collins Business Essentials, 1995), p. 22.

  13 Tom Perkins, Valley Boy: The Education of Tom Perkins (New York: Gotham Books, 2007); interview with Ray Lane.

  14 Interview with Nancy Floyd.

  15 Interview with Ira Ehrenpreis.

  16 Interview with Ray Lane; Kleiner Perkins, “MoneyTree Report,” PricewaterhouseCoopers, January 21, 2011, at https:/
/www.pwcmoneytree.com/MTPublic/ns/moneytree/filesource/exhibits/10Q4MTRelease_FINAL.pdf.

  17 Interview with Robert Metcalfe; Susan Hockfield, Inaugural Address, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, May 6, 2005, at http://web.mit.edu/hockfield/speeches/2005-inaugural-address.html.

  18 Steven Koonin, “From Energy Innovation to Energy Transformation,” p. 6 (“decades”); interviews with Ray Lane and Ernest Moniz.

  19 Steven Chu, speech, CERAWeek, March 9, 2010; interview with Matt Rogers; U.S. Secretary of Energy Advisory Board Meeting, TK, p.16 (“rolling the dice”); President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Accelerating the Pace of Change in Energy Technologies Through an Integrated Federal Energy Policy (Washington, DC: Office of the President, 2010), pp. 3–5.

  20 President’s Council of Advisors, Accelerating the Pace of Change in Energy Technologies through an Integrated Federal Energy Policy, pp. 13–14 (comparative funding). ARPA-E was proposed in the influential National Academies: report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2007).

  Chapter 29: Alchemy of Shining Light

  1 Walter Isaacson, Einstein: The Life of a Genius (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009), ch. 4 (“lazy dog”); Albrecht Folsing, Albert Einstein: A Biography, tr. Ewald Osers (New York: Penguin, 1997), pp. 77, 95 (“exceedingly thorough,” “depressed”).

  2 John Stachel, ed., Einstein’s Miraculous Year: Five Papers That Changed the Face of Physics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 177–98; Isaacson, Einstein, pp. 94–101.

  3 Interview with Jean Posbic (“explained it all”).

  4 Interview with Ernest Moniz.

  5 John Perlin, From Space to Earth: The Story of Solar Electricity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 18 (Siemens).

  6 Albert Einstein, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1921, at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1921/.

  7 Perlin, From Space to Earth, pp. 4, 25–26, 31, 202; New York Times, April 26, 1954 (“almost limitless”); Time, October 17, 1955.

  8 Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), chs. 18, 19; Deborah Cadbury, Space Race: The Epic Battle Between America and the Soviet Union for Dominion of Space (New York: HarperPerennial, 2006), p. 173 (“Kaputnik”).

  9 Perlin, From Space to Earth, pp. 41–44 (“roofs”); John Perlin, “Solar Power: The Slow Revolution,” Invention and Technology 18, no. 1 (2002).

  10 Interview with Peter Varadi; Peter Varadi, lecture, 19th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference, June 7–11, 2004.

  11 Interview with Paul Maycock.

  12 Interview with Paul Maycock.

  13 Interview with Peter Varadi.

  14 Interviews with Naohiro Amaya (“very apprehensive”) and Taichi Sakaiya; Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1991), p. 688 (Ginza).

  15 Paul D. Maycock and Edward N. Stirewalt, A Guide to the Photovoltaic Revolution: Sunlight to Electricity in One Step (Emmaus: Rodale, 1985), pp. 67–69.

  16 Sanyo Corporation, “Solar Global Site,” at http://www.sanyo.com/solar/history/index.html; Sharp Corporation, “Solar Global Website,” at http://sharp-solar.com/index.html; International Energy Agency, “National Survey Report of PV Power Applications in Japan 2002,” May 2003 (“solar roofs”); interview with Atul Arya (“shocked”).

  17 Interviews with Jean Posbic, Hermann Scheer, and Anton Milner.

  18 Wall Street Journal, October 12, 2006 (“by accident”); Time, October 17, 2007; Bill Powell, “China’s New King of Solar,” Fortune, February 11, 2009.

  19 Interview with Shi Zhengrong.

  20 Associated Press, September 8, 2009; New York Times, September 9, 2009.

  21 European Photovoltaic Industry Association and Greenpeace, Solar Generation 6: Solar Photovoltaic Electricity Empowering the World 2011, http://www.epia.org/.

  22 Cleantech Group, “Clean Technology Venture Investment Totaled $5.6 billion in 2009 Despite Non-binding Climate Change Accord in Copenhagen, Finds the Cleantech Group and Deloitte,” press release, January 6, 2010; Peachtree Capital Advisors, 2010 Greentech M&A Review, January 12, 2011.

  23 Interview with David Carlson.

  24 Daniel Clery, “Sending African Sunlight to Europe, Special Delivery,” Science 329, no. 5993 (2010) pp. 782–83 (Desertec); Fortune, July 21, 2008 (land rush).

  25 Lawrence Makovich, Patricia DiOrio, and Douglas Giuffre, “Renewable Portfolio Standards: Getting Ahead of Themselves,” IHS CERA, 2008 (another layer); interviews with Paul Maycock and Anton Milner.

  26 Interview with Paul Maycock.

  Chapter 30: Mystery of Wind

  1 Raymond Chandler, “Red Wind,” in Trouble Is My Business (New York: Vintage, 1988), p. 162.

  2 U.S. Department of Energy, 20% Wind Energy By 2030: Increasing Wind Energy’s Contribution to U.S. Electricity Supply (Springfield, VA: U.S. Department of Commerce National Technical Information Service, 2008); Global Wind Energy Council and Greenpeace International, “Global Wind Energy Outlook 2010,” October 2010.

  3 Edward J. Kealey, Harvesting the Air: Windmill Pioneers in Twelfth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), ch. 6.

  4 Lynn White Jr., Medieval Technology & Social Change (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 88–89; Carlo M. Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy 1000–1700 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), p. 144 (“distant announcement”).

  5 W.O.A., “The Storage of Wind Power,” Scientific American XLIX, no. 2 (1883), p. 17; Robert Righter, Wind Energy in America: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma, Norman Press, 1996), pp. 45–47, 52 (“more than offset”).

  6 Righter, Wind Energy in America, p. 94 (“Cheapest Power”).

  7 Palmer Putnam, Putnam’s Power from the Wind, ed. Gerald Koeppl (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1982), p. 3 (“surprisingly high”).

  8 New York Times, August 31, 1941.

  9 Righter, Wind Energy in America, p. 136 (“precursor”).

  10 Righter, Wind Energy in America, p. 174 (“We thought”).

  11 John Berger, Charging Ahead: The Business of Renewable Energy and What It Means for America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 157 (“suspend you”); interview with Chris Hunt; Righter, Wind Energy in America, p. 171 (“eyesore”).

  12 Interview with James Dehlsen.

  13 Interview with James Dehlsen; Ole Sonnichsen, The Winner: The Dramatic Story of Vestas (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, 2009).

  14 Henry Nielsen, Keld Nielsen, Flemming Petersen, and Hans Siggaard Jensen, “Risø National Laboratory: Forty Years of Research in a Changing Society,” Risø National Laboratory, 1998, pp. 3, 19 (“peaceful use”); Ole Sonnichsen, The Winner, p. 18.

  15 Interview with James Dehlsen; Peter Asmus, Reaping the Wind: How Mechanical Wizards, Visionaries, and Profiteers Helped Shape Our Energy Future (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2001), pp. 42–43, 119; Righter, Wind Energy in America, p. 181 (90 percent).

  16 Berger, Charging Ahead, p. 155; Righter, Wind Energy in America, pp. 230–31.

  17 Forbes, July 18, 1983; Righter, Wind Energy in America, p. 209; Asmus, Reaping the Wind, p. 127 (“tax farms”).

  18 Interview with James Dehlsen; Washington Post, November 17, 1991.

  19 Interview with Robert Kelly.

  20 Interview with Victor Abate.

  21 World Wind Energy Association, World Wind Energy Report 2009 (Bonn: World Wind Energy Association Head Office, 2010).

  22 Liu Zhenya, speech, Washington, D.C., April 24, 2009.

  23 Interview (“precious resource”).

  24 IHS Emerging Energy Research, “Global Wind Turbine Markets and Strategies: 2010–2025,” p. 1.13.

  25 Interview with Tulsi Tanit (“beauty of wind”); Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2008 (“under pressure”).

  26 IHS Emerging
Energy Research, “Global Wind Plant Ownership Rankings 2009,” June 2010, p. 5.

  27 Interview with Lew Hay III.

  28 Lawrence Makovich, Patricia DiOrio, and Douglas Giuffre, “Renewable Portfolio Standards: Getting Ahead of Themselves,” IHS CERA, February 2008 (6 percent).

  29 “PG&E Corp. Q2 Earnings Call,” transcript, August 6, 2008 (“gets hot”); Liu Zhenya, speech, Washington, D.C., April 24, 2009.

  30 Interview (“awfully long way”).

  31 Interview with James Dehlsen; Jon Wellinghoff interview, GreenMonk, April 15, 2010, at http://www.ferc.gov/media/videos/wellinghoff/2010/04-15-10-wellinghoff-transcript-part-2.pdf.

  32 Inter view.

  33 IHS CERA, “Renewable Portfolio Standards: Getting Ahead of Themselves,” 2008; IHS CERA, “Comparing the Full Cost of Wind Generation to Other Options in Texas,” 2008.

  34 BBC News, September 23, 2010.

  35 Interview (“windiest places”).

  36 Interview.

  37 Boston Globe, April 28, 2010.

  Chapter 31: The Fifth Fuel—Efficiency

  1 National Academy of Sciences, Real Prospects for Energy Efficiency in the United States (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2010), p. 4; ExxonMobil, Outlook for Energy: A View to 2030, December 2010.

  2 World Economic Forum and IHS CERA, Energy Vision Update 2010: Towards a More Energy Efficient World, 2010, p. 12; Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on Energy,” June 29, 2009.

  3 Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (New York: Penguin Press, 2007), p. 492.

  4 Scott Murtishaw and Lee Schipper, “Disaggregated Analysis of U.S. Energy Consumption in the 1990s: Evidence of the Effects of the Internet and Rapid Economic Growth,” Energy Policy 29, no. 15 (2001) pp. 1335–56.