Future of Energy Reading List

TL;DR: The future of energy is solar+batteries+synthetics.

As of Oct 2023, the global solar deployment rate is approximately one megawatt per minute.

Over the last 2-5-10 years this has become increasingly inescapable. As of October 2023, this Nature Communications article reports some recent modeling showing most of the transition will occur by 2027.

Here follows a reading list organized by topic for people who are curious to learn more. If you have recommendations not on this list or suggestions for blog topics, let me know.

My writing

Solar Will Keep Getting Cheaper, Radical Energy Abundance, and Applications (Oct 2023)

Long Live The Sun (good all round summary Apr 2021)
How To Produce Green Hydrogen For $1/kg (Aug 2023)
You Should Be Working On Hardware (Aug 2023)
We Should Not Let The Earth Overheat (June 2023)
We Can Have Ecological And Energy Abundance (Feb 2024)

Energy, prosperity, and growth: earliest blog on solar vs coal (Oct 2018) and update (May 2020)
The Unstoppable Battery Onslaught (May 2021) and Grid Storage: Batteries Will Win (July 2023)
Build More Solar Panels (July 2022)
River-scale desalination (Nov 2022)
A Vision For Water Abundance (Jan 2024)
Synthetic fuel (Feb 2022) and more focused updates on Terraform Industries
How To Apply Skepticism To New Energy Tech (Apr 2023)
Solar Will Crush Nuclear (Jun 2019)
Space-based Solar Power is not a good idea (Aug 2019) and part two (Sep 2019)

Ramez Naam

Mez and I agree on most of this stuff, but he’s been writing about it for much longer! We respectfully disagree (as of Oct 2023) on the need for massive grid build out.

TED talk (Oct 2022)
Insanely Far Thinking Post on Solar and Synthetic Fuel (Jun 2011!!!)
Solar Plunging Below Fossil Fuels (Oct 2014)
How Far Can Solar Go (Jan 2016)
The Third Phase of Clean Energy Will Be the Most Disruptive Yet (Apr 2019)
Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap (May 2020)

Austin Vernon

Solar PV’s Path to Dominance (July 2021)
Electrify Everything Is Slow (Sep 2021)
Simple Solutions Power Solar’s Advance (Apr 2022)

Books/articles

Electrify Everything is a good summary of demand-side approaches to carbon reduction.
Alex Honnold’s reading list.
My book reviews, including a range of books of varying quality on energy.

5 thoughts on “Future of Energy Reading List”

  1. Color me skeptical. Greenland? Solar? Don’t make me laugh. How are you supposed to run your heat pump in Nuuk in December with zero sun? How much does solar power cost to heat your house every night throughout the summer? At least with wind, there is some there year ’round.

    Best guess is they ignore storage, which is by far the most expensive part of the system. Please rerun the numbers for Nuuk for 6 months of storage. If you can do that, overnight during the summer is easy!

    https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/30460~29787/Comparison-of-the-Average-Weather-in-Nanortalik-and-Nuuk

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      1. I’m skeptical of their model. As the saying goes “all models are wrong, some are useful”, I wonder if the useful part of it is political and/or a sales job. If you look at the 2030 model, the only countries that are light blue (onshore wind) and not solar (pink) are Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Norway stands out to me because I know the vast majority (90%!) of its power is produced by hydro, which isn’t even a color on the map! 

        Hydro is great because it is cheap and dispatchable, it can be used as base load and/or peak power, and even be used for storage (pumped hydro). Even if solar is cheaper per MWh, it is not dispatchable, cannot be used as base load, is maybe pseudo peak (see your CA Duck Curve), and desperately needs storage to be useful for use outside of the middle of the solar day and at night.

        BTW, Nuuk has hydropower to power their hypothetical heat pumps!

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