The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World Paperback – Illustrated, September 26, 2012

We all live fast paced and complex lives. If you are a reader then the key choice you must master is what to read. There is simply too much out there, and you cannot absorb it all. Every now and then a book comes along which is the equivalent of a precious diamond. It is so full of information, presented in such an interesting way that you can't bring yourself to put it down. You couple this characteristic with an author who is a major thinker and what you have when you put it all together is a 1 in a 100 type book. This is a book that changes everything we know about energy.This is Daniel YerginDaniel Yergin is such an author, and this is such a book. It has now been two decades since the he turned the world upside down with his Pulitzer Prize winning "The Prize - The Epic Quest for Oil". To have read it is to understand the world. Its monumental impact affected our economy and Wall Street. In the last few years it became apparent that The Prize needed a badly needed update, not just a chapter added. Instead of completely revamping The Prize, Yergin did one better, he chose to write on the world of energy in general and then incorporate revisions from his previous writings which were necessary. This brings us to "The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World".We live in world that currently creates $65 trillion per year in gross production of goods and services. Our country does close to $15 trillion of this production, while Europe as a whole does slightly more. Within 20 years the world is expected to produce $130 trillion, that's a doubling in just 2 decades. Now here's the problem as laid out in the book. Yergin clearly spells out that in the developed world today we use about 14 barrels of oil per person per year. In the developing countries we use about 3 barrels per person per year. What are we going to do when gross world production goes from $65 trillion to $130 trillion; energy needs must expand along with economic production?Oil, coal, and natural gas currently provide 80% of the world's energy needs. It is the thesis of the book that these three sources of energy combined, cannot suffice to answer our energy needs. Yes there is more of each of these sources than previously thought available. As an example, today we produce 5 times the amount of oil than we did in 1957, a remarkable increase, but what is coming down the pike is a need to expand energy to extraordinary levels.The Book's OrganizationThis is a relatively long book composed of 711 pages of narrative without a boring sentence in the entire book. It reads fast in spite of its length. There are 16 pages of bibliography and this bibliography is a useful one if you want to explore this topic further. You will then find 34 pages of footnotes, and I like the footnotes being in the back of the book in this case, as opposed to the end of the chapters as you see in other books. Yergin has given us six parts to ponder in this story of how we will solve our energy problems.PART I - The New World of OilIt is in this chapter that the author covers the return of Russia as an energy power. The world is a changing place and Russia has become an energy powerhouse with its abundant oil and gas resources. Yergin also covers the war in Iraq and the rise of China in this part. China's needs will eclipse our own as their economy continues to rapidly expand. The beauty of a book like this is that you are not only learning about the energy world, but the world in general. It is a fascinating journey as we find out about the emerging superpowers and whether or not America can continue to hold onto economic dominance in a rapidly changing world.PART II - Securing the SupplyThere's more than one reason why America spends close to $800 billion on defense spending. You have to keep the sea lanes safe for oil and energy transport. Without world trade, America would rapidly sink into a depression since international trade makes up 25% of our Gross Domestic product. In this section the author gives you a thorough survey of what it means to run out of energy including oil and natural gas.PART III - The ELECTRIC AgeThe book makes clear that we may be living in the post industrial age, or the information society, but in terms of energy we are still living in the OBSOLETE Fossil Age, and it has to change. The Electric age is coming to an end, and in this section Yergin tells us the pros and cons of what is coming. You are not getting theories from talking heads. This is the preeminent expert on oil and energy in the world today. Corporations and governments pay a fortune to consult with the author with regard to what he thinks is coming next.PART IV - Climate and CarbonIs there glacial change? Is the earth getting warmer? What is the effect of climate change on man's need for more energy? Where will it come from and can we afford it? Is the internal combustion engine now more than a century old reaching the end of its operational efficiency? Must we go another way? The average SUV weighs 5000 pounds and is being driven around town half the time by soccer moms driving alone? How much longer can we keep the whole process going, and is it changing right before our eyes?PART V - New EnergiesYes, there are new sources of energy coming. We are going to see wind turbines everywhere, but there is also a 5th source of energy coming. Perhaps it is already here and that is EFFICIENCY. We must get more out of the energy we already have. When Exxon moves oil crude from a pipeline to tanker there is less than one teaspoon of oil that is lost in the process. We must become more efficient as a society and as a world, and we must close the conservation gap, which we haven't even begun to tackle yet.PART VI - Road to the FutureHow interesting that in the last part of this book the author chooses to deal with what he calls carbohydrate man, and the great electric car experiment. Would you believe that only about 20% of the energy that comes out of the internal combustion engine is efficiently used in the running of a car. The rest comes out of the muffler into the air as heat and lost energy. With electric cars, the efficiency approaches 85%? Batteries are still too heavy however, and they do not last as long as they should. We haven't even discussed how costly they are to replace. Nevertheless, the electric car is in our future, and this book tells you the whole story.CONCLUSIONYou are going to love this book, all 700 plus pages of it. Nobody tells a more exciting story than Daniel Yergin. To win a Pulitzer Prize you must grip the reader's attention and never let go from beginning to end, and that is precisely what we have here. It is a non-fiction book that reads like a spy thriller and a reader can't expect more from a book, especially one on the topic of energy.I urge you to read anything this man writes. It is rare that Yergin publishes and everything he says has power and relevance attached to it. My only reading wish is to find more books in the same class as "The Quest". Such books are rare unfortunately, and when you find them, we have to let our friends and other readers know. I thank you for reading this review.Richard C. Stoyeck

The Quest is a must read to understand the modern day energy complex. The breadth of topics is remarkable and after reading it one comes out with a strong appreciation of the politics, history and economics of energy. The book is quite long and is split into 6 parts each focusing on a different topic but the book comes together extremely well and one feels like they have had a comprehensive overview by the end.The author starts with the fall of the soviet union and how, among other things, low oil prices was a cause of economic strain given Russia's dependence on oil exports for foreign currency. The author describes the geology and political landscape of eastern Russia and the oil resources of the various former soviet states. The author discusses things like the petro state and discusses how Venezuela came to where it is today. The author discusses the Iraq war and the oil politics of the 90s and how the Asian crisis catalyzed consolidation in the global petro space as oil price collapse combined with growing engineering complexity required larger petro companies. The author then discusses how a decade later China growth changed the trajectory of demand substantially while supply remained relatively inelastic. In reading the first section one gets a sense of how the supply and demand side of oil have formed through time.The author moves on then to the challenges of dealing with inelastic supply with growing demand. The scramble for oil resources was a real concern as resources seemed to be depleting while new oil supplies were becoming harder and harder to come by. The author discusses the growth of gas states like Qatar which was relatively unknown and came to be an extremely important energy player as it developed its gas field and became a huge LNG exporter. The author discusses how natural gas has become a major ingredient in power generation due to the cheap cost of turbine construction as well as relatively low emission content.The author then discusses electricity and its history. He details things like the battle between Edisons DC and Tesla's AC adopted by Westinghouse. The history is really interesting and the author then discusses the growth of electricity demand and how the Nuclear reactor became a strong candidate for electricity supply. The author goes through the uranium purification process and how different purities of uranium isotopes lead to different chain reactions.The author also discusses climate change and the carbon imprint of mankind. He discusses the history of the scientific investigation of the carbon cycle and is always careful to properly give the reader the background on how the fields evolved. The author then discusses last century and how the growing appreciation of the potential for climate change and how greenhouse gases could impact the ecosystem became a key political issue. The author discusses Rio and Kyoto for example and discusses different economic solutions considered for dealing with emissions. In particular cap and trade is discussed for SO2 and carbon taxes as well. The author gives the reader some economic theory and in particular Coase's insight that cap and trade is more economically efficient than taxation. The author discusses the challenges at the global level in which domestic politics prevent global solutions and apportioning blame is difficult given the legacy issues of carbon emissions being almost solely from developed markets.The author then gives the reader and overview of the renewable space. The author discusses wind and solar and how the photo electric effect that Einstein won the Nobel prize for is at the heart of the photovoltaic effect needed for solar panels. The engineering history of solar is given as well as an understanding of how uncompetitive it was compared to regularly generated electricity. The author then gets in to how energy efficiency is an incredibly important part of the puzzle and regulatory standards over time have substantially improved our energy efficiency in things like autos.The author then moves on to discussing the new age of electric vehicles. Which as the author highlights isn't so new and was an idea that goes back over 100 years. The author gives the background of the combustion engine and the growth of the US and European auto businesses. One learns of how the current auto landscape came to be and the new directions it is taking with companies like Tesla leading the charge in EV's. The author also notes the change in user demand from light trucks to the prius and now to EVs as gas and politics have evolved.The quest is a great read as one gets an overview of so much of the energy landscape and all of the demand factors and supply factors and competing interests. Through reading it one gets a sense of the directions we might take in the future, the complexity of all of the driving factors and the lack of singular solutions to the growing need of more electricity pitted against the concerns for the environment. Its very enjoyable to read and informative throughout, Highly recommended

Daniel Yergin has added another book to his list of highly informative and well-researched analyses of global economic issues. I worked many years in the oil industry (exploration) and consider myself pretty well informed on the international politics and economics of oil. However, I learned a good deal from reading this book, especially about those parts of the globe that I was not involved in with my work. My one caveat is that we are in the midst of very dynamic change in world energy (e.g., the US natural gas boom), so the interested reader will not be able to read "The Quest" and then think s/he can lean back and understand what is going on. However, s/he can move forward with a much firmer foundation of knowledge and history.