The Grand Energy Transition: The Rise of Energy Gases, Sustainable Life and Growth, and the Next Great Economic Expansion
Today, humanity is in an energy and climate crisis of our own making. While we are all now aware of how American banks and financial institutions overleveraged our financial system, few people are aware that since the 1970s, we have also been leveraging our economic growth by consuming energy at less than the full-cycle cost. We have altered and placed in grave danger our economy, environment, and the security of our societies by the energy we use. The magnitude of the crisis—even the crisis itself—has been hidden from our view. It will be the awareness of this economic, environmental, and societal crisis that will become the driving force of civilization's next evolutionary step, the one taking us to sustainable life and growth on Earth.This book describes our ongoing Grand Energy Transition—the GET: a one-time, evolutionary step for humankind. The GET is the transition between the unsustainable solid energy sources of our past and the virtually limitless, clean sustainable energy sources of our future.The Grand Energy Transitiontells how the GET is creating a clear and irrevocable energy path forward, and how the GET itself reveals the most likely energy winners and losers. Energy industry insider Robert Hefner makes the case that America is blessed with abundant, affordable supplies of natural gas that can be scaled up in the near term to become the bridge fuel to our energy sustainable future and that these supplies—supplemented by Alaskan natural gas and the world's liquefied natural gas—are adequate to fuel at least half of our vehicle fleet for decades to come, and to replace our oldest, inefficient coal-fired electric power generation, as well as all new electric power needs not met by wind, solar, and nuclear.This timely book is not intended to answer the millions of good questions about energy use and our energy future that need answering, nor is it a text about the details of energy production and consumption. Rather, it introduces a new way to look at the evolution of energy within civilization and, with this understanding, forecast the best possible comprehensive solution to today's formidable energy problems and our path forward to a new era.