Crossing the Energy Divide: Moving from Fossil Fuel Dependence to a Clean-Energy Future

Introduction: The Chasm to Be Crossed

This book makes two paradigm-challenging claims.

First, physical energy plays a far more fundamental role in economic productivity and growth than most of the economists advising business and government have ever acknowledged. The implications for everyone who breathes, especially during the coming period of hoped-for recovery and transition to the clean-energy economy of the future, are enormous. Energy services aren’t just a large part of the economy; they’re a major part of what drives the economy. And if that is so, both the economic recovery and the energy transition will take far longer than the Obama administration has counted on—unless investment is targeted to the very specific technologies and ...