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

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

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 Yergin Daniel 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 Organization This 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 Oil It 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 Supply There'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 Age The 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 Carbon Is 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 Energies Yes, 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 Future How 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. CONCLUSION You 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 Prize was one of my favorite books of all time. Filled with history, geopolitical intrigue and amazing stories. This follow up book was extremely interesting as well but, given that it tackles many different topics, it doesn't go into as much depth in each and provides a bit less historical background. It's a bit more of a lesson on different energy sources. Having said that, the knowledge gained from the book is indispensable for someone interested in current affairs. The book provides you with the enough knowledge on the different energy sources available to man so that you can better understand what is going on in the world today and it debunks some of the myths floating around.

Recommend this book to everyone, especially to those who don't have any interest to energy/electricity to date. Daniel Yergin's way of passing on his knowledge is smooth and fluent. You might feel you could overview every up to date situations and problems relating energy and electricity while you are enjoying some kind of attraction at the Disney land. He examins almost of all the current human activity not only oil and natural gas but also electricity, nuclear power generation, energy saving, renewable energy, electric car, and even global warming with environmental problem. In his former work, "The Prize," Daniel Yergin presented us our most concerns at that time by depicting various persons who figured in creating the oil business and seeking the hegemony of fossil fuels. The epic questing for oil was equal with the history of America itself. He predicted the fossil fuels would be remained as an important option for the near future energy while foreseeing arrival of nuclear renaissance and suggesting our efficient usage of fuels as other alternatives. What made him to write the book was the Chernobyl and the Gulf War. The Fukushima accident and the Arab's spring movement turned him to take the pen again. This time he considers up to the present issue of energy and electricity from a different angle, rather from an bird eye like standpoint. He verifies every steps of success and failure of energy choice. Every characters and historical events in this book vividly prove the creativity of mankind and intensity in their try and error process. I learned for the first time of George Mitchell who continued his efforts with the belief that gas could be certainly extracted from shale rock. Henry Ford's episode was also an interesting story. According to Daniel Yergin Ford was pushed his back to invent the internal combustion engine by Thomas Edison who himself had been sticked to the electric car. The description of some gasoline stations giving away whole chickens as premiums to lure in customers during the Great Depression made me smile. I remember Japanese gasoline stations unfolded severe competition of sales volume across Japan in the eighties. They tried to attract drivers with a pack of dozen eggs or boxed tissue papers as give aways. Nowadays not only developed nations but also developing nations together with Russia equally eager to capture security and sustainability of the energy for their prosperity and growth. A quest never ends as long as the human spirit and the desire for the technological advancement never halts. Policies, subsidies, regulations and politics have great influence on our quest. One thing unchanged is the fact the innovation has been affected greatly by the price of fossil fuels. Energy policies have always shown the recurrent characteristic of being "pendulumatic, " moving in one direction and then another, and the back again. Daniel Yergin concludes the key of future energy revolution lies in the creativity and the spirit of quest by mankind. And we are needed to have as much as possible options for the wealthy future. There are two movements attract attention in Japan, which Daniel Yergin doesn't mention about in the book. A professor of the Keioh University starts a research to utilize the cloud computer technology for a smart grid as Community Energy Management System(CEMS) and House Energy Management System(HEMS). The research association of hydrogen supply/utilization technology sets a milestone in the year of 2015 as a new phase for the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. Gasoline stations considering utilizing the part of their facilities being used as hydrogen filling stations while Japanese auto mobil makers launches the commercial hydrogen driven fuel cell vehicles in that year. Policies, regulations and subsidies should be determined by much longer and wider points of view not by the price level of currently available energy.

Dr, Yergin has been writing important books on important subjects for over three decades. His (with co-author Joseph A. Stanislaw) THE COMMANDING HEIGHTS: THE BATTLE BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND THE MARKETPLACE THAT IS REMAKING THE MODERN WORLD is a magisterial on-the-spot portrayal of how state planning and public ownership of major industries was prevalent in portions of Europe and the developing world during much of the post-WW II period. He documents, in nearly a dozen countries, why this was working less and less well. Focusing on President Reagan, Prime Minister Thatcher, Hayek, Keith Joseph, and a few other key figures, Yergin illustrates how deregulation and privatization became the major economic direction of the post-Cold War period. The PBS documentary of his book vividly portrays these major systemic shifts and indicates that the world ahead for the global economy will encounter perilous straits. Yergin, individually and thrugh the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, which he founded, has, for me, been the most authoritative voice on energy past, present, and future. In 1980 I read ENERGY FUTURE: THE REPORT OF THE ENERGY PROJECT AT THE HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL for which Dr. Yergin was the co-editor. I found it highly informative, though some of its short-term projections on oil production and price did not hold up well during the volatile 1980s. His 1991 Pulitzer Prize winning THE PRIZE: THE EPIC QUEST FOR OIL, MONEY, AND POWER is a magnificent telling of the story of petroleum from the buccaneer days to oil discoveries around the world, and to the early shenanigans in Russia and the Middle East. This pattern of contracts, exploration, exploitation, and then nationalization continues in the Middle East and elsewhere. The creation of OPEC marked a further stage in the government vs. major petroluem companies' 'game' that leads to regime changes and, on occasion, war. THE QUEST: ENERGY, SECURITY, AND THE REMAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD starts with a detailed update of the oil world since THE PRIZE and then describes the recent massive expansion of shale natural gas, which greatly expands the availability of hydrocarbon energy over the coming generations. Then Dr. Yergin undertakes the gargantuan task of exploring: 1) Will enough energy be available to meet the needs of a growing world and at what cost and with what new technologies? 2) How can the security of the energy systems on which the world depends be protected? 3) What will be the impact of environmental concerns, including climate change, on the future of energy and how will energy development affact the environment? Yergin has done a masterful job in presenting a detailed historical perspective on these diverse issues. Much of the expanded global demand will come from China and other non-post-industrial countries. [Chinese bought 2 million vehicles in 2000 and, within a few years, will be purchasing 30 million vehicles annually.] Yergin predicts that future oil production will plateau around midcentury,and then gradually decline. He examines in details the prospects for renewable energy sources, including wind,solar, biofuels, and hydro and concludes that renewables will not be a dominant energy source by 2030. After 2030 he speculates that greater renewable energy could come through innovation, technological advances, and massive investment. Yergin estimates that an investment of $14 trillion to expand new electric capacity from 2012 to 2030 will be required. During this period coal, oil, and especially natural gas will provide the preponderance of energy. He realizes that the Black Swan of the unexpected affects any attempt to predict energy needs and availability. He documents the volatility of energy prices over the past thirty years. The technology to utilize natural gas, especially with shale fracking, has greatly expanded this energy source since the 1991 publication of THE PRIZE. The Fukushima nuclear disaster has had a Three Mile Island/Chernobyl-level impact on the possibility of additional nuclear plants in much of the post-industrial world, although China is continuing at flank speed with nuclear construction. Regarding security, he underscores the political volatility present in many of the major oil-producing countries and notes that 40 percent of world oil exports pass through the Persian Gulf Strait of Hormuz, adjacent to Iran. Another major unknown is what, if anything might be done to address the issue of 'climate change.' He provides a valuable account of how the issue of 'climate change' has waxed and waned over past generations. He clearly believes that 'climate change' will have a significant impact on our world in the coming generations. He does not seem optimistic that the developed and the developing world can reach agreement on effective measures to mitigate the likely impacts of 'climate change.'

Fair, factual, and well written. Excellent introduction to the world of energy for any adult, but even more valuable to any budding scientist in engineering, chemistry, biology--or even to the liberal arts majors in political science who only use calculators to compute tips at Starbucks. The geopolitics of the energy industry are huge. Few other books come close to walking one through the various energy alternatives in a readable and informative way while touching on both the positives and the negatives of the various alternatives. While Mr. Yergin hints at the fact that most of the environmental support of green alternatives is based far more on hype and manipulation of politicians and the media than on the economics and the science, I feel that more information on the economics of the alternatives would be helpful to put the real alternatives in perspective. Governments selecting winners and losers based on politics really distorts the incentive system and wastes time and fortunes in the process. But the author did conclude that most of the green alternatives aren't ready for prime time. But the invaluable contribution of this book is in highlighting many of the challenges with the energy alternatives in such a way that it could ignite the entrepreneural energies of young scientists who may have the energies to come up with solutions. Solving a huge problem in one area of energy which really doesn't have the potential to supply energy on a major scale is nice. But solving obstacles to major advances in energy production (environmental breakthroughs, capacity, energy storage, transmission & distribution) could be game changers! Such research could end up powering nations and new industries. The individual or teams that can solve the problems around purifying or reusing return fracking fluids containing high levels of salts will and should end up fabulously wealthy because this will provide an alternative to high pressure injection wells that currently are the only realistic option for disposal. And deep high pressure injections wells were first identified as sources of localized tremors in some geologically active areas going back to the 1960s when they were being used throughout the country to dispose of some hazardous wastes.

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.

This book of 717 pages is encompassing covering all important aspects of the energy industry. I have a tendency to like books that give you the big picture instead of going laboriously through the details but this book, by covering everything, in the end, delivers the big picture. Yergin does a fantastic job covering each area of the energy market from oil, through natural gas, nuclear, coal, renewables and efficiency, as well as the industries that consume these sources, like utility companies, transportation, residential and commercial buildings. From the geopolitical analysis and the history of each of these areas, we have a sense of the problems and possible solutions that are available for us, taking into account, politics and economics. The issue of emissions of greenhouse gases is thoroughly covered - like what Yergin did for the energy resources - from the early days of the discoveries by scientists of the chemical mechanisms by which carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas through the policies and conflicts each region has in dealing with it. By reading The Quest, you get a sense of the problems and complexity that the sheer scale of the energy market can pose. This, 65 trillion dollars market, and bound to double by 2030, is so vast that one need to think how would each new technology would affect the existing immense infrastructure and what new infrastructure is needed, or how it will affect the existing one, while implementing any innovation. The understanding that fossil fuels cannot go away soon, no matter what we do, is revealing. This is an amazing book. Having said all that, I would have liked to see in the book something like a master table that one could reference to while reading with key data such as energy consumption, and emissions by region or country, or percentages of energy consumption by industry. For instance, it took me some time to understand what a million barrels of oil per day means in terms of global production or consumption. Very important book.

Cómo todo lo de Yerguin maravilloso. Lectura obligada para entender el mundo de la energía.

I really enjoyed this book. It is not as dramatic and thriller-like as The Prize, but it is an excellent big picture of the energy industry in the last twenty-two years. I highly recommend to read The Prize first and then read this book. One of the many things I liked is the fact that fossil fuels are not the only options available, i.e. there are alternatives to fossil fuels and they are coming, not as quickly as we would like but they will evolve and become the norm in the future. That is one of the many conclusions that can be drawn from this wonderful book. The fact that a good part of the book is dedicated to these technologies is the best example of the aforementioned. The consequences are starting to be evident. Look in the World Bank web site [...] at the electricity consumption of the USA in the last three years versus the GDP. Although GDP has grown the electricity consumption has not. This is mainly due to energy efficiency, one of the topics mentioned in the book. Last year in the USA the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) set the standards for increasing the fuel efficiency of cars and light-duty trucks to 54.5mpg by Model Year 2025, again energy efficiency. All in all we can get a pretty good picture of the energy industry now and the possible trends in the future. This book does not tell you what the next main sources of energy will be, as the author is not an oracle, he left the door open to many possibilities and I agree with that as throughout history the business of predicting what the next "big thing" will be has been pretty awful. I particularly think there will be a mix of energy sources depending of the resources available in each region and electricity will significantly reduce the use fossil fuels for transport and mobility as it did many years ago with the lighting. There may be technologies that we do not even know now and that have not even been invented. I totally agree with what Mr. Ahmed Zaki Yamani said: "the Stone Age came to and end not for lack of stones, and the oil age will end, but no for a lack of oil." And as Mr. Bjorn Lomborg said in his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist": "We stopped using stones because bronze and iron were superior materials, and likewise we will stop using oil, when other energy technologies provide superior benefits." Just to finalise this point, the main use of oil when the first well gushed in Titusville in 1859, was for lighting purposes. I am 100% sure that few people think nowadays of using kerosene for lighting, unless they are camping in the wild and even so I have got my doubts. The oil industry has done a magnificent job in innovating and creating technologies to make the upstream and downstream oil/gas possible in places that thirty years ago were impossible, and that is also mentioned in this book. Likewise all the usual geopolitics involved in the energy industry as well as the rise of China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies that are reshaping the demand for energy. Climate change is also mentioned in a way easy to understand and mainly in a way that shows how it affects us all. I was well impressed by how the author linked the scientific breakthroughs and inventions to the energy industry, as they were the foundations of many international companies such as General Electric, Siemens, Westinghouse, First Solar, Ford, Suntech, Vestas, etc. From Thomas Edison to General Electric and Siemens, from Albert Einstein to SolarTech/Q-Cells/Suntech and so on. All in all a great book to read if you are seriously interested in the energy industry. I said seriously, because there are a lot of pages to be read... well, if you read The Prize you will read The Quest without any problem.

Having read The Prize - a critical and informative history of the development of the oil industry - I became aware of The Quest a few years ago and am sorry I delayed reading it. Daniel Yergin effectively analyzes the evolution of energy needs, consumption needs and lifestyle choices that are confronting all of us as citizens of the world and the overarching impact of global economies and geo-political issues. The Quest presents an informed and dispassionate view that will enable readers to better understand and engage in the inevitable discussions that will ensue around the dinner table or in the boardroom.

Alles gut

A must read if you want to understand how energy is the key driver behind international relations and world economy. The manner in which the author has connected sporadic incidents across the globe and created the whole canvas is simply amazing.