ELECTRIFY: AN OPTIMIST'S PLAYBOOK for OUR CLEAN ENERGY FUTURE (audiobook) by Saul Griffith

 



Published by Tantor Audio in November of 2021.
Read by David Marantz.
Duration: 7 hours, 13 minutes.
Unabridged.

Saul Griffith makes a convincing argument that the clean energy future to prevent excessive global warming (No carbon) only comes from making everything, and I mean everything, electric (with the exception of air travel) - electric cars, electric boats, electric trains, electric heat pumps to heat homes, electric stoves, electric ovens, electric water heaters, and electric clothes dryers. 

I mostly picked up this book as a reaction to the fact that so many people in my social media feed keep re-posting anti-electric car memes that they did not create. Someone is really pushing back hard against the concept. I saw this book and began to wonder if this concept were even possible.

According to Griffith, it is very possible and with almost no "and then we come up with magic technology" moments baked into his plan. Based on what is already being done in Australia and the United States, this could be 99.5% done with current technology. We just need to divest from Carbon infrastructure (oil, natural gas, coal) and re-route that spending to renewable electricity (hydroelectric, solar, wind) and carbon free energy like nuclear. 


People will argue that solar and especially wind have to be subsidized to keep up with fossil fuels, but Griffith correctly points out that fossil fuel companies receive billions of dollars of subsidies every year so it's kind of a moot point.

He imagines a world where every roof has solar power cells installed on them and can feed directly into the electrical grid. Every farm has windmills. Every parking lot is covered with a car port cover that is covered with solar power cells. The electric company becomes less of a supplier and more of a distributor from all of those homes. The company would manage the flow and would maintain a backup system (nuclear, hyrdo, or solar power brought in from other locations) to keep it all running. 

The biggest problem is financing all of this. For that, Griffith looks back to American history. After World War II, the U.S. government backed home loans to veterans (and later others) through government programs. This could be duplicated to homeowners, new builds and landlords to pay for solar panels and the changes to a home's electrical grid. Not only would the electricity have to be able to flow away from homes, but it would also have to be able to handle a lot more electricity. Electric cars and trucks take a lot of juice to recharge in a short time. 

I walked away convinced but can only rate this book 3 stars out of 5.

Why the low rating for a compelling argument?

1) I listened to the audio version of this book. Griffith includes a lot of charts and relies on them heavily to make his point. Rather than edit the audiobook text and provide summaries of the charts, Griffith has the narrator literally read the charts. I could have sat down and literally transcribed them onto a piece of paper. Do you know how completely boring it is to listen to all of that data when you are not literally transcribing it to a piece of paper?

2) I am going to go with a stereotype. Griffith is an engineer. I think he was taught to write by middle school English teacher who loved the TRIT writing plan and he never deviates from it (it is tried and true after all). This leads to an easy to follow format - but very boring. Griffith tries to liven it up with some dad joke humor here and there. The result - it reads like a government report presented by a likable guy. Too bad - he has an important message.

3) The audiobook reader is very clear and easy to understand. However, he sounds so detached that I thought he was a computer-generated voice (he sounds similar to a popular synthesized voice you find online).  With the processed writing format it just got tedious at times. 

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  ELECTRIFY: AN OPTIMIST'S PLAYBOOK for OUR CLEAN ENERGY FUTURE (audiobook) by Saul Griffith.

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