5 Books to Understand Energy

recommended by Ramona Liberoff

Hi! I’m a co-founder of Gist Books. I’ve spent many years working in and around sustainability and believe it’s time for all of us to understand systems like food and energy. We’re reinventing nonfiction by creating beautiful, modular and customisable little hardback books for those with curiosity who don’t necessarily wade through a lot of nonfiction. Our initial six topics include solar energy and nuclear energy, and here are some great background books that help explain energy very well.

  • 1

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    Atomic Dreams: The New Nuclear Evangelists and the Fight for the Future of Energy
    by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow

    This is a great overview, written in accessible language, with a journalist's eye and a depth of understanding of the long now of nuclear energy. It's also refreshingly global and full of excellent examples of the debates that still challenge the development of this low carbon energy around the world.

  • 2

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    Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero is Not Enough
    by Holly Jean Buck

    A very clear-eyed overview of the challenges involved in ending fossil fuel dependency around the world, and a very useful set of knowledge to understand the "other side of the argument" around renewables. The lenses in part II are especially helpful to decode a lot of debates in this area.

  • 3

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    Short Circuiting Policy (Studies in Postwar American Political Development)
    by Leah Cardamore Stokes

    This is an example of a book by an academic with deep expertise on policy, who has the spirit of an investigative journalist and the narrative gift of your favourite relative. Leah's excellent podcast A Matter of Degrees (co-hosted with Dr Katharine Wilkinson) is a refreshing take on what we can all do to understand the often hidden dialogues on energy that affect us all in our energy prices and our shared environment.

  • 4

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    Going Nuclear: How Atomic Energy Will Save the World
    by Tim Gregory

    A bang up to date, passionate book urging us to overcome outdated narratives on nuclear and see this clean fuel as part of a viable future. The perspective is primarily British but globally applicable.

  • 5

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    Solar Power Finance Without The Jargon (second Edition)
    by Jenny Chase

    OK, it's expensive and a little bit academic, but given how often the cost of renewable energy systems is used as an argument against them, it's worth understanding more about how this is put together. Jenny Chase from Bloomberg New Energy Finance is very well placed to help us understand this, and her crisp writing helps us all.

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