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The End of Energy Obesity: Breaking Today’s Energy Addiction for a Prosperous and Secure Tomorrow

by Peter Tertzakian

Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2009

Is it any wonder that our energy needs are so great? Nearly everything that defines our way of life requires energy-consuming devices, from cars, planes, trains, and air conditioning to lights and computers. And our global appetite for energy keeps growing as population and wealth obliges consumption on an unfathomable scale.

Over the years, we’ve made our devices more efficient, only to find, ironically, that it’s made us consume even more energy. We’ve periodically cut back our energy use only to revert back to bad habits. We’ve added more renewables only to find that fossil fuels still dominate. Now we are energy obese. How can the world reduce its energy appetite and change its diet of fuels for a prosperous and secure tomorrow?

In The End of Energy Obesity, energy expert and bestselling author Peter Tertzakian explores solutions to this question by analyzing the role of technology and circumstance on our energy use. Throughout the book, Tertzakian focuses on the most practical options that provide the highest leverage for resolving our energy problems and reveals how evolving habits, lifestyles, mind-sets, and innovations-that might seem improbable now-will help curb our insatiable energy appetite.

Divided into three comprehensive parts — The Making of Our Energy Appetite, Elusive Solutions, and Thinking Out of the Box — The End of Energy Obesity:

• Examines what Tertzakian calls the First Principle of Energy Consumption, the powerful 6,000-year-old connection between increases in wealth, standard of living, and energy use. Can this principle be broken?
• Explains why conventional strategies and policies for resolving our energy problems are lacking, and discusses how societies are vulnerable to three harmful effects of energy obesity. Should we be treating the symptoms or the cause?
• Probes into where the greatest leverage lies for mitigating society’s energy-related problems, and shows how surprisingly powerful technological trends will reshape our energy appetite and diet-sooner than you may think!

Filled with in-depth insights and practical advice, The End of Energy Obesity puts the world’s serious energy issues in perspective, exposes misconceptions, and introduces us to the new technologies that, in the next ten years, will reshape our lifestyles and, for the very first time, make it possible to decrease our overall energy consumption while increasing wealth and the standard of living. The future of energy is likely to surprise you.

Peter Tertzakian is Chief Energy Economist of ARC Financial Corporation and bestselling author of A Thousand Barrels a Second: The Coming Oil Break Point and the Challenges Facing an Energy Dependent World. Passionate about the history and direction of energy in society, Tertzakian blends three decades of experience in geophysics, economics, technology, and finance to analyze energy trends. Over the years, his prescient advice to corporate leaders, policymakers, and students has earned him many accolades for his work, including an asteroid in his name. Always questioning the consensus view, Tertzakian writes a weekly journal, is often quoted or seen in the media (including an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart), and is a sought-after speaker at events around the world.