Book Review: "Bridging the Energy Gap"

        Bridging the Energy Gap by Andrew Langley is a great educational book that discusses briefly about the history of energy, and also informs the reader about the lack of resources that provides us energy, and the pollution they cause. Fossil fuel oil, gas, and coal are the three main sources that provides electricity that powers our world. Today, we are currently in a situation where we are consuming more electricity than we can produce. This inverse rate is known as the energy gap. 

       Langley doesn't only present us a problem, but he also includes many various ways we can solve these problems. The solutions mainly fall under the umbrella of transitioning to renewable energy. Nuclear, wind, water, sunlight, and bio-fuel energy are all great solutions that Langley discuses further into detail in the book.

       What gives this book its uniqueness and value as compared to other books about the same topic, is that it's interactive and refers to websites to further your understanding in renewable energy. For example, when Langley talks about hydroelectricity, he uses the "Three Gorges Dam" located in China as an example. He then submits a link that is an online article about the dam.

       Once again, this is a great educational book about renewable energy and as to why we should switch to it. There is no biased opinions, nor do you even get the sense that the author is biased. It is just pure hard facts that is also interactive and uses many references. I give this book a two thumbs up and highly recommend it. If you are interested in reading the book, then you can order it off amazon.

What Government can Do

         The government has already recognized the importance of becoming renewable. But we as the people and as a whole can influence the government to dedicate more funds into renewable energy. Renewable energy is quite costly to initiate. The material and cost per material is very expensive. For example, when building a solar panel home system, the typical 5kW residential solar installation cost is $14,000. Commercial-scale turbines installed today are 2 MW in size and cost roughly $3-$4 million installed. We can reduce this cost by having government dedicate a certain tax percentage towards renewable energy, and thus it will make these costs decrease. This may seem like a major sacrifice and cut into the United States budget, but it will pay off in the long run like a season ski pass.
        The cut in taxes towards renewable energy could not only reduce the cost for installing renewable energy, but it can also effectively create ads and stress the importance of making the change for renewable energy.
       Goldman Sachs' Stuart Bernstein, global head of clean technology and renewables group, expresses why we need to switch to renewable energy in this following video:

This video isn't the only way of showing the government our need to transition to renewable energy, but you can purchase our T-Shirt, Sticker, and become part of our Facebook group in showing that the people of the United States are in this together.