I was motivated to write this book because I have read many books, articles and news stories that suggest that we are running out of cheap energy and the world will soon be plunged into a never-ending cycle of wars designed to secure the few remaining energy resources. The second perception about energy is that the current energy sources are destroying the environment and we have to find safer, cleaner energy sources that will allow us a better, simpler lifestyle. This is the story of energy and what I found.

Energy fuels economies and lifestyles, and if we don’t have enough, then the future could be bleak. So, is the world running out of energy, and do we have to fight wars to secure enough cheap energy supplies to maintain our current lifestyle or should we be lowering our standard of living so that the world has enough energy supplies? What are the alternatives? What is the future of energy? I will show in this book that we have plenty of energy supplies; we do not have to fight wars to maintain our lifestyle. There are some misguided politicians who think otherwise, and I hope this book will demonstrate to them the errors of their thinking.

The second and related question is: should we be developing cleaner forms of energy so that our energy sources are not destroying the environment? In seeking to answer this question, I came to a surprising conclusion: all forms of energy have an impact on the environment. That is because energy is part of the environment. If you manipulate energy sources, you will have an impact on the environment. The more successful an energy source is, the more impact it has on the environment. I formulated that idea into an important principle in Chapter 1 called The Towler Principle. We do have the ability to mitigate and minimize the environmental impacts, to lessen their impacts, and that should be our goal.

In examining these questions, I have tried to tell the story in simple and easily understood terms. In Chapter 2, I introduce the units used for energy, of which there are many. But they can be converted from one unit to another. In Chapter 3, I introduce the laws of thermodynamics, which are fundamental to understanding energy processes. These are not difficult principles to understand, but you cannot hope to understand energy if you do not have a rudimentary knowledge of these laws.

In each chapter on specific energy sources, I not only describe how the source is used to generate energy, but also show a lot of graphs and statistics to prove and illustrate my points. If this becomes too much information to absorb at once, the reader can skip to the end of the chapter where a summary of the conclusions will be found. Chapter 16 ties all these conclusions together and answers the questions raised in the book. It reaches optimistic conclusions. We have plenty of energy: we don’t have to fight wars; we don’t have to destroy the environment. The future is bright because we have enough energy, and we know how to access it and use it.