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Electrify

An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future

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In Electrify, Saul Griffith lays out a detailed blueprint - optimistic but feasible - for fighting climate change while creating millions of new jobs and a healthier environment. Griffith's plan can be summed up simply: Electrify everything. He explains exactly what it would take to transform our infrastructure, update our grid, and adapt our households to make this possible. Billionaires may contemplate escaping our worn-out planet on a private rocket ship to Mars, but the rest of us, Griffith says, will stay and fight for the future.

Griffith, an engineer and inventor, calls for grid neutrality, ensuring that households, businesses, and utilities operate as equals; we will have to rewrite regulations that were created for a fossil-fueled world, mobilize industry as we did in World War II, and offer low-interest "climate loans." Griffith's plan doesn't rely on big, not-yet-invented innovations, but on thousands of little inventions and cost reductions. We can still have our cars and our houses-but the cars will be electric and solar panels will cover our roofs. For a world trying to bounce back from a pandemic and economic crisis, there is no other project that would create as many jobs - up to 25 million, according to one economic analysis. Is this politically possible? We can change politics along with everything else.

©2021 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (P)2021 Tantor
Environment Politics & Government Science Technology Solar System Electrical Engineering
All stars
Most relevant
This book is read with the urgency Climate Crisis requires. Laid out with a practical approach devoid of spin. Action!

Critical

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A great listen, for someone who is very interested in what the future could look like it is explained very well. the book refers to a lot of graphs and tables which are not available for audible listeners. This information would make it so much better to cross reference. it can feel a bit confusing without the visual aid to look back on.

Great content missing the visual graphs etc

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What I really liked about the book is it's effective communication. Saul Griffith doesn't talk like a scientist, going into every nuance and intricacy. And he also doesn't talk like a politician, trying to placate all sides and careful not to get pinned down with an unpopular opinion or strategy.
Instead, Griffith serves a simple, actionable plan how to decarbonise, giving us a world with clean air and abundant electricity that is too cheap to meter.
Though his vision is slightly utopian, it is far from impossible and as he mentions in the beginning of the book, we shouldn't limit our demands and imagination to what seems "politically possible" at the moment. The technical solutions are here. We only need to apply them right.
It doesn't matter whether you buy the bamboo toothbrush or the plastic one, whether you compost or go clothes shopping one too many times a month. What matters are a few big decisions. Electric car instead of petrol. Electric heat pump instead of gas boiler. Photovoltaics on your roof.

When you've got that, you are golden.
There are tons of jobs where you can make a difference in climate change. From engineering and education to law and finance there are countless little dials and nobs we can turn in order to push towards a better future.

A simple message with a few deep dives here and there

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Bad reading, can't stand it, it's like a Robot. I really recommend this book but not the audio version.

I recommend the written version better

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