Rating: 
Summary: A Brilliant Confluence of a Number of Trends
Review: This book is not just about the emergence of an alternative energy source and the drivers that require us to move away from dependence on fossil fuels as our primary energy source.The book attempts to address how civilizations have been developed, and the contribution that energy makes toward this development. Furthermore, Rifkin draws upon theories of thermodynamics and history to make his points. This book also discusses bare facts associated with the oil industry and how we will need to make significant changes in the way we live in order to face the reality that our sources of energy need to change. For the scientist willing to approach this subject matter with an open mind, the environmentalist interested in understanding how business and economics can shape green development, and the individual curious of the path the world might take, this book is a holistic overview of how energy issues will drive our progress.
Rating: 
Summary: The coming storm
Review: This book paints a pretty scary view of the future, but let's remember that gasoline powered cars have not been around all that long, and the fact that they might not be around forever shouldn't come as that much of a surprise. I thought that the division of 175 pages for the problem and 75 pages for the solution about summed up the issue. We need to start putting some real effort (read money) into this so we can begin to pull ourselves out of the middle east. With respect to comments that hydrogen needs to be separated from water, and is not a primary energy source in and of itself... of course, but that doesn't change the fact that it will become our only choice, and if one reads past the dust jacket, they will see that is addressed in the book. Overall, this is chocked full of statistics, yet somehow seems to be 1% more like an infomercial than a literary work, but it is something that everybody should drop their nintendos and read. Maybe it should be a required read in school as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Writing is thick as oil, content is all hot air
Review: This book will disappoint anyone interested in the possibilities of using hydrogen as an alternative energy to fossil-fuels in automobiles and other practical uses. Rifkin spends 3/4ths of the book in a long-winded, simplistic recounting of history from the Roman Empire through our current time of troubles. It's not that this context isn't important to the subject, it's just that what little original observations there are, such as that Rome fell because of the law of thermodynamics, are so simplistic if not just plain wrong. In the final quarter of the book where we finally get to hydrogen, Rifkin concentrates less on explaining possibilities and problems and more on advancing his grandly banal vision of a world village. Little is made of the distinction between hydrogen as an energy carrier, and its use an energy source. His over-use of cliches like "Think Globally, act Locally" typify his style of inflating bumper-sticker cliches into pretentious but shallow observations.
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating and Riveting
Review: This review will be SHORT, contrary to some of the other ESSAYS I see on this site. I couldn't put this book down. I read it in two days. Having said that, let me just say that the book is not intended to be a technical blueprint for building the hydrogen energy web. The book is a provacative examination of the means by which society harnesses and uses energy. The history lessons are not an off-topic distraction, but an integral part of understanding the socio-economic and geopolitical impact of energy--past, present, and future. This book is intended to make you think. That it does.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and Riveting
Review: This review will be SHORT, contrary to some of the other ESSAYS I see on this site. I couldn't put this book down. I read it in two days. Having said that, let me just say that the book is not intended to be a technical blueprint for building the hydrogen energy web. The book is a provacative examination of the means by which society harnesses and uses energy. The history lessons are not an off-topic distraction, but an integral part of understanding the socio-economic and geopolitical impact of energy--past, present, and future. This book is intended to make you think. That it does.
Rating: 
Summary: Important Topic, Poorly Executed
Review: We're running out of oil and other fossil fuels faster than most people realize. Peak oil production might occur in 10 years or less. Then, prices will go up dramatically causing another worldwide recession. Middle Eastern countries will once again hold the world hostage, as they own most oil reserves. Global warming will continue to get worse as more fossil fuels are burned. Despite this gloomy picture, the author provides a "silver bullet" solution--hydrogen power. Hydrogen is clean; it contains no carbon and thus produces no carbon dioxide; it's inexhaustible; it's renewable; and it's getting cheaper to produce. With hydrogen fuel cell technologies coming on strong, each of us can become both producer and consumer of hydrogen, breaking the stranglehold of big oil companies and unstable Arab governments. Hopefully, the switchover to hydrogen power will occur before we exhaust our oil and gas reserves and have to increase the amount of coal we burn and the harmful acid rain that inevitably follows. The author has presented a coherent argument for hydrogen and a hopeful vision for our energy future.
Rating:
Summary: Most Interesting Book I've Read In Years
Review: We're running out of oil and other fossil fuels faster than most people realize. Peak oil production might occur in 10 years or less. Then, prices will go up dramatically causing another worldwide recession. Middle Eastern countries will once again hold the world hostage, as they own most oil reserves. Global warming will continue to get worse as more fossil fuels are burned. Despite this gloomy picture, the author provides a "silver bullet" solution--hydrogen power. Hydrogen is clean; it contains no carbon and thus produces no carbon dioxide; it's inexhaustible; it's renewable; and it's getting cheaper to produce. With hydrogen fuel cell technologies coming on strong, each of us can become both producer and consumer of hydrogen, breaking the stranglehold of big oil companies and unstable Arab governments. Hopefully, the switchover to hydrogen power will occur before we exhaust our oil and gas reserves and have to increase the amount of coal we burn and the harmful acid rain that inevitably follows. The author has presented a coherent argument for hydrogen and a hopeful vision for our energy future.
Rating:
Summary: Three Important Points, One Misleading Title
Review: What this book WAS about: 1. The world is running out of fossil fuels. (Rifkin's Grade: A+) No, really. And faster than you realize. Rifkin's thorough, satisfying treatment of what happens when world oil production peaks is required reading. Rifkin writes much on this topic, making his point but setting himself up for failure with his much flimsier treatment of hydrogen alternatives (see below). 2. Fuel sources -- their abundance and depletion -- account for the rise and fall of civilizations. (Grade A-) I found this to be the most fascinating idea in the book, and potentially the most important for its grand sweeping historical scope. Readers who savor "geodestiny" arguments such as those brilliantly described in Jared Diamond's Pulitzer-winning, "Guns, Germs, and Steel", or other "ultimate causes" of history (like Schmookler's profound "The Parable of the Tribes") will be chewing on this aspect of Rifkin's thesis for days. The degree to which Rifkin's "fuel-as-destiny" argument stands up to academic scrutiny, I'll leave to scholars to debate. But even if over-simplified, the argument has the unnerving effect of putting the notion of our cozy, stable, modern existence completely up for grabs. The startling, humbling "a-ha" is that we take much for granted -- our wealth, our security, our comfort, and our expectation of constant progress. Without sufficient fuel, all of these can only slide backwards, with the ultimate grim outcome of adding "modern civilization" to the long list of great civilizations who've come and gone. In short, when oil runs out, a second Dark Age might not require anything so random or dramatic as global pandemic or cometary impact. Why an A-? Rifkin's dependence on thermodynamic entropy is interesting but scientifically literate readers will cringe when he jumps casually from physics to culture using the same terminology. 3. The democratizing, decentralizing effects of distributed energy production. (Grade C) The second most important idea in this book, and worthwhile if only to inspire other writers or your own thinking of how the world might fundamentally restructure itself if all energy were produced locally. Rifkin's flimsy exploration of the topic (just one chapter) comes across as froth however, spastic arm-waving with little research or substance, particularly when taken together with the book's most damning shortcomings (see below). I'm unconvinced that distributed power generation will lead to one big utopian love-fest; I want to hear suggestions, with the same depth and insights as in Point #2, of how geopolitics will be rattled and reshaped from the ground-up. What this book SHOULD HAVE BEEN about: 1. Renewable sources as a solution to the energy *source* problem. (Grade: F) Out of 9 chapters, less than one chapter is devoted to this topic. In fact, according to the index, only *three pages* are about solar energy! True, Rifkin disclaims that hydrogen is only a good way to store and transport energy and that it's not a primary source. Unfortunately, he writes the rest of the book as though he has forgotten his own disclaimer. By constantly whooping up hydrogen's ubiquity ("the most abundant element in the universe," etc) and speaking of household-level, distributed generation, he misleads the casual reader into assuming that energy is there, free for the taking if, like fusion, we'd only get off our butts and harness it with technology. NOT TRUE!! How on earth are we supposed to get the hydrogen to every household in the first place? In tanker trucks? In hydrogen pipelines? (Both are net energy losses.) The only possible solution, which he, at best, only implies, is that *each home/building* needs to produce its own electricity via some renewable source. Presumably, a solar collector or windmill on every roof? Yet his coverage of the state-of-the-art and economics of these technologies is shockingly nonexistent. Again, these nascent technologies, the root of any true "hydrogen economy," comprise just a few pages in this entire book by that name. Moreover, even if every residential and commercial building deployed cost-competitive, next-generation solar/wind technologies, then why not just sell excess electricity back to the grid and dispense with household hydrogen altogether? The only answer is... 2. Hydrogen as gasoline replacement. (Grade: C-) If renewable energy sources solve the "source" problem (a big "if"), then electrical generation no longer requires fossil fuels. That leaves one last problem: cars. Cars need gasoline, not electricity. Electric vehicles powered by batteries are a dead-end. Fortunately, recent breakthroughs by companies like Ballard have made hydrogen fuel cells potentially economically feasible. The economics and technologies of hydrogen-powered automobiles easily warrant 2-4 dedicated chapters in any book called "The Hydrogen Economy." Rifkin's treatment was so lean (less than one chapter!) that we're left wondering basic things like how many miles a car can get from a gallon of hydrogen. Or for that matter, is hydrogen pumped into the car as a gas or liquid? Is refueling dangerous? Etc. Due to his brevity, he completely fails to paint a picture of a hydrogen economy in which cars run on hydrogen. Rifkin's only redemption on this topic was his encouraging, well-researched statistics regarding major hydrogen technology investments among the automotive manufacturers and oil companies. For a book so heavily front-loaded with the "why" of hydrogen, Rifkin's coverage of hydrogen's "how" is strangely almost non-existent. Most of the requisite technologies exist and are gradually approaching cost-competitiveness. But he chose to mention them briefly or not at all (Stirling engines anyone?). It's as though Rifkin ran out of pages, time, or ready knowledge, and needed to wrap things up quickly with a very rushed ending. Or perhaps, at the last moment, his publisher asked him to change the title of his nearly finished manuscript about fossil fuel depletion to something containing the word "Hydrogen." The identical book might have earned five stars if it were titled "The End of Oil." Perhaps not as marketable, but you'd feel less misled by the time you reach book's end. Read it only for the points mentioned above, if you're interested; not for insights into hydrogen's future.
Rating:
Summary: May Act As A Reality Check For Some
Review: You do not have to be a scientist to enjoy this book. Rifkin wrote an extremely interesting book that will keep you reading throughout the night as if it was a science fiction book. One of the most interesting chapters 'Energy and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations' along with the rest of the book may act as a reality check for some living in the United States of America. This book will stimulate your mind leaving you with plenty to ponder about.
| 
