Book review: ‘Stellar’ by James Arbib and Tony Seba

One of the major things that is missing from modern society, and possibly the cause of the plight we find ourselves, both environmentally and politically, is the lack of a compelling and positive vision for the future. This absence is particularly notable in the current geo-political environment. This new book provides such a vision for a positive global future based on abundant and cheap energy from solar, wind and batteries. It is very different, however, to other books on energy futures.

The book starts with a historical survey that sets out the impacts of the transition from a hunter gather society to an agricultural society. At that point we changed to an extractive model of the world which over generations has shaped our mentality, our laws, our institutions and even our bodies. It is that extractive model that is the root cause of many of our problems.

The argument in the book is that we will soon have cheap, effectively free, and abundant energy from solar, wind and batteries – a ‘stellar’ energy system that doesn’t need extractive inputs to operate. The emergence of a stellar energy system produces results that cannot be predicted from the sum of the parts – what the authors call ‘radiance’ which is a super abundance, i.e. over supply, of energy that will enable us to restore the damage caused by the extractive economy on a massive scale. With abundant clean energy anything become possible.

Moving beyond the energy system itself the book looks at the effects of this super abundance on various systems including food production, water and transport, as well as issues of ownership and the wider economy and politics. The need for systems thinking is stressed throughout. The effects of embedding stellar technologies into an extractive system, which is where much of the energy system is now, is described as a chimera. The authors argue that this approach leaves us in danger of ‘snatching defeat from the jaws of victory’. The book finishes with eight guiding principles for the journey towards a stellar economy.

This book is a highly recommended tour de force based on real ‘outside the box’ thinking. As the basis of a positive vision of the future it deserves a wide audience amongst energy professionals, economists, policy makers, and indeed anyone interested in building a better future for the world. My optimist side believes in this vision, my realist side remembers the quote from Arthur C. Clarke, ‘we tend to over-estimate what we can achieve in the short-term, and under-estimate what we can achieve in the long-term’. My practicality says, ‘what can we do today to build this future?’.

Credit: Steven Fawkes