“We are at an energy crossroads, and the path taken in the next few years will affect every person on the planet. Vijay Vaitheeswaran has produced a thoughtful and provocative book that maps the choices we face and the trade-offs we will encounter. POWER TO THE PEOPLE explodes myths, highlights our energy options, and shows the way to an energy future that is very different from the past. This volume is must reading for anyone who cares about the environment.”

Daniel Esty
Director, Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy  

POWER TO THE PEOPLE provides an informed, lively and skeptical tour of energy, environment, and technology that is sure to stir debate.Daniel Yergin"The post-fossil-fuel age is coming faster than you think, and POWER TO THE PEOPLE shows why. Discover the energy future in an important, lively and highly readable book "

Gregg Easterbrook
Author, The Progress Paradox "


People need power. The challenge of meeting future energy needs has long moved beyond the realm of increased supply. Vaitheeswaran's analysis offers both a strategic ivory tower perspective as well as a breathtaking review of paradigm shifts and new technological frontiers. This is a book about the future - and the choices we face. Whether you are a pessimist, skeptic or optimist – POWER TO THE PEOPLE will challenge your assumptions without offering simplistic answers."

Achim Steiner
Director General, IUCN - The World Conservation Union


" The post-petroleum age is approaching rapidly, and who better to herald its arrival than a top journalist for The Economist. In POWER TO THE PEOPLE, Vijay Vaitheeswaran compellingly describes the vast innovations in technology and policy that are beginning to shake the energy industry to its core. It is a sign of the times that "alternative" energy is now attracting as much interest from business executives focused on the bottom line as it is from ecologists focused on climate change: as described in this book, the "coming energy revolution" is as logical, and perhaps as inevitable, as it is necessary."

Christopher Flavin
President, Worldwatch Institute


"Written in the easy, fluent style that makes Vijay Vaitheeswaran so readable in The Economist, POWER TO THE PEOPLE examines the energy future, including the prospects for fossil fuels, with a calm rationality that will surely command the respect of people across the political spectrum. More to the point, it does so in a spirit of optimism that doesn't prescribe a disruptive trade-off between preserving our environment and providing enough energy for continuing human progress."

Lord Browne of Madingley
Chief Executive, BP


“ Vijay Vaitheeswaran’s analysis of where we stand right now on the energy front is well reasoned, insightful, and tempered. At a time when the whole world is increasingly worried about our energy future, Mr. Vaitheeswaran takes us on an engaging, and ultimately hopeful, exploratory journey, investigating the many choices that lie ahead.”

Jeremy Rifkin
Author, The Hydrogen Economy.


" Many books on energy are filled with table after mind-numbing table, others with paeans to the all-powerful forces of free markets or the supposed magic of green energy technologies. Vaitheeswaran has written a book on energy that is factual, non-polemical and-can it really be?-fun to read! No one will agree with everything the author has to say about the world's energy future. Everyone will finish this book knowing much more about this important subject than they did before."

Paul R. Portney
President, Resources for the Future


“In a crucial area of public discourse that is too often dominated by flamethrowers from either side of the political spectrum, Vijay Vaitheeswaran’s POWER TO THE PEOPLE provides a welcome relief: a balanced assessment of where we are, how we got here, and where our actions today may be taking us in the years ahead.”

Robert N. Stavins
John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University