The New Map

Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations

By: Daniel Yergin

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

Length: 15 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Prize and The Quest reveals how climate battles and energy revolutions are mapping our future.

A new type of Cold War is emerging between China and the West. The global order is being simultaneously shaken by climate change and the shale revolution in oil and gas - and now by the coronavirus. Controversial fracking technology has given America unprecedented leverage as the world's leading energy powerhouse, ahead of Saudi Arabia and Russia, upending the chessboard of global politics and changing the psychology of the global economy. Despite being weighed down by sanctions, Russia is pivoting east towards China as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping unite to challenge America and lay claim to almost all of the South China Sea, one of the world's most critical trade routes. Elsewhere, the map of the Middle East created after World War I is being attacked by ISIS and Iran's Revolutionary Guards as the region struggles to come to grips with the recent oil price collapse caused by the rise of shale. Oil producers, from the Middle East and Moscow to corporate boardrooms around the world, now fear that peak demand for oil is coming as renewable energy vies with fossil fuels.

The New Map tells a sweeping story about how the role of energy in climate change is shaping geopolitical discussions, challenging our industries and our lifestyles and accelerating a second energy revolution - the quest for renewables. It also brings realism to the debates over the energy transition.

©2020 Daniel Yergin (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Eye-opening

As someone who never understood well energy and its geopolitical implications, this book was enlightening.

'New Map' or old ideas?

I had high expectations for this book. I loved Yergin's The Prize (do look it up if you haven't heard it). For me Yergin's writing in that made him something like the Michael Lewis of energy storytelling.

Sadly this book doesn't repeat past brilliance. The storytelling is at times compelling - I was fascinated by the discovery of the 'slick' fracking technique, for example, which I hadn't heard before. However the author beats repeats his points, and with too much detail. For example he gives repeated descriptions of the discovery of different shale gas deposits etc. by different companies. So the pace slows and the narrative becomes, at times, monotonous.

More concerningly, though, nothing in the author's 'New Map' seems very new. The ideas and outlook have been peddle by energy experts (including Yergin's own CERA) for about 10 years.

It is difficult to know who the audience for this book is therefore. Those who know the energy industry will find little new here. Those who don't will likely be dragged down by the detail. But there are certainly interesting anecdotes and elements within if you're willing to stick with it.