Yergin, the chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Washington, spends a lot of time thinking about energy. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for a history of the oil industry, The Prize. He is promoting his latest book, The Quest, a comprehensive examination of energy.
So after taking five years to write an 800-page book that explores everything from wind turbines to electric vehicles, is Yergin convinced we're stuck with greenhouse-gas-producing fuels?
"I'm convinced there will be major changes," he said. "But given how massive the energy system is, how complex it is, things just don't happen overnight."
Existing energy systems contain an enormous amount of embedded capital. New technologies have long lead times. Automobile fleets take a decade to turn over. And world energy demand is expected to grow 35 to 40 percent by 2030.
Wind turbines, after decades of development, are only now cost-competitive, he said. Photovoltaic cells, first used in spacecraft in 1958, still require subsidies.
"It's not a light switch where you can go from one to another," he said.
Yergin's long-term perspective comes out of his experience as a historian.
He is a skeptic of "peak oil" theorists, who believe the world is heading toward a catastrophic plunge in petroleum production. He said that the world has survived four previous pronouncements of the end of oil, starting with the 1886 prediction by the Pennsylvania state geologist that oil was "a temporary and vanishing phenomenon."
Yergin says that peak oil advocates don't take into account improvements in extraction technologies and efficiencies in consumption that often arise during periods of rising prices and shortages.
