Recommended Reading

Books on Energy Policy – Articles on Energy Policy
Books on Market Economics – Books on Change, Innovation, Strategy
Important Documents – Commentary – Newsletters – Documentaries

Send us your recommendation for a book that has given you insight into how we should meet the challenge of changing minds to opening energy markets and opening minds to changing energy markets. Send your recommendations to Jeff Mangold, CAEM's Director of Communciations.

Books on Energy Policy

Sharon Beder, Power Play: The Fight to Control the World’s Electricity (The New Press, 2003) (Publisher Link). A contrarian’s view of the efficacy of privatization and deregulation, nonetheless an excellent discussion of the challenges that must be overcome if the transition to markets is to be successful.
Robert Bradley, Energy: The Master Resource (Amazon.com link).
Tom Casten, Turning Off the Heat: Why America Must Double Energy Efficiency to Save Money and Reduce Global Warming (Prometheus, 1998) (Amazon.com Link)
Julian Darley, High Noon for Natural Gas: The New Energy Crisis (Amazon.com link).
Howard Hayden, The Solar Fraud: Why Solar Energy Won't Run the World (Vales Lake, 2002) (Amazon.com Link)
Peter W. Huber and Mark P. Mills, The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy (Amazon.com link).
Sally Hunt, Making Competition Work in Electricity (John Wiley & Sons, 2002) (Amazon.com Link)
William A. Mogel and David J. Muchow, eds., The Energy Handbook (Lexis-Nexis, 2002) (Publisher Link)
Paul Roberts, The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World (Amazon.com link).

Articles on Energy Policy

R. Richard Geddes, A Historical Perspective on Electric Utility Regulation in Regulation, The Cato Review of Business and Government. This article discusses what was wrong with the traditional utility model.
James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency: What's Going to Happen as We Start Running Out of Cheap Gas to Guzzle? in Rolling Stone, March 24, 2005. Also in The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century by the same author (Amazon.com link).

Books on Market Economics

Milton Friedman, Free To Choose (Harcourt, 1980) (Amazon.com Link)
Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (Yale University Press, 1982). Though somewhat dated and not actually about electricity or energy, provides keen insights on why we must reform our electric policies. (Amazon.com Link)
Oz Shy, The Economics of Network Industries (Cambridge University Press; 2001) (Amazon.com Link)
Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy, Revised and Expanded (Basic, 2003) (Amazon.com Link)
Thomas Sowell, Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One (Basic, 2003) (Amazon.com Link)
Daniel Yergin, The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy (Simon & Schuster, 1998) (Amazon.com Link)

Books on Change, Innovation, Strategy

Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Little, Brown and Company, 2002) (Amazon.com Link)
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1996). New paradigms are not embraced by the keepers of the old paradigm. Believers of the old paradigm have to die out before the new paradigm is universally embraced. Thus paradigm shifts take time. (Amazon.com Link)
Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 5th Edition (Free Press, 2003). Change takes place along an S curve, starting out slow but then hitting the point of inflection after which change is rapid. It also develops an academic framework for understanding change. (Amazon.com Link)
Sun Tzu, The Art of War. The oldest military treatise in existence was written 2400 years ago. A typical proverb: "Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him." Read some of this classic, translated by Lionel Giles, here.
Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait, The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America (Penguin Press, 2004). The success of an idea needs leaders and organization and strategy. (Amazon.com Link)

Important Documents

The Electric Consumers Reliability Council, better known as ELCON, represents large industrial customers. They recently published an insightful report that is must reading for all who care about competitive electric markets. Read ELCON's press release about this study or download a copy of the study.

FERC has issued its third State of the Markets (SOM) Report. This document provides an impressive overview of how energy markets are operating, highlighting significant developments and issues that surfaced in roughly the last year. It is meant as a handbook rather than as textbook.

Wood MacKenzie, Falling Short? The Growing Challenge to Supply the North American Natural Gas Market (2004). In this landmark study of North American gas supply, Wood Mackenzie combines its unique capability in the international upstream and LNG industries with its expertise in analysis of North American energy.More on this study.

Commentary

Thinking Strategically by Dar & Company, an advisory group focused on the merchant energy, gas and electric utility industries. Vinod Dar has been CEO of two energy trading and marketing companies and has founded strategy and risk management practices at major energy consulting companies.

Ken Silverstein of UtiliPoint International is the author of an almost daily analysis of interesting issues relating to electric markets. It is neither "pro-competition" nor focused exclusively on competitive market issues, but it is an insightful commentary on important developments. It is not merely "trade press" but rather is perspective and commentary, insightful, intelligent, and balanced.

It is not hard to find material supportive of renewables. It is harder to find disciplined, unbiased analysis that has a skeptical attitude toward renewables. One insightful and pithy author is Glenn Schleede. You can read about Glenn and read a collection of his articles here.

Newsletters

Restructuring Today is published daily by George Spencer. George has been one of most insightful journalists on the transition from monopoly to competition since he created Gas Daily in the early 1980s.

Energy Advocate is a monthly newsletter by Dr. Howard Hayden, a retired physics professor. He is a very clear, non-politically correct thinker on energy issues.

The Cruthirds Report was started in response to the lack of current in-depth information about state PSC cases in the southeast but covers the entire southeast U.S. as well as the FERC cases that are creating such consternation amongst integrated utilities and state commissioners the region.

Documentaries

The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream explores the American Way of Life and its prospects as the planet approaches a critical era, as global demand for fossil fuels begins to outstrip supply.