Charged: A History of Batteries and Lessons for a Clean Energy Future (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books) - Softcover

Turner, James Morton

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0295752181 ISBN 13: 9780295752181

Publisher: University of Washington Press, 2023

Synopsis

Winner of the 24th Annual Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize

Finalist for the 2023 Cundill History Prize

Gold Medal Recipient, Nautilus Book Awards, Sustainability

The dirty work essential to a clean energy transition

To achieve fossil fuel independence, few technologies are more important than batteries. Used for powering zero-emission vehicles, storing electricity from solar panels and wind turbines, and revitalizing the electric grid, batteries are essential to scaling up the renewable energy resources that help address global warming. But given the unique environmental impact of batteries―including mining, disposal, and more―does a clean energy transition risk trading one set of problems for another?

In Charged, James Morton Turner unpacks the history of batteries to explore why solving "the battery problem" is critical to a clean energy transition. As climate activists focus on what a clean energy future will create―sustainability, resiliency, and climate justice―the history of batteries offers a sharp reminder of what building that future will consume: lithium, graphite, nickel, and other specialized materials. With new insight on the consequences for people and communities on the front lines, Turner draws on the past for crucial lessons that will help us build a just and clean energy future, from the ground up.

About this title

About the Authors

James Morton Turner, a historian, is professor of environmental studies at Wellesley College. He is the author of The Promise of Wilderness: American Environmental Politics since 1964 (University of Washington Press, 2013) and coauthor of The Republican Reversal: Conservatives and the Environment from Nixon to Trump (Harvard University Press, 2018).

Paul Sutter is series editor for the Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books series. He is professor of history at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has published five books, including Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement (University of Washington Press, 2005) and Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Providence Canyon and the Soils of the South (University of Georgia Press, 2015).

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0295752181
• ISBN 13: 9780295752181
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256