Books

the-solar-century-coverAn account, written with colleagues at Solarcentury and SolarAid in 2009, of how solar energy can play a key role in global renaissance: how an acceleration of growth in the solar industries – and their sisters in sustainable energy – can ameliorate the climate crisis, soften the energy crisis, help rebuild the damage caused by the financial crisis, and spread much hope besides.

“An incredibly inspiring read …a compelling, exciting and inspiring case for solar as a central thrust of a renewable energy future.”
www.Treehugger.com

Press contacts
Solar Century extractRuth Killick, Profile Books 90207 841 6307 / ruth.killick@profilebooks.co.uk) or Charlotte Webster 0207 803 0148/ 07990 583307 (charlotte.Webster@solarcentury.com)

Amazon.com: readers’ reviews and ordering

Read an extract from The Solar Century – Chapter 4 – ‘Solar Tech’, how cutting edge solar technologies work and are manufactured.

Download The Solar Century cover image

halfgone_frontcover

 

My account (1997 – 2005) of the peak oil threat: how the global oil industry is overblowing both its reserves and resources assessment and its ability to deliver oil to market in a timely manner, how the growing numbers of whistleblowers in an around the oil industry are faring with their warnings about the great global energy crisis that looms as a consequence, and how peak oil conflates with climate change.

Video: Meet the author

Amazon.com: readers’ reviews and ordering

Portobello: publisher’s website

“Oil depletion is now meeting global warming …it’s scary….a mix of a textbook and a call to arms ….Few people could make the transition from geologist to oil consultant to chief scientist for Greenpeace and then to boss of Britain’s largest solar energy company ….his personal insights are fascinating ….the writing is always clear and conveys complicated but important technicalities in very accessible terms.”
Daily Mail

“Jeremy Leggett, former oil geologist and a fine writer, spells out the reality in Half Gone – and very different it is from the official blandishments from on high, in which the incompetence seems beyond belief and deception is a way of life.”
Guardian

“Leggett knows what he is talking about. ….The resulting book is a fast-moving, easily readable polemic whose unashamed populism doesn’t obscure the weight of it arguments.”
Sunday Times

“His arguments are so powerfully and persuasively drawn that his statements begin to seem obvious. ….a compelling must-read for politicians, pundits and punters alike.”
Independent

“If you want one book that ….. really deals with this and attempts to explain the complications of it, I recommend it to you.”
President Bill Clinton

“Really excellent. Personal and passionate, but strong on the science and eminently reasonable. Certainly the best account of the Peak Oil debate that I have come across so far, and I really hope that it is having the impact on key people that it deserves.”
Jonathon Porritt, Commission on Sustainable Development

“Among the shelf full of books on the oil situation that have been published in the last year or so, (this) is far and away the best.”
Lester Brown, President, Earth Policy Institute

“What makes Half Gone important is that it goes beyond the conventional clarion call about “peak oil” to consider also the other great fossil-fuel-related crisis we face – global warming. ….Despite its gloomy topic, (it) is an impressive and jaunty read and should be mandatory for politicians and planners ….a detailed, finely poised, buoyantly optimistic and ultimately plausible vision of how increased energy efficiency and renewable energy sources can lead to an ecologically viable and soft, rather than hard, landing.”
Sydney Morning Herald

“Leggett’s case is equally convincing and frightening. ….gives a fresh, keen understanding of the imminent need to alleviate our economic dependency on oil.”
Internationalist: Journal of Culture and Currents, Winter 2005 (US)

“Leggett summarizes data…. that convincingly indicate that world oil production is in irreversible decline.”
Gilbert Taylor, Booklist (US)

Book of the year: Ian Irvine, Independent-on-Sunday

Bookseller magazine votes Half Gone one of the top 50 environmental books ever (November 2009).

My account (1989-2000) of the first decade of international effort to negotiate a global climate change treaty, as I witnessed it in and around the negotiations. As far as I know, it remains the only eye-witness acount of the climate talks, and the way the fossil-fuel vested-interests (the “carbon club”) tried to derail them.

 

Amazon.com: readers’ reviews and ordering

“Vastly broadens our understanding. For the unscientific, this account of events from the International Panel on Climate Change set up by the United Nations in 1988, to the summit in Kyoto, Japan in 1997, is a revelation. Suddenly the apparently contradictory nature of so much we have heard and read falls into place.”
Glasgow Herald

“a page-turning story in racy prose” …“the final chapter is not only nail biting, but moves the reader to tears.”
Daily Mail

“The best book yet about the politics of global warming …essential reading.”
Sunday Times

“Racy… a powerful and highly readable book. Those who want a crash course on the nature of today’s environmental movement and the politics of the climate negotiations can be assured of an excellent, reliable read”
New Scientist

“The Carbon War is a must for anyone interested in observing how a few global oil corporations hijacked governments over the climate negotiations.”
Guardian

“provides ample evidence, much of it drawn from the author’s first-hand experience, to support its assertions. Mr Leggett knows both sides of the street.”
Economist

  • My most recent commentaries

    • Comment on HMG’s decision to take their illegal FiT plan to the Supreme Court.

      21 Feb 2012

      Jeremy Leggett: “We have been expecting this but we hoped that Ed Davey would see sense and not take the appeal. If we are lucky this is just a cynical exercise to limit the market to 3rd March and they will withdraw in a few weeks. If not, and they really are serious about a Supreme Court appeal, then the implications for the renewables industry are deeply worrying. Two weeks ago, Ministers reassured the industry that they wanted to see 4 million solar homes in the UK by 2020. This appeal completely undermines that claim. They need to stop rewriting the scheme, end the constant stop-start and provide long-term stability and meaningful returns for investors and customers and give certainty to the 30,000+ employees of this successful industry – one of the few that is actively creating jobs in this country. If the appeal is successful it will allow Government to change feed-in tariffs whenever it chooses, even for projects that are already installed and supposedly guaranteed the feed-in tariff. At a stroke, this would undermine investment in all UK renewables, not just PV, and show investors that the UK government simply cannot be trusted. Fortunately their arguments are weak. They are the same ones unanimously rejected by the Court of Appeal so I wouldn’t give them much chance of success. Sadly, this appeal has the whiff of farce about it. First they try to woo private capital into infrastructure; then they mismanage it; now they go to the Supreme Court to argue for sovereign default to cover their tracks. I just hope the new Secretary of State actually understands what his lawyers are doing.”

    • Climate change should mean a 100% renewables by 2030 target.

      10 Feb 2012

      Interview at the Oxford Climate Forum, in Oxford university student magazine, Cherwell: “There are people who are worried about peak oil who aren’t worried about climate change. And vice versa. I’m worried about both. With both of them, at a minimum it’s about wrecking the global economy. A lot more in the case of climate change. These are high stakes issues. And both are high risk. In fact, climate change isn’t just high risk. It’s odds on certainty.” More.

    • UK government loses appeal on illegality of DECC’s solar feed-in tariff cuts.

      25 Jan 2012

      Three more judges rule, in the Appeal Court that the government’s proposal to cut tariffs from 12 December was illegal. Business Green: “Jeremy Leggett, chairman of Solarcentury, said the news was a positive outcome for the entire renewable energy industry: “Today we have reminded government that it will be held to account when it acts illegally and tries to push through unlawful policy changes. We would much prefer not to have taken this path but ministers gave us no choice. Our hope now is that we can work together again to restore the thriving jobs-rich solar sector that has been so badly undermined by government actions since October”.”

    • “The carbon bubble will burst – we must be prepared this time”.

      23 Jan 2012

      Business Green: “This is really important. No matter where you stand in the green debate, the threat posed by the systemic over valuation of carbon intensive firms and assets is a critical issue that should concern you – really, really concern you.” …. That is the warning currently being sounded by the recently launched Carbon Tracker Initiative, which last week released its second report on the scale of the so-called “carbon bubble” and wrote to Bank of England Governor Mervyn King urging him to take action. The two reports from the group – which is backed by some high profile green thinkers and investors, including the WWF, Solarcentury chairman Jeremy Leggett, former chief scientist Sir David King, and Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith – should be required reading for political leaders, business leaders, and economists everywhere. If there was any sense of proportion, it would be at the top of the agenda at this week’s annual billionaire schmooze-fest at the World Economic Forum in Davos.”

    • Investors ask BoE to probe risk that fossil-fuel reserves pose “sub-prime” risk.

      19 Jan 2012

      Fossil fuel reserves listed in the City of London are “sub-prime” assets posing a systemic risk to economic stability. So warns a high-profile coalition of investors, politicians and scientists , writing an open letter to Sir Mervyn King asking him to launch an investigation. Signatories include Aviva Investors, Climate Change Capital, Conservative politician Zac Goldsmith and Solarcentury chairman Jeremy Leggett. Abatement policies could mean billions of pounds of fossil fuel reserves will rapidly lose value and cause a “major problem” for institutional investors and pension funds. Guardian: “CarbonTracker’s latest report reveals that coal reserves held by 16 London-listed companies will release 45bn tonnes of CO2 when burned, equivalent to 86 years of annual UK emissions, which are the tenth highest in the world. Most of the coal is in other countries such as Australia and South Africa.”

    • Richard Branson: “the absolute necessity” of investing in renewables.

      5 Jan 2012

      Richard Branson, in posting my latest blog on his website: “Struck by this email from my friend Dr Jeremy Leggett over Christmas highlighting the growing divide between those that believe in the absolute necessity of investing in renewable fuels and those who ignore the obvious need – preferring to focus on short term goals and profits. I believe we must keep investing in alternative fuels to help reduce our Global carbon problem. Those fearing that economic growth will be stifled by investment in renewables are wrong.” etc.

    • High Court rules UK government has acted illegally of solar feed-in tariff target date.

      21 Dec 2011

      My message to BBC Radio’s The World Tonight: let us turn this humiliation for HMG into something positive and get back to where we were: creating jobs the nation needs in these hard times. And to Business Green: “We encourage the Secretary of State to accept the judge’s very clear ruling, to not plunge the industry into a further period of uncertainty by considering going to appeal, and to conduct the remainder of the current consultation process properly with constructive conversations with the industry.”

    • Big 6 pressure on UK government led to UK solar feed-in tariff ambush.

      10 Dec 2011

      My view in the Huffington Post: “There are only two possibilities, given the absence of a credible savings narrative and the seemingly lethal intent of the six week warning and the market-shrivelling energy-efficiency pre-qualification. One is breathtaking collective incompetence. The other is conspiracy.
      The answer is conspiracy. So I have been told in recent weeks by insiders in Whitehall, Westminster, and in the relevant parts of the energy, PR, and financial industries.”

    • Countercurrents: the triple crunch we face and the barriers to renaissance.

      5 Dec 2011

      In an extended interview in India, I talk about the similarities between the credit crunch and the peak oil issue, and the power of renewables and why clean-energy industries are being held back.

    • “A focus on renewables would allow the Government to deliver on some of its cornerstone mantras”.

      30 Nov 2011

      My latest column in Sublime magazine: “The current government in Britain appears to be playing fast and loose with some fantastic renewable energy opportunities – and ones that could provide much-needed jobs. what is that about? If the British Prime Minister were being authentic, he could be leading on an impressive story right now. Those of his core mantras that involve energy, taken together in strategic harness, make for an inspiring vision. Picture the scene. His Big Society concept sees communities taking power for themselves, providing for themselves. In short, Britain could be less centralised, more community-centric, more resilient to economic shocks.”

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