The great discoveries of the past two and a half centuries – the steam engine, electromagnetic induction, the electric power grid, the internal combustion engine, the transistor, personal computers, the internet – change not just the way we live, but an entire global economy. Nothing, however, created more change or made more millionaires than one discovery. By the early 1900s, the iron carriage had made its appearance on the streets of our booming cities, but a new kind of engine and a new kind of fuel would be needed to make a “gasmobile” run. Oil.

Despite the many advances, however, since the start of the petroleum era, ecosystems are failing because of increased industrialization, combustion pollution, and greenhouse gases. Are we seeing the beginning of the end, the twilight of our most gleaming idol? Is the next great global energy transition being forced upon us? In the words of Ahmed Zaki Yamani, Saudi oil minister from 1962 to 1986, “the Stone Age did not end for lack of stone and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil.” Alas, short-term profits and share price is still being valued over environmental degradation and global warming.

The role of the car is examined from the advent of the internal combustion engine (ICE) in the early 1900s (Benz and Daimler in Stuttgart, Olds and Ford in Detroit) to electric vehicles (EVs) in the past 2 decades (GM’s EV1, Toyota’s hybrid Prius, and Tesla’s Roadster). With over 1 billion cars on the road and annual sales of almost 100 million, 90% run on hydrocarbon combustion, EV propulsion is changing the rules of the road. By 2035, the sale of gasoline and diesel cars will end across Europe and other regions. Examples of electric propulsion are given, including cars, trucks, buses (especially China), marine transport, and airplanes, as are the challenges to electrify each sector (cost, range, weight, charging infrastructure). The competing technologies of lithium-ion batteries and hydrogen fuel cells are discussed.

Increased energy storage is needed to continue the green transition in transportation (chemical batteries, hydrogen) and the grid (gravitational, mechanical, thermal). Lithium supply chains and mining practices are discussed in Australia, China, the US, and South America (the so-called high-Andes “lithium triangle”). Load-management, distributed energy resources, and vehicle-to-grid technology are explained to recondition an aging one-directional grid, redefining consumer habits similar to early grid building.

Called “the rock that burns” by Aristotle, coal was the first major industrial fuel, created about 300 million years ago as heat and pressure compressed pools of decaying plant matter. Burned to generate heat to boil water and make steam to move a piston in a Watt “fire engine” or a giant turbine in a modern power station, the industrialization of manufacturing, transportation, and electric power is examined from beginnings in the United Kingdom to today’s increased use of coal combustion in developing countries despite the limited thermal efficiency and harmful combustion by-products.

A transition simplifies or improves the efficiency of old ways, turning intellect into industry with increased capital – when both transpire, change becomes unstoppable. The transition to a more efficient combustion fuel changed the global economy when coal replaced wood (twice as efficient) and oil replaced coal (roughly twice as efficient again). The history of the Industrial Revolution is explained through the energy content of different fuels (wood, peat, coal) from the 1800s, early steam engines that produced power for manufacturing and propulsion, and the political, economic, and social consequences of industrialization (wealth, health, and globalization), culminating in Thomas Edison’s 1882, coal-fired, electricity-generating, power station in Lower Manhattan.

There is much to do to create a modern energy paradigm, one that is clean, sustainable, and economically viable, but the changes are coming as overall efficiencies improve and manufacturing costs decrease for today’s renewable technologies. In 2000, 0.6% of total global energy production was generated either by wind or solar, a 50% increase in a decade; by 2010, the amount had doubled.1 By 2013, Spain had achieved a global first as wind-generated power became its main source of energy (21% of total demand, enough to run 7 million homes2), while both Portugal and Denmark now regularly produce days powered 100% by wind.

Historically cloudy England scored a first, as solar became the largest source of grid energy during an especially sunny 2018 spring bank-holiday weekend,3 while in the midst of high winds from Storm Bella on Boxing Day in 2020, the UK was more than half powered by wind, a new record.

Photovoltaic solar power is examined from the atomic level up, starting with solid-state electronics, elemental crystals, and semiconductors. The preferential doping of silicon and germanium to make p-n junctions, transistors, and solar batteries is explained along with the growth of the PV industry that has seen solar panel prices drop and uptake increase exponentially over the past 4 decades according to Swanson’s Law (a solar equivalent of Moore’s Law). The manufacturing of the modern solar cell, behind-the-meter installations (residential and commercial solar), and utility-scale solar are all discussed.

The growth of the solar industry is traced from the beginning of the Space Age in 1957 to the first solar farm in 1982 in the Mojave Desert northeast of Los Angeles that generated 1 megawatt in a single location for the first time and the current record-breaking solar farms across the globe (India’s 2.2-GW Bhadla Solar Park is currently the largest). The latest developments in thin-film solar cells, building-integrated PV, and floating solar are discussed, concentrated solar power is explained (power tower and parabolic trough), and the advantages and disadvantages of utility-scale PV versus CSP examined. Home installation calculations, panel requirements, local insolation data, and tips to maximize output are given.