The dirty work essential to a clean energy transition

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

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.

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"An eminently readable, elegantly precise treatise on the topic of batteries."

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"An enjoyable and accessible book...Many readers may be susceptible to the trap of wide-eyed idealism in terms of environmental activism and the 'clean energy future' Turner discusses in this book. He strikes a great balance between optimism and pessimism on that front; he puts a lot of things into historical and highly realistic perspective. In doing so, he provides a roadmap for people who actually want to achieve a clean energy future, pointing to the pitfalls previous engineers fell into or carved themselves, and advising how to learn from those mistakes and forge ahead."

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"Engrossing and sobering, Charged is essential reading for anyone concerned about environment, energy, and the sustainable future."

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"The book provides readers with a valuable history of battery technology, the interdependency of batteries and the environment, and the challenge (and perhaps impossibility) of just energy transition policies."

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"[A] careful and scrupulously referenced historical account of an important object: where [the battery] came from, its evolving influences on society, and where it might be taking us. . . . No one who thinks seriously about our energy future should neglect either Turner’s warnings or his hopes."