I'm trying to figure out what are the classic books and authors on the topic. There seems to be a plethora of books on climate and energy out there and every blog recommends a completely different list. As I'm not that familiar with the topic, I'm ideally looking for a book that gives an overview of the different types of energy and their practicality.
Electrify by Saul Griffith's is an up to date survey of where we are.<p><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify" rel="nofollow">https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify</a>
The expensive _Managing Global Warming_ is useful because it has chapters on various renewable energy and related topics, each one written by some kine of specialist in that field, and will bring you up to date as of 2018. There may be better such books, but I’m biased because I wrote the solar energy chapter:<p><a href="https://www.elsevier.com/books/managing-global-warming/letcher/978-0-12-814104-5" rel="nofollow">https://www.elsevier.com/books/managing-global-warming/letch...</a>
Not really what you asked for but I think they are more important to gain perspective:<p>The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein<p>The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World Without America by Peter Zeihan
If you speak spanish there's a really good book doing now the rounds by an skeptic of the long-term economical viability of renewables (and fossil fuels, nuclear, and more): Petrocalipsis, by Antonio Turiel. It's very clear, concise and data-driven, so it's one of those books where even when you disagree with a point it forces you to research why.<p>An ok alternative in english would be Facing the Anthropocene, by Ian Angus (but the scope of that book is way more limited, and it's markedly political, specifically ecosocialist)