What The New Map teaches us about the world of energy

Daniel Yergin’s lessons about the past, present, and future of energy

Back in October, I wrote a LinkedIn post inviting anyone who was interested to join my new energy book club.

Over 60 people responded to that invitation.

I sent out a poll to these folks and asked what book they’d prefer we read.

The answer, by a slim margin of a single vote?

The New Map: Energy, Climate and the Clash of Nations by Daniel Yergin.

Daniel Yergin also wrote The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, which won the 1992 Pulitzer prize for general nonfiction. The Prize is the closest thing to required reading that exists for oil & gas workers.

The New Map was very much a worthy selection. I was excited to jump in.

We had our first book club discussion in late January. Our second was in early February, and our third and final discussion was in late February.

Before each discussion, I sent out a set of notes, 5 to 7 pages in length, with excerpts from the book and associated questions we could use to prompt our discussion.

The conversations were fantastic. It was incredibly helpful to read part of the book, pause, reflect, and discuss…then do it all over again for the next part. I felt like I read each section with greater intention and deliberation, having been informed by our prior conversation.

Now that I’ve finished reading the book, and I’ve had three rounds of discussions with my fellow energy book club companions, it’s time for me to put this post together.

Below I’m going to describe what The New Map teaches us about the world of energy. And I do mean “world”. The book is heavy on geopolitics, as you might infer from the “Clash of Nations” bit in the subtitle.

Image generated by Google Gemini via the prompt “the board in the game Risk but with oil barrels as pieces on the board instead of the regular game pieces”

Some of The New Map was exactly what I would have expected in advance. But some of it surprised me, particularly around the narrative structure Mr. Yergin used to walk us through to the present day energy landscape.

As you might expect, given the book’s title, Mr. Yergin begins by describing the “Map” for four of the world’s key geopolitical regions: America, Russia, China, and the Middle East. Then he moves on to a “Roadmap” for the future, focusing on the disruptions to the transportation sector. He concludes with a “Climate Map”, which is the newest element of our energy discourse.

In this post, I’ll keep the same order that Mr. Yergin used across the six sections of his book.

Without further ado, let’s dive in.

America’s New Map

As I mentioned, Mr. Yergin begins the book by describing “America’s New Map”.