Review of Charged: "The Hidden Costs of Batteries" in Science by Benjamin K. Sovacool

Batteries are everywhere—in our mobile phones, our remote controls, our toys, and increasingly in the fleets of electric vehicles on our roads. Batteries are ubiquitous because they can do many things: They can store energy in homes, improve the resilience of electric grids, and assist with the integration of low-carbon electricity sources such as wind farms and solar photovoltaic panels.

Batteries, argues environmental historian James Morton Turner in his new book, Charged, are the cornerstone of our modern “culture of mobility,” one that depends on portable, reliable, and cordless sources of energy. In Charged, Turner offers an eminently readable, elegantly precise treatise on the topic of batteries…

For full review, see Science