Former Gov. Schweitzer predicts energy revolution in new book

Former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer is predicting a revolution in how America consumes and produces energy.

In his new book, “Power Up. Energy: How the coming revolution will empower you, free us from oil wars and make you a buck or two,” Schweitzer says the current American system of energy dependence is broken. Consumers will be free from oil wars, he says, when America begins investing in energy independence through solar power and batteries.

During a press conference Friday afternoon in front of the O’Shaughnessy Center in Whitefish, Schweitzer deflected questions about his future plans in politics, saying he won’t run for office, but instead wants to “build businesses and ideas and concepts.”

“This is not about selling books,” he said. “I wanted to change the world. I wanted to be part of that.”

Schweitzer writes about his first days in office when he traveled to Troy to attend the funeral for a young Marine killed in Iraq. He would attend many similar funerals during his two terms as governor and each time he struggled to tell the family the person died for freedom or protecting the U.S. when he believed the country was involved in an oil war. 

The time he spent working in Libya and Saudi Arabia also made him examine how the U.S. could become more energy independent. He watched in the 1980s as Saudi Arabia worked to become food self-sufficient and realized that the U.S. had to become less dependent on foreign oil. 

“I realized if they could figure it out, we could too,” he said. 

The book looks at creating a nation of energy entrepreneurs, the history of batteries, better battery storage, fracking, wind, solar, natural gas, oil and the Keystone XL pipeline. 

Schweitzer points to batteries as the solution for consumers to become less energy dependent. He realized 10 years ago that batteries were a game-changer while driving an all-electric Tesla car in California. 

“That’s when it hit me that I was driving the future of energy, and it wasn’t just about Tesla, it was about the battery,” he writes in his book.

He pictures a future where American consumers store power in their cars to power their home with solar panels in the day and the car battery at night. They drive to work using that stored power and then plug in their car, and sell unused power to their local utilities through net metering. 

He says this will mean less dependence on oil from the Middle East, which in turn will mean no more “oil wars.”

“We have hope,” he said, for a future that doesn’t include oil wars and being dependent on dictators.

Never straying too far from the political arena, Schweitzer said he’s been asked why he hasn’t endorsed fellow Democrat Hilary Clinton in her run for president. 

“I’m waiting for one candidate — Republican or Democrat — to address the elephant in the room,” he said. “Why has the longest [American] war been because of oil when we lead the world in technology.” 

Schweitzer will be signing books Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon at the O’Shaughnessy Center in Whitefish. The electronic version of the book sells for $9.99 on Amazon. Paper copies can be ordered for $14 through the website powerup.energy.