Sustainable Energy - without the hot air

Prof MacKay's starting point is that there is a great deal of vague flummery talked about energy production and consumption. It is easy to make vague claims of "huge" potential green sources or to obsess over what turn out to be very minor energy savings. His goal in this book is to have a hard-nosed discussion of real numbers, so that there can be a more sensible discussion of options. He avoids making explicit recommendations, but his one continual plea is that we create a plan that "adds up" rather than merely reflecting wishful thinking. The world currently consumes enormous quantities of fossil fuel, so any viable alternative plan also has to deal with very large numbers, either as savings or as alternate sources. MacKay writes in a very readable and entertaining style. But he is also very careful to explain his numbers and to build his scenarios from the ground up. I found his analyses convincing and stimulating. Sometimes more detailed or more mathematical analysis is pushed off to supplementary appendices, but those are also well worth reading. I learned many things. One key factor I hadn't appreciated was the enormous land areas required for renewable sources, such as wind, solar, biofuel, or geothermal to make a substantial difference. For example, MacKay calculates that it would probably require 10% of the UK's surface to be dedicated to wind farms in order to make a significant contribution to the UK's current energy needs. Even larger areas are required to generate meaningful quantities of biofuel. If an area the size of Africa were dedicated to growing biofuel, that might only replace a third of current world oil needs. But MacKay also points out there may be places where building vast energy farms makes sense. For example, a 20,000 square km solar power farm in the Sahara could be one way to meet the UK's energy needs. MacKay explains how technologies such as electric cars or heat pumps reduce energy needs, independent of how the electricity is generated. He shows us that because electric motors are extremely efficient, burning oil in a central power plant and using the electricity to run an electric car actually requires much less energy than traditional cars. Similarly, he shows how using a central electric power station to power home heat pumps is a significantly more efficient way to heat houses than burning gas or oil at the house. (I had definitely not understood this before!) MacKay would prefer we use green technology to create the electric power, but it is interesting that even using fossil fuel power stations, electric cars and heat pumps still reduce overall fossil fuel consumption. In his concluding chapters, MacKay outlines several possible plans that "add up". All of them have significant negatives, either through reliance on nuclear power, or enormous environmental impact, or enormous expense. He doesn't pick a winner from among these options, but he emphasizes that we need to chose a plan rather than simply saying "no" to every possible option. Regardless of whether you agree with Prof Mackay's goal of shifting to alternative energy supplies, this book is definitely worth reading. MacKay succeeds admirably in explaining the raw numbers, so we can see what realistic energy choices are available. Having read this book (and having it available as a reference) I now feel much better equipped to read the plethora of ideas, plans, suggestions, trivia, wishful thinking and occasional good sense that circulate around energy policy. MacKay is right that numbers matter, and plans need to add up!

Easy read with lots of information about energy. A wonderful book full of facts about generation of electricity and options for how it can be done in the future. This is a great book with hard numbers, and not just a bunch of arming waving, and armchair theorizing. I cannot recommend this book too highly for anyone who wishes to understand the energy issues facing the industrial world. Mr. MacKay did a wonderful job of getting a large amount of hard data together about the UK and to a lesser extent the world, an power, in particular, electrical energy use and generation, now and in the future. It was originally free on line at a web site "withoutthehotair", however as of the date of this write up, unfortunately it is no longer available on line. MacKay is a British, so this book is written about the United KIngdom, and not the US. However, all of the basic principals and arguments that he presents can be easily applied to the USA. He starts from the place that we like the life that we live with ample and reasonably priced electricity. He does address the CO2 emission issue, for the global warming crew, so there is hard information to consider. He is not going down the hair shirt route that we all need to cut our energy use by x percent or the world will cook tomorrow. It is so nice to look at a book that deals with real numbers and the world as it is, and that people like living in this world. He looks briefly at the world and history of CO2 emission over the years essentially since before the industrial revolution. He does a wonderful and very comprehensive job of looking at the different proposals for generating energy such as tidal, wave, wind, geothermal, etc. The specifics are tied to the UK, but they can be applied to the USA or any other country as applicable. Tidal could apply to the Bay of Fundy for example in North America. He has a breakout for where all of the energy including the electrical energy goes which is interesting. He breakouts out total energy consumption including air travel. He looks at the energy that is used for housing and different approaches. All of this is preparation for the last section of the book, where you can play king for a day, and devise your own approach to providing the required electrical power fro the UK by selecting the option that you prefer. He includes nuclear as an option. My favorite section is 27, "Five Energy Plans for Britain", where he presents five different options to illustrate the choices that one must make in deciding what options to select among wind, tide, solar, geothermal. nuclear, solar in the desert, hydro, waste etc.

Uno dei pochi libri su quest’argomento che val la pena di leggere.

Ce livre (en anglais) présente de façon très complète, et remarquablement simple et claire le problème de la consommation d'énergie auquel l'espèce humaine va être confrontée à court terme. Le problème est quantitatif (si on ne chiffre pas sérieusement le problème, on passe son temps à dire tout et n'importe quoi, ce que quantité d'autres livres font abondamment). Il faut donc aligner des chiffres. Mais l'auteur réussit l'exploit de les présenter de façon extraordinairement simple et concrète en les ramenant à une seule personne (vous !), de sorte qu'on la sensation de gérer son propre budget. Toutes les explications sont compréhensibles par tout le monde et il s'agit entre autre d'un ouvrage de vulgarisation remarquable (les détails un peu techniques sont systématiquement mis en appendices, qu'on peut tout à fait omettre mais qui sont accessibles à toute personne se souvenant de ses études scientifiques dans le secondaire). En bref une lecture indispensable pour toute personne voulant vraiment savoir quelle est la situation. Seul défaut: l'auteur examine surtout, pour être très concret, le cas du Royaume Uni, mais la situation de la France est peu différente.

Does what is says on the cover, a clear explanation of how much energy we use, how much renewables might be able to provide and the options for getting off fossil fuels. The figures concentrate on the UK (the writer was a highly regarded professor at Cambridge University) and are a few years old now, so some of the latest figures for wind and solar production and costs are not there, but overall an invaluable book for anyone wanting to get to grips with the facts in this post-truth age.

Schade eigentlich, dass dieses Buch hier bisher keine Rezension erfahren hat. Vielleicht liegt es daran, dass es das Buch (mit ein paar drucktechnischen Einbußen) auch online gibt; es muss lediglich nach 'sustainable energy' oder 'david mackay' gesucht werden. Dennoch gehört dieses Werk als gedrucktes Paperback in jeden Bücherschrank. Und sei es nur als Nachschlagewerk. Es räumt auf mit diversen (fast liebgewonnenen) Vorurteilen in der Klimadebatte; z.B. die 'schlimme' (aber irrelevante) Insektenatmung, der 'tolle' (aber untaugliche) Hybrid-PKW etc. pp. Der Autor David MacKay ist seit letztem Jahr (2009) Berater der britischen Regierung. Insofern hat das Buch einen leichten Touch aus britischer Perspektive; aber nur ganz leicht. Die Aufbereitung von Daten (z.B. der Pro-Kopf-Anteil klimarelevanter Emissionen weltweit, auch historisch kumulativ!) in überzeugenden Grafiken ist beispielhaft und unerreicht! Wie wahrhaftig dreckschleudernd sehen da auf einmal USA oder Deutschland im Vergleich mit den angeblichen Dreckschleudern China oder Indien aus...

It's best book ever to give you an idea of how to effectively use available resources specifically energy.