Sustainable Energy – without the hot air by David MacKay (PDF)

Description

Addressing the sustainable energy crisis in an objective manner, this enlightening book analyzes the relevant numbers and organizes a plan for change on both a personal level and an international scale–for Europe, the United States, and the world. In case study format, this informative reference answers questions surrounding nuclear energy, the potential of sustainable fossil fuels, and the possibilities of sharing renewable power with foreign countries. While underlining the difficulty of minimizing consumption, the tone remains positive as it debunks misinformation and clearly explains the calculations of expenditure per person to encourage people to make individual changes that will benefit the world at large. If you’ve thrown your hands up in despair thinking no solution is possible, then read this book – it’s an honest, realistic, and humorous discussion of all our energy options.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐For a book about energy policy written by a physicist, this is surprisingly humorous. Mackay’s approach to energy production and consumption is straight-forward and pragmatic. He has lots of graphics, some very useful. He presents different blends of energy sources for future production and shows how it could potentially meet demand. I like Mullin’s Energy For Future Presidents

⭐better, but this is a close second.Perhaps best of all, Mackay gives you a full and abridged version in the same book. His optional supplemental sections in the back provide more technical details if you want to see it. It’s where he “shows his work” essentially.

⭐I read the free e-book first and liked it so well that I bought the paperback book to get more readable graphs and tables. It is absolutely the most factual and understandable book about sustainable energy that I have come across in 10 years of reading in this area. David MacKay avoids adjectives totally by substituting straightforward conversions of varying types of power into kilowatts and gigawatts and of energy into kilowatt-hours/day. He also calculates the land area required to implement each type of sustainable energy to weed out what he calls “country sized” energy sources. His coverage is unbiased and comprehensive. This is a must-read for anyone that wants to get past sound bites and understand how to replace current fossil fuels — whether you are worried about global warming or just running out of fossil fuels themselves. Furthermore, his straightforward and entertaining writing style makes it a fun read.One note: The book is written in England from that perspective. Some of the area comparisons are based on parts of England and will require conversion to square miles and states for those of us in the metrically-challenged US. This does not detract at all from the discussions.One small irritation is that he constantly points out the fact that the per-capita energy consumption in Britain is about half of that in the US. This is partly fair due to our love affair with central heating, muscle cars, pickups and SUVs. However, having personally experienced temperatures of +113F (45C) and -30F (-34C) and driven 70+ miles (113 kilometers) between towns in the US west, I think that at least some of the criticism is overdone. A more fair per-capita comparison might be taken from New England in the US, since both are densely-populated areas in northern maritime climates warmed somewhat by the Gulf Stream. In addition, the solution he proposes to replace all transportation with electric vehicles would not work in the spread-out Western US without either radically new battery technology or battery exchanges.Despite these small gripes this is a must-read book for energy literacy, whether you download the free e-book or purchase the book itself.

⭐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.

⭐How are we going to switch to sustainable energy so as to avert the negative effects of climate change? This is what the late Cambridge physicist and Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Department for Energy and Climate Change, David MacKay sets out to do in ‘Sustainable Energy – without the hot air’. He does this by looking at the physical potential and limits of sustainable alternatives to powering present consumption patterns and desires, with the aid of simplifying assumptions and largely back-of-the-envelope calculations about each possible energy source and the main things that demand energy, such as transport, heating and electricity. The advantage of this transparent approach is that, as he explicitly states, readers can understand the methods behind such calculations and use these methods to do their own calculations. However, if you’re happy to trust his workings and are only interested in his results, the disadvantage of course is that you have to wade through pages of calculations to find what you’re after. Even so, it is worth noting his assumptions and the caveats to his workings, not least the one that the politics and economics of the energy options he explores are not considered.The TLDR summary of the book is that MacKay thinks that we can maintain present consumption levels sustainably, at least scientifically speaking. That is, there is sufficient energy from sustainable sources (defined as renewable energy or non-renewable energy sources that could be sustained for 1000 years at consumption rates growing annually by today’s growth rates) globally to power a fleet of electric vehicles and sufficient technological advances to store and redirect this energy as appropriate. A key finding, indeed, is that the UK is unlikely to have enough sustainable energy to meet its needs, and so will have to import energy from other countries.I think the strengths of this book thus is its wide coverage of options and energy conundrums, transparent workings, debunking of various myths and indeed important warnings to the reader to be mindful of the ‘hot air’ and agendas behind the claims of some purported environmentalists. I definitely walked away feeling much better informed about the energy problems and possible sustainable solutions. The book is stuffed with interesting trivia that may be new to many readers e.g. Britain’s original coalfields were comparable to Saudi Arabia’s oil fields, and as a result, Britain is the country responsible for the second highest contribution to the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, historically speaking. Likewise, the finding that jetliners are four times more efficient in transporting people than ocean liners is interesting, even if sea-going freight is far more efficient than freight delivered by air.The main weakness in my view however is the inconsistent consideration of the economic or political implications of MacKay’s proposals. Most of the time, MacKay ignores these considerations. For example, he says that there is sufficient sunshine in the Middle East and North Africa to meet the 2006 (when the book was written) energy needs of Europe and North Africa. But is such a setup politically and economically desirable? The concentration of oil in the Middle East has surely been a factor in the many conflicts there (and nothing emits CO2 like a war), while as of April 2017 much of North Africa is politically unstable. The political and economic options for constructing and protecting sufficient solar farms in the area are certainly not straightforward or cheap. Sometimes however, he does consider the political aspects of energy choices, notably in the five energy plans for Britain that he proposes, which illustrate how different energy choices could satisfy different desires (e.g. varying levels of domestic wind farms, nuclear power stations and imported energy). He also casually suggests that lowering consumption levels and hence demand for energy would be “unsellable”, which is highly debatable in my opinion.Inevitably for a book written in 2006, its advice has dated somewhat: cheating car companies has meant that diesel has not been the ‘green’ solution hoped for, with an air pollution crisis in many UK cities instead. And of course, no-one in 2006 was predicting Brexit, which will occupy the UK civil service fully for the next few years at least, sapping the time available to make choices about sustainable energy. Indeed, the fact that surveys show many of those who voted for Brexit are also sceptical about climate change may result in the UK government putting off difficult decisions about energy choices, but we’ll see.Nevertheless, for a purely scientific overview of the pros, cons and potential of meeting present and future demands for energy from a range of sustainable options, as well as plenty of interesting facts, historical and more recent, ‘Sustainable Energy – without the hot air’ is very much worth a read.

⭐MacKay delves into the fundamental engineering, thermodynamics, and physical limits of net zero options to build a sustainable energy future. The book is over a decade old now and some of the performance assumptions in areas like wind, solar, and batteries are outdated given the huge declines since publication, but the fundamental physics is sound and provides an enlightening take on energy technologies which helps the reader look beyond the many claims and counter claims in this most thorny of subjects. ‘Sustainable Energy’ is one of my favourite introductions to the technology of net zero. Full review see: https://net-zero.blog/bookshelf/sustainable-energy-without-the-hot-air

⭐I bought this from Amazon when it originally came out and accidentally ordered two copies, a mistake which I am eternally grateful for because frequently lean on both copies. Although the argument has moved on slightly since this was written, most of the arguments are still valid, and the way that he reduces complicated concepts to simple numbers is utterly brilliant and compelling. I’d give this book 7 stars if I could.

⭐I cannot praise this book highly enough. With admirable clarity, honesty and lack of bias, David MacKay sets out the facts surrounding energy consumption and renewable energy generation. He explains, with the help of clear and not overly complicated mathematics, how much energy our different activities consume. He also explains, in a similar way, the capacity of different sustainable and non-carbon energy sources to meet that consumption. He enables the reader to understand the facts and make comparisons and informed moral choices.The result is quite sobering reading. For example, after reading and understanding this book you will realise that at present rates of individual consumption (flying abroad, driving around a lot, buying lots of consumer goods and turning up the thermostat) there is no way we can meet our energy needs from renewables without also including nuclear power in the mix and/or completely industrialising our landscape (assuming we want to stop using fossil fuels). However MacKay is NOT a doom-and-gloom merchant. The facts speak for themselves. While ‘climate change denial’ is not logically justifiable after reading this book, MacKay’s view is: okay we’ve got a problem, so let’s look at the facts and see what can be done. But let’s not obfuscate and cover it up with platitudes like “we’ve got a huge amount of wind in Britain” ‘ – as he shows, ‘huge’ is relative, and it turns out that our consumption is a whole lot huger.The book is beautifully designed and illustrated with clear diagrams expressing all the information you need to understand this topic; all of it useful, and some of it alarming and/or surprising.It should be compulsory reading for students of Year 11 upwards, and should be tax deductable for the rest of us! Having said that, it is also in the public domain so you don’t have to buy the book; you can find it online and download the PDF.

⭐I read this as a (free) ebook but the diagrams and graphs just don’t work on an e-reader, so I got this hard-copy version. A lot of it is very dated (2008 I think) but a lot concerns things that won’t change, eg the amount of energy available from wind or the power output of the sun per sq. metre. so it’s still relevant. Really well written with a healthy degree of scientific scepticism and a dash of dry humour. Highly recommended.

Keywords

Free Download Sustainable Energy – without the hot air in PDF format
Sustainable Energy – without the hot air PDF Free Download
Download Sustainable Energy – without the hot air 2016 PDF Free
Sustainable Energy – without the hot air 2016 PDF Free Download
Download Sustainable Energy – without the hot air PDF
Free Download Ebook Sustainable Energy – without the hot air