Many of you probably know about this free book and have already downloaded a copy and actually read it[1], but let me point the rest you to it.
The book is David McKay’s Sustainable Energy – without the hot air. You can get the book from the above link as one ginormous PDF (roughly 50MB), or in smaller sections.
From the preface:
I’m concerned about cutting UK emissions of twaddle – twaddle about sustainable energy. Everyone says getting off fossil fuels is important, and we’re all encouraged to “make a difference,” but many of the things that allegedly make a difference don’t add up.
Twaddle emissions are high at the moment because people get emotional (for example about wind farms or nuclear power) and no-one talks about numbers. Or if they do mention numbers, they select them to sound big, to make an impression, and to score points in arguments, rather than to aid thoughtful discussion.
This is a straight-talking book about the numbers. The aim is to guide the reader around the claptrap to actions that really make a difference and to policies that add up.
I don’t know if I will love or hate this book, but based on the above quote and a very perfunctory skim of a few early chapters, it sounds like my kind of work.
[1] Just to be clear: I hadn’t gotten around to downloading the book until this morning. Someone recommended it to me on Facebook (thanks, Paul!), so I thought I’d give it a mention and bubble it up near the top of my to-do list.
I’m very very surprised. You sound like MacKay very often. I think you will like it.
Whether it was intended that way or not, I’ll take it as a compliment.
I’ve heard a lot of good comments about the book in general, and I’m really looking forward to it, as soon as I finish the current pile of journal articles.
I started skimming the book last night and wound up spending most of the day reading it. It does a very good job of painting the difficulty/enormity of the energy problem ON A PER PERSON BASIS. It is written to the British reader, but the lessons apply to all.
I just started the book last night, although I didn’t get very far (not a reflection of the book). I really like where (I think) he’s going. Strong emphasis on numbers, plus what I call humanizing them–choosing units that newcomers can easily grasp, keeping numbers in context (as in per person values), not getting obsessed with useless precision, etc.
Plus, any book that refers to the planet Dorkon and uses all those colorful English expressions can’t be bad.