Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air

In the process of writing my book on renewables I read quite a few others, including Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air (2009) by Dr. David JC MacKay. This is a fanstically worthwhile project by a professor of physics at Cambridge with a wonderful sense of humor, who presents his case in an incredibly bright and witty manner.

The premise of the book is answering the question: Could the people of the UK sustain themselves with renewable energy generated within the UK itself? The discussion then proceeds to do what I thought about doing in my book, i.e., lay out all the basics of energy for a newcomer to the subject. It really is done in a most clever and entertaining way, yet it does not lack the rigor that one would expect from a professional of this calibre.

I tried to take a different tack in my book, however, insofar as, in truth, the question at hand is moot, for several reasons surrounding the economics and politics of energy. For instance:

To answer the question, don’t you first have to know what are you willing to pay for energy: financially, aesthetically, and ecologically? And isn’t that a factor of how you calculate the costs of our traditional energy solutions?

and

Aren’t there special conditions in the UK (population density, latitude, average wind velocity, etc.) that would tend to produce a different answer to this question had the author been writing about the US, or China, or any other country/landmass in the world?

Of course.

Yet, trust me, this is a great read from a terrifically intelligent and insightful fellow. If everyone could just read his chapter on global warming, the world would be a much better place.