| | |  | Sustainable Housing | Home » » Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air | | | | | | | 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. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| David JC MacKay | | Paperback:
| 384 pages | | Publisher:
| UIT Cambridge Ltd. | | Publication Date:
| February 20, 2009 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0954452933 | | Product Length:
| 8.14 inches | | Product Width:
| 8.39 inches | | Product Height:
| 0.79 inches | | Product Weight:
| 2.28 pounds | | Package Length:
| 8.58 inches | | Package Width:
| 7.72 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.94 inches | | Package Weight:
| 2.07 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 43 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 43 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
53 of 55 found the following review helpful:
A Must Read if discussing sustainable or renewable energyMar 05, 2009
By Albion Exile
This book is an essential resource for understanding energy policy as it relates to conservation and to renewable resources.
I've just been listening to yet another "news" report pointing out that compact fluorescent light bulbs don't save much energy because an incandescent light bulb will also heat your house.
Coincidentally I had just read the part of this book dealing with this myth, so I was able to confidently mutter under my breath "true, but only in the winter (when you need the heating) and only if you are heating inefficiently using electricity."
This book puts real numbers to a lot of hand-waving arguments which are used to justify grandiose claims made for different renewable energy sources or to imply that we could save the world if we all just unplugged our mobile phone chargers. Some of the arguments stand up when the numbers are put in, but many don't. When you see what the numbers are, it becomes evident how unrealistic and ineffectual many of the proposals are.
Is it worth unplugging a power block when not in use? Can planes be made more efficient? How much space would solar farms or a wind farms need to occupy to meet our energy needs? How much agricultural land would be required for bio-diesel? All these questions (and many more) are answered.
What makes this book really stand out is that it converts energy amounts to comprehensible units (kilowatt-hours per person per day), supplies copious references for the numbers used, and provides the calculations on which the arguments are based. (Detailed calculations are presented in appendices for the math-averse and should be accessible to anybody with a basic knowledge of physics).
Note. Although this book is primarily aimed at a UK audience (energy consumption figures are based upon UK patterns, and land use proposals are related to UK locations), the discussions are of global applicability.
31 of 33 found the following review helpful:
Do the numbers!Mar 04, 2009
By Robert Hargraves
This book is essential for anyone thinking about energy policy. It excels because MacKay does not espouse one specific solution, but rather teaches the reader how to create solutions and evaluate them. He emphasizes that the numbers must add up -- total energy production must equal total energy consumption.
In a way the book is very simple. He leads the reader by the hand in estimating the energy requirements of society - transportation, heat, food, gadgets, and so on. He similarly helps you make credible estimates of achievable production from sources such as sunlight, tides, hydro, nuclear, wind, coal, and oil.
Like a good physicist, MacKay is able stand back and estimate these numbers top-down from first principles, with just enough depth to generate numbers that are credible to you and good enough for policy making.
The charts, graphs, tables, and pictures are extensive and clear.
If you have a particularly loved energy source [wind?] or a particularly hated one [coal?] you can "do the numbers" and build your own energy policy. The only requirement is that the numbers add up!
21 of 22 found the following review helpful:
Essential purchaseAug 09, 2009
By D. BULL
I work for an environmental watchdog in New Zealand. I flicked through the first few pages of "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" as it sat on a colleague's desk, took it back to my own desk and read it for two hours straight, got online and bought my own copy. It's that good.
For a start, this is how environmental science should be communicated; crystal clear text and honest graphs, with simplified theory and ballpark calculations that anyone can follow, backed up by empirical data as a check on results, real examples, frequent references, and explanations of limitations.
But the thinking behind it is every bit as good. MacKay is entirely pragmatic about energy supply and demand, never preachy, and he is game enough to admit when his results surprise even himself. If he is cautiously optimistic in his conclusions, it is because he has laid out a number of justifiable options.
Buy it. Better still, buy it and read it.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
 Approachable and Systematic Primer on Sustainable EnergyJul 27, 2010
By Thomas A. Sobieck
This book was amazingly well written, and frankly, it scared the hell out of me. In clear concise language the author describes many alternative energy sources without the flimsy "if everyone unplugged their cell phone chargers we could power X houses" foolishness. He used physics and graphs. To show the land costs of some of the energy projects he used *gasp* maps.
Our civilization needs to make hard decisions about our energy future. This book is an essential resource for citizens. It truly gives you the facts about energy sources without the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt that many activists and lobbyists rely on. I know that I'm going to send a copy to all my representatives and tell them to get moving on helping the US become energy independent (a cause I didn't care that much about until reading this book).
And, finally, this is a free book. If you own a Kindle DX, go download the PDF in high definition from the author's website. The print is a little small, but it was worth saving the $30.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
Sustainable energyApr 26, 2009
By David H. Rodgers
This is the only book I have read that really addresses the issues of sustainable energy. This book is a study of supply and demand with emphasis on the UK. Since much renewable energy is relatively diffuse the impact will vary with population density - high density countries will find it more difficult to allocate the needed real estate (my conclusion from reading the book).
The author starts from first principles and produces numerical estimates of how the energy/power we use is distributed between the needs of transport, heating/cooling, generation of products, etc. He then uses a similar approach to define what we use to generate the power we currently use. Following on he shows what proportion of UK land resources would need to be dedicated to make major impacts to the current production and consumption of energy using renewables. He recognizes the societal issues that will be raised by the dedication of large areas to renewable power generation but does not suggest solutions.
He suggested a few approaches to balance consumption and generation and concluded that for renewables we need to reduce the consumption by a sizeable amount. Whether this would be politically feasible is questionable in my opinion.
This should be a must read book for all politicians, corporate officials and NGO personnel before they produce more waffle that simply obfuscates the issues.
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