Sustainable Energy Contents

I Numbers, not adjectives

• Motivations
• The balance sheet 
• Cars 
• Wind 
• Planes 
• Solar
• Heating and cooling 
• Hydroelectricity 
• Light
• Offshore wind 
• Gadgets 
• Wave 
• Food and farming 
• Tide 
• Stuff 
• Geothermal
• Public services
• Can we live on renewables?

II Making a difference

• Every BIG helps
• Better transport 
• Smarter heating 
• Efficient electricity use
• Sustainable fossil fuels? 
• Nuclear? 
• Living in other countries’ renewables?
• Fluctuations and storage 
• Five energy plans for Britain
• Putting costs in perspective
• What to do now 
• Energy plans for Europe, America, and the World
• The last thing we should talk about
• Saying yes

III Technical chapters

• A Cars II 
• B Wind II
• C Planes II 
• D Solar II
• E Heating II 
• F Waves II
• G Tide II 
• H Stuff II

IV Useful data 

• I Quick reference 
• J Populations and areas
• K UK energy history

Preface to Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air PDF

What’s Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air eBook about?

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.

This is a free book

I didn’t write this book to make money. I wrote it because sustainable energy is important. If you would like to have the book for free for your own use, please help yourself: it’s on the internet at www.withouthotair.com.

This is a free book in a second sense: you are free to use all the material in this book, except for the cartoons and the photos with a named photographer, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence.

(The cartoons and photos are excepted because the authors have generally given me permission only to include their work, not to share it under a Creative Commons license.)

You are especially welcome to use my materials for educational purposes. My website includes separate high-quality files for each of the figures in the book.

Download Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air by David JC Mackay PDF Free.