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I was surfing some energy related blogs yesterday when I ran across a link to David MacKay's web-book Sustainable Energy--without the hot air. While long in terms of pages, it is quite skimmable and packed with lots of easy to read tables and figures.
David
MacKay does an excellent job of relating the enormity/difficulty of
decarbonizing our energy system TO EACH INDIVIDUAL PERSON. His audience
is clearly the "average" British citizen and his examples revolve
around his intended audience. MacKay breaks down the mind numbingly
large national energy flows to the per person level. He uses simple
round numbers that cut through the complexity of a national energy
system without losing the essential reality of our current energy usage
and challenging prospects for decarbonizing it.
After providing
a relatively thorough assessment of the British consumer's options for
living sustainably--given current sustainable technology and throwing
in some technologies that will likely become available in the medium
term--which revolve around better (in carbon terms) transport and more
efficient heating/cooling, plus "all of the above" renewable generating
technologies, MacKay gives a brief overview of the rest of the world
can follow suit. It is worth noting that efficiency improvements (2/3
from converting to EVs + mass transit, 1/3 from more efficient
heating--a.k.a. heat pumps) are ~ equal to "realistic" renewable
resources.
MacKay effectively quashes the notion of British
energy independence--in the sustainable energy sense that the island is
able to generate as much as it uses. But he does hold out the hope that
"imported" solar energy from deserts/North Africa could balance the
British carbon energy equation in the long term.
As a major
solar enthusiast I was disappointed to see that prospects for solar in
Britain appear limited, although importing energy from solar farms
located in desserts could be the *wildcard* in allowing Brits to live
sustainably (i.e. without carbon/coal).
Nevertheless MacKay's
analysis appears sound. The challenges are major, but if we do the big
sensible things (EVs, solar thermal, heat pumps, lower the thermostat
in winter etc.) simply becoming AWARE of our horrendous energy
appetites seems to have done wonders for MacKay's personal energy use
and we ignore the rest (MacKay really resents people who distract him
with myopic/trivial energy "fixes" or else he had a bad childhood
experience with an undercharged phone) it just looks possible to leave
a functioning planet to our children and grandchildren.
