Course: REEC 120 Sustainability and Renewable Energy

Unit 9 Overview

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In Unit 9 we are going to explore materials from the book Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air by David Mackay. You are expected to read five sections:

- “Can we live on renewables?” pages 103-112
- “Sustainable Fossil Fuels” pages 157-160
- “Nuclear?” pages 161-175
- “Living on Other Countries’ Renewables” pages 177-185
- “Hydroelectric” pages 55-56

The course to this point might appear, well ok, it is a bit disjointed. There are a lot of materials and ideas coming from a lot of different areas. The Live Seminars do not naturally flow with the book. The process should make more sense at the end of this unit, and so here we go!

Let us start on page 103 in “Can we live on renewables?” Looking at the total energy consumed by a resident in Britain the energy produced with renewable energy sources.  Yes, there are a ton of variables to account for but, on average the energy usage of an affluent person in England is 195kWh per day. In the United States that amount is…wait for it, wait for it… 250kWh per day.

So how does the production side stack up to the assumptions made in Mr. MacKay’s book?  On page 107, he shows the assumed rates and proposed values from a number of organizations that have explored the data. It seems Mr. MacKay has given some very optimistic values. Look at page 109, and we are in some serious concerns of consumption verse production.

So how can we balance out our problems? One proposed idea is to limit and be careful with our limited fossil fuels. Even with careful consolidation, coal is only a short-gap measure.  How about something more powerful: nuclear?