Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air
by David J.C. MacKay · first published 2009
88% recommend9% neutral2% critical
Why HN recommends it
Does the arithmetic on energy use and supply, comparing renewables, nuclear and fossil fuels in consistent units. Readable yet rigorous, with calculation appendices. Suits engineers and anyone wanting numbers.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Provides an overview of the sustainable energy crisis that is threatening the world's natural resources, explaining how energy consumption is estimated and how those numbers have been skewed by various factors and discussing alternate forms of energy that can and should be used.
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Mentions per year
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Surely you are joking, Mr. Feynman. D. MacKay: Sustainable energy - without the hot air. N. Taleb: Fooled by randomness. M. Karinthy: A journey round my skull.
on “Ask HN: Summer Reading Recommendations?” ↗…such as solar panels, heat pumps with ground drilling, industrial heat waste, etc. These are standard technologies being used in large parts of the world. For more info I recommend the excellent book Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air by MacKay (pdf freely available at withouthotair.com).
on “How Water Heaters Have Evolved into Grid-Scale Energy-Storage Devices (2014)” ↗…vehicles as they get now. If you're interested in these sort of questions, I highly recommend the following book which I got a few days ago. I'm finding it both sobering and exciting: http://www.amazon.com/Sustainable-Energy-Without-Hot-Air/dp/...
on “Ask HN: Why aren't we spending more time to research harnessing solar energy?” ↗David Mackay's "Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air" has good numbers comparing many different forms of energy storage: http://www.inference.eng.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/. It's a "hard-headed" engineering look at our energy options written by a physicist.…
on “To Slow Global Warming, We Need Nuclear Power (Op-Ed)” ↗David MacKay's Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air
on “Ask HN: Book recommendations for renewable energy and climate change?” ↗The author Hannah Ritchie works on Our World In Data and also publishes the fantastic Sustainability by Numbers substack. It's in the same vein as the late, great David MacKay's Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air. This tool has its own recent substack post. See the comments too, especially the one by Chris Preist that contextualizes the energy usage of streaming video (a topic that has also been discussed on…
on “Does that use a lot of energy?” ↗Sustainable Energy – without the hot air, by David J. C. MacKay.
on “Ask HN: Book recommendations for renewable energy and climate change?” ↗David MacKay's book "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" goes into a huge amount of detail about plane efficiency http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/cC/page_269... It's also a great book
on “Airplanes can't get much more efficient” ↗…effectively utilized. Nuclear's a wildcard, though I'm generally skeptical. There are a number of sources which give detailed breakouts of renewable energy potential or possible scenarios. David MacKay's Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, and Jacobson & Delucchi's "Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power" give a pretty good overview. Turns out that with solar + wind and some form(s) of storage, you can approach…
on “Wind and solar power are even more expensive than is commonly thought” ↗Also wanted to add the invaluable http://www.amazon.com/Sustainable-Energy-Without-Hot-Air/dp/...
on “What can a technologist do about climate change?” ↗"Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air" by David MacKay - available for download (http://www.inference.org.uk/sustainable/book/tex/sewtha.pdf). It really illustrates the enormity of the energy problem and the changes that are needed to make…
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗Highly recommend reading sustainable energy without the hot air by the late David MacKay. Even though dated, he really puts numbers behind every broad stroke assumption that causes pause
on “Carbon Capture and Storage is necessary to keep global warming below 2°C” ↗…I’m thankful for their meticulous work. Any remaining errors are my responsibility. The late David MacKay of Cambridge University inspired me with his wit and insights. I recommend his phenomenal book Sustainable Energy—Without the Hot Air to anyone who wants to dig deeper into the subject of energy and climate change. Jabe Blumenthal and Karen Fries are the two former Microsoft colleagues who organized my first learning session on climate…
on “Bill Gates: Nuclear power will ‘absolutely’ be politically acceptable again” ↗…options says that no, there aren't easy ways out. AI alone won't save us, aps won't save us, unsubstantiated claims of dematerialisation won't save us. You could look to sources such as David MacKay, Sustainable Energy --- Without the Hot Air, who made a similarly hardboiled analysis for the UK. Given rates of energy consumption, touted measures like "unplug your electronics" are not enough. This isn't a problem that's solved by a bunch…
on “The Modern World Can't Exist Without Fossil Fuels” ↗Indeed. I was briefly tempted to create a globalised version of David MacKay's classic "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" under the title "How to save the world and get rich trying", but (a) there's no point because all the business people already noticed, and (b) someone else thought of that name before I got around to…