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Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet Mark Lynas See book keywords and concepts

Most people believe that tackling climate change is simply a case of building enough wind turbines, fitting solar panels to enough roofs or recycling more of their glass bottles. Yet the calculations of Jeffrey Dukes, highlighting the raw figures of fossil energy use, indicate that the reality is somewhat different. In a wider sense, one could argue that the whole economic system of modern Western society is founded on denial - in particular the denial of resource limitations.

In the UK, the scientist James Lovelock is at least consistent; though he fulminates against wind turbines, he is a passionate advocate of nuclear power. With each side offering its miracle energy cure, the public is left with a false impression - that we simply have to choose one of the touted solutions and the problem will be solved. The reality is that only a combination of serious energy efficiency and a wide variety of new technologies offer any hope of a way out of the crisis.

Wind-generated power could electrolyse water, producing clean hydrogen for fuel-cell-driven cars - but this would require another 4 million 1 MW wind turbines to displace a wedge-worth of petrol and diesel fuel. A massive programme of reforestation, combined with an end to the clear-cutting of tropical forests, might also deliver a wedge of carbon emissions reductions. All of these approaches have their pros and cons, of course.

Energy efficiency measures have fewer drawbacks - but improving efficiency in cars and buildings can have the surprising effect of increasing power consumption overall by making energy cheaper than it would otherwise be. wind turbines are visually intrusive, and onshore wind farms tend to be sited in highland areas which are visible for great distances. Offshore wind installations can be sited below the horizon if the seabed is shallow enough to allow it, but are more expensive to build and operate.

We need to construct 2 million 1 MW wind turbines to generate electricity, and cover 2 million hectares of land with solar panels. We need to stop the destruction of tropical forests, and we need to dramatically increase tree cover elsewhere. And we need to make a difficult choice between injecting billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide underground and investing in 1,400 new gas power plants to produce electricity. All this, and we can hope to stabilise emissions in 2055 at today's levels, breaking the continual upward growth of a 'business as usual' path.

This is not impossible - we can double the quantity of wind turbines, and further reduce the numbers of vehicles on the roads. We can cut our need for energy by living less consumptive lifestyles, and by adopting more localised patterns of behaviour. As Socolow and Pacala emphasise, we already have the technologies and the social know-how to achieve this transition.

Safe Trip to Eden: Ten Steps to Save Planet Earth from the Global Warming Meltdown David Steinman See book keywords and concepts

Today, when you invest in GE, you're also investing in fuel cells, wind turbines, and photovoltaic technology. Buying shares in Chevron—with its energy conservation and renewable energy divisions and its widely recognized high environmental standards—or BP and Shell, both of whom are investing heavily in solar, is buying green equity. It isn't that these companies are by any means environmentally perfect—and in this book I've tried hard not to sugarcoat?

The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century James Howard Kunstler See book keywords and concepts

Thanks to fossil fuels, you could produce the special alloy metals needed to make the turbines, and you could run factories to mass-produce them and make the replacement parts —because wind turbines are notoriously finicky and break down a lot—and you could set up the installations using petroleum-powered heavy equipment, backhoes and front-end loaders and bucket trucks and what-have-you to prepare the site and jockey the machines into place. What happens without the fantastic technological support of the oil economy in the background?

The advanced nations could consciously commit themselves to dedicating some portion of the world's remaining oil endowment to the production of wind turbines, solar arrays, and batteries—but don't count on it happening. American leaders haven't paid attention to energy issues since the oil crises of the 1970s. It's hard to believe that we are suddenly going to behave more intelligently. Anyway, most of that remaining oil is not under American control. We are already fighting over it. What happens when the people of the world are locked in conflict over the remaining oil?

The energy captured by wind turbines can be captured or stored in ways other than electric batteries, especially during those times when a wind "farm" (a collection of windmills) is producing a surplus beyond what customers are using. One possibility is pumping water up into storage reservoirs to operate hydroturbines in offline periods. But this depends on favorable topography. It wouldn't work in Nebraska. And a substantial amount of energy would be lost in the conversion process.

How do we get exotic ores, chromium, titanium, from the few places that possess them to the foundries where the alloys are manufactured in order to manufacture wind turbines? What do we use to power the furnaces? Coal? Coal is generally mined using diesel-powered equipment. Well, artificial diesel fuel can be made from coal, or one can reinvent coal-powered steam shovels and the like, but it would be necessary to ramp up whole new industries on a shrinking petroleum energy base. Then what happens when the coal runs out? The coal industry predicts that the U.S.

Sure, it is possible to generate electricity using wind turbines. Yes, European nations have made major investments in "wind farms." Denmark was getting 18 percent of its electricity from wind in 2003, the most per capita of any country. Germany was producing more than 10,000 megawatts from its installations, Spain more than 3,000. This is all possible because the world has been at or around the historic peak of oil production, meaning the oil economy at the millennium was at its most robust just when these wind farms were set up.

Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century Alex Steffen See book keywords and concepts

It's true that photovoltaics are ineffective at night, and wind turbines are nonproductive in still air, but when used together, alternative energy sources can deliver a steady flow of power. No one source of renewable, clean power is going to single-handedly replace our current energy infrastructure. Instead, we're going to see a mix of technologies, policies, and systems. This will make the resulting energy grid more flexible—but the political path to this future will be challenging, jjf Solar Power M* The sun sends a tremendous amount of power to every square meter of the earth every day.

Its thirty wind turbines can generate enough power for 100,000 homes while reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 245,815 tons (223,000 metric tons) per year. But London Array, which is still in the planning stages, will easily steal the spotlight. The project expects to use 270 turbines to power more than 750,000 homes, a quarter of them in greater London. At 1,000 megawatts, London Array would prevent the release of more than 2 million tons (1.8 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide every year. If the project goes through, it will be fully operational by 2011.

Right: One of Magenn's flying wind turbines. Opposite: Wave power represents a vast, untapped energy source. Tidal Power ¦m Few people are familiar with "hydro-kinetic" energy, the use of water motion to generate power. The potential is great, but commercial systems are only now starting to be developed. Questions remain, too, as to the impact of hydrokinetic-power systems on ocean environments. However, hydrokinetic-power systems don't clutter scenic areas like wind-power systems, and they are far less intermittent than either wind- or solar-power systems.

If houses with solar panels on their roofs and wind turbines in their backyards make you think of communes and hippies, your mental picture is out-of-date. Anyone with a bit of a do-it-yourself mindset and a little disposable income can benefit from installing a home-energy system. These setups can save you real money over the long term and provide most or all of your power in clean, homegrown ways. For some of us, going off the grid isn't a matter of home improvement or rebellion against price-gouging utilities—it's the only option.

We can add building-integrated solar-photovoltaic shingles, rooftop panels, or wall/window units, and we can install rooftop or wall-mounted wind turbines. Solar photovoltaics are the most common form of home-generated power, and scores of books describe them. Many homeowners are proud to have solar panels bolted to their roofs; those who want the energy benefits without the bolt-on look can now use building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPVs). Most of these are "solar shingles," which do indeed cover your roof like shingles.

Windsave and Renewable Devices are two UK manufacturers who sell small wind turbines designed for the home. The Swift windmill from Renewable Devices is particularly attractive because it is specifically designed to reduce the noise and the potentially building-damaging vibrations that older small wind-turbine designs are known for. A small turbine is enough to offset a good portion of electricity use in a typical home. But when a microturbine is combined with a building-integrated solar system and high-efficiency consumption—relatively inexpensive.

The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century James Howard Kunstler See book keywords and concepts

You can't manufacture metal wind turbines using wind energy technology. You can't make lead-acid storage batteries for solar electric systems using any known solar energy systems. The pseudo-fuel hydrogen will be considered in its own special category, as the popular hopes about it are based on higher orders of unreality. The so-called "hydrogen economy" centered around hydrogen-powered cars, as promised by President Bush in his 2003 State of the Union message, is at this point a fantasy, and an especially dangerous one insofar as it promotes complacency about the predicament we face.

Earth Right H. Patricia Hynes See book keywords and concepts

The world market for wind turbines doubled every year from 1981 to 1985, reaching the equivalent of one coal-fired plant per year. All this has been developed without the government subsidies that nuclear power has enjoyed and the artificially low costs from which fossil fuels have benefited, because the tab for environmental damage they cause is picked up elsewhere. If renewable sources were used to their capability, U.S. C02 emissions would be reduced 2.8 percent by the year 2000. WHY NOT NUCLEAR POWER?

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