Overview
- Of interest to professionals and lay-readers alike
- Challenges fundamental assumptions
- Stimulates the discussion about our common future
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About this book
It is widely assumed that our consumer society can move from using fossil fuels to using renewable energy sources while maintaining the high levels of energy use to which we have become accustomed. This book details the reasons why this almost unquestioned assumption is seriously mistaken.
Chapters on wind, photovoltaic and solar thermal sources argue that these are not able to meet present electricity demands, let alone future demands. Even more impossible will be meeting the demand for liquid fuel. The planet’s capacity to produce biomass is far below what would be required. Chapter 6 explains why it is not likely that there will ever be a hydrogen economy, in view of the difficulties in generating sufficient hydrogen and especially considering the losses and inefficiencies in distributing it. Chapter 9 explains why nuclear energy is not the answer.
The discussion is then extended beyond energy to deal with the ways in which our consumer society is grossly unsustainable and unjust.
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Keywords
Table of contents (11 chapters)
Reviews
From the reviews:
"Ted Trainer, of the University of New South Wales, has made a valuable contribution to the literature of energy and resource depletion with his new book Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society. … Anyone interested in Energy Descent Planning, Community Powerdown responses and Economic Localisation should read this book." (www.zone5.org, September, 2008)
Authors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society
Authors: Ted Trainer
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5549-2
Publisher: Springer Dordrecht
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental Science, Earth and Environmental Science (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4020-5548-5Published: 02 August 2007
Softcover ISBN: 978-90-481-7389-1Published: 19 October 2010
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4020-5549-2Published: 26 July 2007
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VIII, 198
Topics: Environment, general, Renewable and Green Energy, Energy Policy, Economics and Management, Energy Systems, Power Electronics, Electrical Machines and Networks, Social Policy