“Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air: A Sobering Look at the New Energy Economy” is the title of a remarkable  book

By Graham Russell

It is written by David McKay, a Professor in the Department of Physics at Cambridge University,  and should be essential reading for the (apparently large) number of people who believe that within a few years our energy can, should and will be generated exclusively from pollution-free, secure, renewable resources like the sun, the wind, algae and the tides.

The introduction to the book says: “the aim is to get around the claptrap to actions that really make a difference and to policies that add up”. Now, claptrap is not a word you often hear in the U.S. but, being a Brit myself (and a Cambridge alum), I understand it very well and there’s just an enormous amount of it flying around concerning “renewables” these days.

McKay does a great job of using simple numbers to show how silly some of the over-hyped projections are concerning the role renewables can play in our energy equation in the coming years (which he correctly argues will be limited at best). For instance: “to provide one quarter of our current energy consumption by growing energy crops……. would require 75% of Britain to be covered with biomass plantations.”

The book does NOT argue that we shouldn’t be pushing toward a more sustainable energy economy: rather, it’s an attempt to direct attention to the need for a carefully thought out, practical, measured and properly quantified approach to reducing our dependence on conventional fossil fuels. In short, we need an energy policy, something that certainly doesn’t exist in the U.S. and apparently doesn’t in the UK either.

I was witness to some of the “claptrap” a couple of weeks ago when I was fortunate enough to attend Globe 2010 in Vancouver, North America’s largest conference on the environment and sustainability. I participated as a moderator in an all-morning session featuring 20 presenters who covered a wide range of smart grid initiatives in both Canada and the U.S. There was a lot of really interesting stuff and some truly enormous numbers thrown around about the amount of investment being made in these projects.

Of course, it was clear that the vast majority of that investment is coming from governments, and that private investment in smart grid ventures is limited mostly to niche technology plays. One of the VCs in the audience asked the members of one panel about the projected ROI on one particularly massive project shortly to get under way and how the government borrowing to fund it was eventually going to be repaid. After a lengthy silence and some embarrassed looks among the panelists, one of them allowed that “those are debates we really ought to be having sometime soon”!!

What you’ll see is that McKay’s book is an attempt to persuade the renewable fanatics to get down from their philosophical and political soapboxes, stop tossing around exaggerated numbers and projections about the potential for renewable energy to change the energy equation in the US and elsewhere and engage in some sensible debate about what’s practical and in the best interests of taxpayers and consumers.

You can find a 10-page Summary here. Or go to the book’s web site.

Graham Russell is the Executive Director of CORE Colorado. He has nearly 25 years of CEO experience, mostly in the environmental services industry. In the late 1980s he implemented a successful consolidation in the then-emerging environmental laboratory industry. Recently he has consulted in the recycling and environmental services sectors. Russell has a B.A. from Cambridge University and an M.B.A. from the Cranfield School of Management in the UK.