Unemployment and poverty could easily be eliminated. (There are none in the Israeli Kibbutz settlements.) We would have neighbourhood work coordination committees who would make sure that all who wanted work had a share of the work that needed doing. Far less work would need to be done than at present. (In our present society […]
Category: Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain A Consumer Society
THE NEW VALUES AND WORLD VIEW
The biggest and most difficult changes will have to be in values and outlooks. The foregoing changes in lifestyles, economy, geography, agriculture and politics cannot work unless people think and act according to some quite different attitudes and habits compared to those dominant today. It is not possible to design a sustainable and just society […]
LAND AREAS AND FOOTPRINT
It should be evident now that a meaningful discussion of the role of renewable energy in the alternative, sustainable society could not have been undertaken effectively before giving the foregoing account of the global predicament and thus of the radically different general form the new society must take. Those prerequisites establish the need for great […]
THOUGHTS ON THE TRANSITION PROCESS
It would be very easy to establish and run The Simpler Way – if that was what we wanted to do. It does not involve complicated technology and it does not require solutions to difficult technical problems, such as how to get a fusion reactor to work. lt does not require vast bureaucracies or huge […]
SO WHAT CAN WE DO HERE AND NOW?
The first thing everyone can do is to talk about these issues as much as possible. We urgently need to get the limits analysis of our situation and the desirability of The Simpler Way onto the agenda of public attention. But the most effective contribution will be to initiate in our localities some of the […]
EUROPE
From the European Wind Energy Atlas (1991) it can be estimated that Europe, excluding Scandinavia probably has 450,000 square km of land with 6.5 m/s or better average wind speed. (However Grubb and Meyer, 1993, p. 193-4, indicate a much lower figure for good European wind area; 90,000 square km of Class 6 wind.) If […]
THE PROBLEM OF THE SPIKE IN PEAK DEMAND
As societies become richer, people demand more air conditioning and this is causing a major headache for electricity suppliers. On the very few days of the year when air conditioning demand goes through the roof, supply capacity might have to be some 20% greater than the level of demand most of the time. In Australia […]
The Intensity of Solar Radiation: The Start-up Threshold Problem
The most important factor determining the winter/summer difference in trough performance would seem to involve the “threshold intensity” needed for system startup. As soon as a PV panel begins to receive weak sunlight it will generate some electricity. But until the energy delivered by the solar thermal plant’s reflectors reaches a specific level the turbines […]