When we eliminate all that unnecessary production, and shift much of the remain­der to backyards, local small business and cooperatives, and into the non-cash sector of the economy, most of us will probably need to go to work for money in an office or a factory for only one or two days paid work per […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

It is usually assumed that windmills will perform at better than 30% capacity on average; i. e., that a mill that can generate 750 kW in its optimum or “peak” condi­tions will have an average output of 225 MW. However a mill’s capacity is mainly a function of its location, and a key question therefore […]

This is true, and important. Every kW of wind power replaces coal or nuclear power. However Ferguson (2006) gives the following puzzling figures. Between 1990 and 2003 Denmark increased wind generation to equal 18% of electricity use and per capita carbon dioxide emissions fell 0.3%, to 10.9 tonnes. UK wind generation rose to 0.5% of […]

The foregoing discussion has only dealt with annual average and peak capacities, and ideal conditions. Solar thermal technology is clearly very promising in the hottest regions, but as with all solar technologies the crucial questions are what con­tribution can be made all through the year, and especially in winter, and under what conditions and at […]