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Our Renewable Future: Laying the Path for One Hundred Percent Clean Energy
The next few decades will see a profound energy transformation throughout the world. By the end of the century (and perhaps sooner), we will shift from fossil fuel dependence to rely primarily on renewable sources like solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal power. Driven by the need to avert catastrophic climate change and by the depletion of easily accessible oil, coal, and natural gas, this transformation will entail a major shift in how we live. What might a 100% renewable future look like? Which technologies will play a crucial role in our energy future? What challenges will we face in this transition? And how can we make sure our new system is just and equitable?
In Our Renewable Future, energy expert Richard Heinberg and scientist David Fridley explore the challenges and opportunities presented by the shift to renewable energy. Beginning with a comprehensive overview of our current energy system, the authors survey issues of energy supply and demand in key sectors of the economy, including electricity generation, transportation, buildings, and manufacturing. In their detailed review of each sector, the authors examine the most crucial challenges we face, from intermittency in fuel sources to energy storage and grid redesign. The book concludes with a discussion of energy and equity and a summary of key lessons and steps forward at the individual, community, and national level.
The transition to clean energy will not be a simple matter of replacing coal with wind power or oil with solar; it will require us to adapt our energy usage as dramatically as we adapt our energy sources. Our Renewable Future is a clear-eyed and urgent guide to this transformation that will be a crucial resource for policymakers and energy activists.
In Our Renewable Future, energy expert Richard Heinberg and scientist David Fridley explore the challenges and opportunities presented by the shift to renewable energy. Beginning with a comprehensive overview of our current energy system, the authors survey issues of energy supply and demand in key sectors of the economy, including electricity generation, transportation, buildings, and manufacturing. In their detailed review of each sector, the authors examine the most crucial challenges we face, from intermittency in fuel sources to energy storage and grid redesign. The book concludes with a discussion of energy and equity and a summary of key lessons and steps forward at the individual, community, and national level.
The transition to clean energy will not be a simple matter of replacing coal with wind power or oil with solar; it will require us to adapt our energy usage as dramatically as we adapt our energy sources. Our Renewable Future is a clear-eyed and urgent guide to this transformation that will be a crucial resource for policymakers and energy activists.
248 pages, Paperback
First published June 2, 2016
28 people are currently reading
234 people want to read
About the author
Richard Heinberg
51 books95 followersRichard William Heinberg is an American journalist and educator who has written extensively on energy, economic, and ecological issues, including oil depletion. He is the author of 13 books, and presently serves as the senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 22, 2018
"Our renewable future" is a optimistic look at how we can we move away from fossil fuels and still continue to prosper. It focusses entirely on solar and wind energy as they are the only well-researched and developed renewable energy technologies for the next few decades at least. The problems with each energy source were discussed at depth: the intermittence of solar and wind, the problem of energy storage and inefficiencies involved in it, problems in seamless integration solar and wind into the grid.
Electricity is only 20% of world's energy consumption, Richard also discusses in depth about other industrial places where fossil fuels are used, transport, air travel, manufacturing and packaging. Within the next few decades, it is possible that we can put more renewable sources into the grid but going completely off the fossil fuels requires considerable research in how these industrial processes can be modified to use renewable sources.
Richard also makes it clear that we as a society might have to adopt to a less-energy future. We have to make structural changes in our society, how we construct buildings and how we travel to work needs a deep thinking in renewable future. Recommended book for people who want to know about renewables and various feasible energy technologies.
Electricity is only 20% of world's energy consumption, Richard also discusses in depth about other industrial places where fossil fuels are used, transport, air travel, manufacturing and packaging. Within the next few decades, it is possible that we can put more renewable sources into the grid but going completely off the fossil fuels requires considerable research in how these industrial processes can be modified to use renewable sources.
Richard also makes it clear that we as a society might have to adopt to a less-energy future. We have to make structural changes in our society, how we construct buildings and how we travel to work needs a deep thinking in renewable future. Recommended book for people who want to know about renewables and various feasible energy technologies.
August 8, 2016
A fairly comprehensive review of our present energy system and what it would take to move towards a fully renewable source from the current overwhelmingly fossil fuel driven one. Heinberg is known for his writings on limits to economic growth due to peak oil, so it comes as no surprise that the slant of this book also gravitates towards his prognosis of an end to our current energy intensive industrial civilization. He does this in a thoroughly systematic way by analyzing the challenges in detail of implementing solar, wind, hydro, nuclear and other non-conventional renewable energy systems, on a large enough scale to make a difference. The reader quickly learns that though the rapid pace of solar and wind power roll out is encouraging, we will reach limits to scaling up somewhere over the region of 60% system wide transition for various reasons.
The book is freely available in its entirety at http://ourrenewablefuture.org/, and I urge anyone interested in our collective future to drop by the website. It contains tons of useful data, charts and references to research on renewables and energy usage. To say the path ahead is daunting is a severe understatement, and I concur with the authors that it would have to entail a drastic curtailing of consumption that would lead to a new world of reduced energy and economic activity, as the sheer physics of moving from an energy dense source to one that is dispersed would dictate.
The book is freely available in its entirety at http://ourrenewablefuture.org/, and I urge anyone interested in our collective future to drop by the website. It contains tons of useful data, charts and references to research on renewables and energy usage. To say the path ahead is daunting is a severe understatement, and I concur with the authors that it would have to entail a drastic curtailing of consumption that would lead to a new world of reduced energy and economic activity, as the sheer physics of moving from an energy dense source to one that is dispersed would dictate.
May 4, 2021
I bought this book as I was already familiar with all the 'doom and gloom' books on the subject of petroleum depletion, climatic instability and sustainable energy, and wanted something that provided a more realistic examination of what it will take for us to make the future look bright, as opposed to just hoping it will happen.
The authors have done quite a thorough job at examining both the problem of petroleum dependency (in respect of energy), and what it will likely take to attain a sustainable energy regime moving forward into the future with less and less dense forms of energy (i.e. petroleum) becoming available. I particularly enjoyed the summation of global (and some national) statistics on energy types and usage, and how it then shows the rather daunting tasks of finding and developing a renewable energy regime to replace it, particularly in sectors where electrification simply won't either be easy or suitable (e.g. flight / ocean travel, industrial processes).
The book did take what I thought was a prudent approach in only looking at 'proven' sustainable methods / technologies of energy generation as available now (i.e. solar, wind), since it's too hard to speculate on what other means may be available in the future, and as the book indicated, energy transitions have typically taken ~40 years to take hold. To that extent, I was a bit perplexed at the absence of any mention of tidal power, but I guess that would still fall under technologies that are still in the research & development stages.
It was nice to see a small section also outlining our dependency on petroleum for many, many of our material needs, and the issue of where feedstocks will come from in the future, in the face of dwindling supplies. Not the intention of the book, but was glad to see it mentioned.
Part III of the book (Preparing for Our Renewable Future) is perhaps that's the most important, as it ties the technical and social aspects of the issue, as a renewable future is not simply the domain of the former. The book makes a compelling (and sobering) case that in the inevitable world of less (available) petroleum, our energy (and material) needs will have to be scaled to what's sustainably possible, and that means a change in what we value as it has a direct relation to how we live.
The authors have done quite a thorough job at examining both the problem of petroleum dependency (in respect of energy), and what it will likely take to attain a sustainable energy regime moving forward into the future with less and less dense forms of energy (i.e. petroleum) becoming available. I particularly enjoyed the summation of global (and some national) statistics on energy types and usage, and how it then shows the rather daunting tasks of finding and developing a renewable energy regime to replace it, particularly in sectors where electrification simply won't either be easy or suitable (e.g. flight / ocean travel, industrial processes).
The book did take what I thought was a prudent approach in only looking at 'proven' sustainable methods / technologies of energy generation as available now (i.e. solar, wind), since it's too hard to speculate on what other means may be available in the future, and as the book indicated, energy transitions have typically taken ~40 years to take hold. To that extent, I was a bit perplexed at the absence of any mention of tidal power, but I guess that would still fall under technologies that are still in the research & development stages.
It was nice to see a small section also outlining our dependency on petroleum for many, many of our material needs, and the issue of where feedstocks will come from in the future, in the face of dwindling supplies. Not the intention of the book, but was glad to see it mentioned.
Part III of the book (Preparing for Our Renewable Future) is perhaps that's the most important, as it ties the technical and social aspects of the issue, as a renewable future is not simply the domain of the former. The book makes a compelling (and sobering) case that in the inevitable world of less (available) petroleum, our energy (and material) needs will have to be scaled to what's sustainably possible, and that means a change in what we value as it has a direct relation to how we live.
February 1, 2019
An incredibly thorough exposition of the problems that lay ahead in our quest to a future powered entirely by renewable energy sources.
It starts with a nice introduction to some key concepts (energy and power, stock and flow energy sources), and does not beat around the bush: fossil fuels are being depleted, so we can't go on like this forever; learning to live without them will not be a choice.
The book focuses on solar and wind energy (later on, it explains why it does not think nuclear energy will be of much use, as well as other renewable sources such as geothermal or hydro), and deals with the problems we will encounter: they are intermitent sources, storing energy is difficult, and electricity is only around 20% of the energy that we use globally. Fossil fuels are necessary for industrial processes and to fuel planes, and are essential components of manufactured products, so we cannot simply expect to replace carbon-burning stations with solar panels and be done with it.
With those limitations in mind, it presents different ways to overcome them, but keeping it realistic: we cannot keep growing, and indeed we need to ungrow. The future will require spending less energy and doing it differently.
I'd highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to know more about the intrincacies that the deployment of renewable energy will entail, and to anyone thinking that technology will simply take care of climate change at some point.
It starts with a nice introduction to some key concepts (energy and power, stock and flow energy sources), and does not beat around the bush: fossil fuels are being depleted, so we can't go on like this forever; learning to live without them will not be a choice.
The book focuses on solar and wind energy (later on, it explains why it does not think nuclear energy will be of much use, as well as other renewable sources such as geothermal or hydro), and deals with the problems we will encounter: they are intermitent sources, storing energy is difficult, and electricity is only around 20% of the energy that we use globally. Fossil fuels are necessary for industrial processes and to fuel planes, and are essential components of manufactured products, so we cannot simply expect to replace carbon-burning stations with solar panels and be done with it.
With those limitations in mind, it presents different ways to overcome them, but keeping it realistic: we cannot keep growing, and indeed we need to ungrow. The future will require spending less energy and doing it differently.
I'd highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to know more about the intrincacies that the deployment of renewable energy will entail, and to anyone thinking that technology will simply take care of climate change at some point.
April 21, 2018
Richard Heinberg has spent the greater part of his life researching the effects of peak oil on the economy. He has now investigated how far we have come toward substituting renewable power sources for petroleum, and assessing what the prognosis might be for our future. This is important information for all of us to understand. The government has been too timid to acknowledge the coming crisis, as they are afraid to lose votes. If change is to happen before too much damage has been done, individuals must take action now. A good beginning would be to read Heinberg and understand what we're truly facing, and what we can do to help for the sake of our children's future.
October 7, 2023
A generally okay read. While the book goes into good detail on a lot of diverse aspects of renewables, it feels quite targeted towards a specific view the authors have themselves. Thereby, biased depictions of some aspects of the renewable story are clearly visible in favour of Heinberg and Fridley's own views. The issue is that these aren't justified too well.
June 29, 2017
Great insight into what might come next.
Wonderful insight into the possible, and inevitable future for humankind. Very informational, as well as inspirational. It would make a great read for anyone interested in energy consumption and the future of humans.
Wonderful insight into the possible, and inevitable future for humankind. Very informational, as well as inspirational. It would make a great read for anyone interested in energy consumption and the future of humans.
February 26, 2019
This is a super informational book, but I didn’t realize it was going to written in a textbook format before I bought it. It has a great message & can be dense at times, but written well & is easy to read for someone who knows nothing about clean energy etc
January 20, 2020
Very important facts about the future of energy systems. Amazing book!
September 2, 2019
An extremely sobering look at what will be required to transition the world to clean energy. I don't have the technical background to know how well the authors' conclusions are supported, but it strikes me as a realistic assessment of the practical hurdles involved. If anything, the book appears to be too confident that the renewable transition will inevitably occur in the near future due to rising fossil fuel prices, which may be optimistic given the newly economical oil and gas reserves in the U.S. as a result of fracking. (Claims of "Peak Oil" appear premature.) Regardless, the authors recognize that by the time the economic signals are clear, it will be too late for the climate. The theme of the book, which is not often heard elsewhere, is that a renewable energy world will require significantly less energy use and real shift in western world consumption. It should also be a more rewarding, healthier existence. But quite different from today.
January 17, 2022
Overall, a good book for an introduction to energy systems and how we could possibly live in a fully renewable future.
Though the book is very American-centric, there detailed research and explanations (with references added at the end of the book per chapter) does allow everyone to question the thoughts presented. Much of the book I do agree with, and the level of knowledge is immense.
Would highly recommend to people who want to see a move to more renewables but doesn't know where to start researching.
Though the book is very American-centric, there detailed research and explanations (with references added at the end of the book per chapter) does allow everyone to question the thoughts presented. Much of the book I do agree with, and the level of knowledge is immense.
Would highly recommend to people who want to see a move to more renewables but doesn't know where to start researching.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews