Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air

David JC MacKay


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The best-selling book on understanding sustainable energy and how we can make energy plans that add up.

How to buy

Online stores selling this book include BookDepository.co.uk, who do both paperback and hardback and send post free to most of the World, and Amazon.co.uk (paperback or hardback).

Recent reviews in the press

... may be the best technical book about the environment that I've ever read. This is to energy and climate what Freakonomics is to economics.
Cory Doctorow
boingboing.net

The book is a tour de force ... As a work of popular science it is exemplary ... For anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the real problems involved [it] is the place to start.
The Economist

The first factual meme on renewable energy? A book about climate change that gets rave reviews from folk at oil companies, environmental groups and the Number One Blog of All Time has to be worth a peek.
energysource blog
The Financial Times

This year's must-read book about tackling our future energy needs.
The Guardian

"For anyone with influence on energy policy, whether in government, business or a campaign group, this book should be compulsory reading." Tony Juniper (Former Executive Director, Friends of the Earth)

"At last a book that comprehensively reveals the true facts about sustainable energy in a form that is both highly readable and entertaining." Robert Sansom (EDF Energy)

Author Display Name: 
David JC MacKay
Edition Number: 
1
Publication Date: 
02/12/2008
Title-specific biography: 

David MacKay is a Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and then obtained his PhD in Computation and Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technology. He returned to Cambridge as a Royal Society research fellow at Darwin College. He is internationally known for his research in machine learning, information theory, and communication systems, including the invention of Dasher, a software interface that enables efficient communication in any language with any muscle. He has taught Physics in Cambridge since 1995. Since 2005, he has devoted much of his time to public teaching about energy. He is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Climate Change.

Last updated: 2010-04-30

Endorsements for Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air

Bob White FRS
Professor of Geophysics, Cambridge University

If everyone lived in the same way as we do in the West we would need three whole planets like earth to fuel our habits. You don?t have to be a rocket scientist to work out that this isn?t sustainable. But its seductively easy to ignore. The people who will suffer most from our profligate use of natural resources are those on the other side of the world in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia and our as-yet unborn children and grandchildren. They are out of sight and out of mind. We excuse ourselves by saying that the inevitable march of technology is bound to bring a solution.

Darran Messem
Vice President Fuel Development, Royal Dutch Shell

By focusing on the metrics of energy consumption and production, in addition to the aspiration we all share for viable renewable energy, David MacKay's book provides a welcome addition to the energy literature. "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" is a vast undertaking that provides both a practical guide and a reference manual. Perhaps ironically for a book on sustainable energy, MacKay's account of the numbers illustrates just how challenging replacing fossil fuel will be, and why both energy conservation and new energy technology are necessary.

Prof. Volker Heine FRS

Conversations, newspapers and committees often make me wonder "Is it only physicists who care about how important or how big some issue is?". Here are the numbers in a form easy to digest about energy use and availability. Fantastic achievement.

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