Energy group read, Week 6

Tony Curzon Price, 23 February 2009
Subjects:

Feb 23 2009. Join the Group Read. Chapters 10 and 11. Offshore and gadgets

(Instructions on how to join are at the bottom of the original post)

Offshore wind seems intuitively a nice option for an island liuke Britain - out of the sight, a sort of power belt that you can see from high places on a clear day. The energy is indeed there - about as much as we use for our heating and cooling. But you'd need an aweful lot of turbines and a massive investment. (Would we then have to worry about the birds?)

What about our chargers and gadgets? There is a myth that they are responsible for the developing "power gap" -- all those new power stations we will need over the next 20 years as the big nuclear power stations are decommissioned. Well, it turns out to be quite small - about the same energy consumption we use for lighting.

Just like to repeat a big thank you to David MacKay who has been very supportive of this project, and to William Sigmund without whose amazing html and perl skills I do not think we would have had an online version to work with.

About the author

Tony Curzon Price  is Editor-in-Chief of openDemocracy and blogs at tony.curzon.com


Feb 23 2009. Join the Group Read. Chapters 10 and 11. Offshore and gadgets

(Instructions on how to join are at the bottom of the original post)

Offshore wind seems intuitively a nice option for an island liuke Britain - out of the sight, a sort of power belt that you can see from high places on a clear day. The energy is indeed there - about as much as we use for our heating and cooling. But you'd need an aweful lot of turbines and a massive investment. (Would we then have to worry about the birds?)

What about our chargers and gadgets? There is a myth that they are responsible for the developing "power gap" -- all those new power stations we will need over the next 20 years as the big nuclear power stations are decommissioned. Well, it turns out to be quite small - about the same energy consumption we use for lighting.

Just like to repeat a big thank you to David MacKay who has been very supportive of this project, and to William Sigmund without whose amazing html and perl skills I do not think we would have had an online version to work with.

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