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The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook

The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook
The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook
 
Item code Model number
EDUCITIZEN 978-1-933392-12-7

logoThe Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook
Community Solutions to a Global Crisis

Greg Pahl

cover(Forward by Richard Heinberg)

Edition: Paperback
Format: B&W photographs, illustrations
Pages: 6 x 9, 376 pages
ISBN: 978-1-933392-12-7
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Release Date: 2007-01-22


Real energy solutions for real problems--NOW!

(Editorial Review) In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Al Gore's summer blockbuster An Inconvenient Truth, and crude oil prices soaring to all time highs, more people than ever know the truth about our oil addiction. Global Warming is here. M. King Hubbert's oil peak is approaching (or already here). The secret's out: fossil fuel reserves are dwindling and popular interest has created the need for accessible, realistic solutions.

The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook provides a clear-eyed view of the current energy situation and points toward a sustainable path forward. Greg Pahl examines renewable energy technologies currently available and homes in on strategies that can be adopted by individuals and, especially, communities. Such cooperative initiatives have been common in Europe for years and are beginning to gain a foothold in the U.S. because these medium-scale projects successfully bring people together to create collective energy security for a neighborhood, town, or region while strengthening the local economy.

Each chapter focuses on a different renewable energy sector—solar, wind, water, biomass, liquid biofuels, and geothermal—then reviews their advantages and disadvantages and describes numerous examples of proven local initiatives. The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook is an eloquent appeal and a practical handbook for community and regional action to deal head-on with environmental challenges and to take responsibility for energy supplies now controlled by large, distant utilities and consortiums. This is the book for anyone ready to take meaningful steps toward a more sustainable future.


Publishers Weekly

January 2007

The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook: Community Solutions to a Global Crisis.

Solar roof panels, backyard wind turbines and biofuel stills: in this how-to vision of a future without hydrocarbon fuels, small really is beautiful. Faced with the paired (and frightfully imminent) dangers of global warming and the point at which half the total recoverable oil on Earth has been extracted and production begins to decline, Pahl champions a spectrum of alternative energy sources. Separate chapters on water, geothermal and biomass (firewood and plant matter) energies in addition to solar, wind and biofuel (the distillate of corn, soy and other crops) sources are both practical and inspirational. First comes technical information; then Pahl reports on community and cooperative alternative-energy successes. In Asheville, N.C., 24 clustered townhouses use solar panels for heat and hot water. Toronto powers 250 homes with a cooperative-owned lakeshore wind turbine. Micro-hydro projects (100 kilowatts or less) power small businesses and homes in Nepal, Pakistan and off-the-grid American communities. A short-run train in Sweden—a nation committed to achieving an oil-free economy by 2020—runs on biogas generated by fermenting cow guts; it gets about two-and-a-half miles per cow—proof, as this readable book illustrates, that ingenuity and small-bore efforts are one way to deal with an energy crisis.


 

Greg PahlAbout the Author

Greg Pahl, author of Biodiesel: Growing the New Economyand Natural Home Heating: The Complete Guide to Renewable Energy Options (both Chelsea Green), has been following renewable energy issues for more than 25 years. He is a founding member of the Vermont Biofuels Association and lives in Weybridge, Vermont. A selection of his articles are at www.gregpahl.com.>

Richard Heinberg is a research fellow at the Post Carbon Institute. He is the award-winning author of seven books including Powerdown and The Oil Depletion Protocol. His monthly “MuseLetter” is available at www.richardheinberg.com

 

 

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