Renewable Energy: A Very Short Introduction

Description

With growing concerns over climate change and air pollution, the need to switch from fossil fuels to clean and renewable sources of energy has become pressing. Here, Nick Jelley describes the main renewables, explains how wind and solar farms can provide the cheapest energy in many parts of the world, and calls for urgent action.

• Describes the main renewable sources of energy - solar, wind, hydropower, biomass, geothermal, tidal, and wave
• Explains how renewable energy can now provide power as cheaply as traditional fossil fuel plants and could provide all the world's needs without contributing to dangerous climate change or pollution
• Offers clear explanations of technologies, including recent innovations in wind and solar energy production, battery storage, and in the emerging power-to-gas provision for clean heating
• Outlines the challenges ahead in replacing traditional with renewable energy supplies, at country, regional, and local levels
• Part of the Very Short Introductions series - over ten million copies sold worldwide

About the Author(s)

Nick Jelley, Department of Physics and Lincoln College, University of Oxford

Nick Jelley is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Physics and a Fellow of Lincoln College at the University of Oxford. His research was in nuclear and particle physics and he published many papers in this field. He was a member of the Nobel Prize winning SNO experiment, for which he was the UK group leader, and the recipient of two Institute of Physics prizes. More recently, he has carried out research on solar energy for use in the developing world. He gave lectures to Oxford physics undergraduates on Energy Studies from 2003-2014, and in 2012 a Science and Society public lecture on Renewable Energy at the University of Liverpool. His books include Energy Science (OUP, 3rd edition, 2017) and A Dictionary of Energy Science (OUP, 2017).

Table of Contents

List of illustrations
1:What are renewables?
2:Why do we need renewables?
3:Biomass, solar heat, and hydropower
4:Wind power
5:Solar photovoltaics
6:Other low carbon technologies
7:Renewable electricity and energy storage
8:Renewable heat and electric vehicles
9:The transition to renewables
Further reading
Index

Reviews

"A wonderful combination of a tour of the basics of renewable energy, and a great update on the ever-changing statistics in this fast changing, and world-changing energy sector." - Professor Daniel M Kammen, University of California, Berkeley