Peace and Environment News* April 1996
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Peace and Environment News * April 1996 |
The Canadian Renewable Energy Guide
Edited by Duncan Noble and Robert Swartman
General Store Publishing House, 1995
Reviewed by Hans Posthuma
As with many areas of technological development, the world of renewable energy is in a state of constant change. New advances are being made, different applications are being found for new and old technology, and through it all costs have dropped steadily in the face of greater demand.
The question is, without launching an exhaustive (and exhausting) study into the myriad of ways to reduce energy use or generate it from an environmentally sound source, what's the best way to find out which renewable energy technology can be used effectively for your particular needs?
Try starting with the Solar Energy Society of Canada's Canadian Renewable Energy Guide. Published in 1995, its 238 pages offer a comprehensive general overview of energy use options for everything from homes and transportation to agriculture, industry, remote locations, and even international applications.
The Guide is a resource book rather than a how-to manual. With the wide variety of renewable energy technologies available and the even wider range of uses they can be put to, the book would have had to either narrow its focus severely or expand to a number of volumes to cover all areas of renewable energy in-depth. Rather, editors Duncan Noble and Robert Swartman have chosen to give a brief but concise overview of each area, accompanied by case histories to show how that technology has been used successfully. For those who want to delve deeper, a separate reference section points the way to companies, books, government departments, associations and even web sites devoted to renewable energy.
The overall tone of the book paints a somewhat rosy picture of renewable energy use in Canada. While this is an arguably naive approach in the face of the fact that an overwhelming percentage of our energy use is not environmentally sound, it does create a feeling that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. For example, while the overall cost and relative efficiency of generating electricity using photovoltaic (PV) cells or wind turbines is still too high to be cost-effective for most applications where the conventional electrical grid is easily accessible, the definition of what's "off the grid" has widened considerably. This is witnessed in areas such as using photovoltaics to provide lighting for a university campus parking lot. This and other applications would previously only have been cost-effective by connecting to the grid, but can now be done more cheaply by PV cells.
The several dozen case histories assembled by the editors make for interesting reading as well as contributing to the "I can do that too" feeling. Among other projects, these success stories provide insights into energy efficient houses, solar and wind powered electrical generators, powering remote telecommunications sites, heating industrial buildings, and making fish farming more efficient.
One of the shorter sections of the book is the one devoted to transportation. At only ten pages, its brevity is testimony to the fact that realistic alternatives to the internal combustion engine are more common in speculative fiction than on Canada's roads. Thanks no doubt in part to lack of interest on the part of the mammoth automobile and petroleum industries, progress has been slow. In the meantime, Canadians continue to consume some one million barrels of oil a day for transportation. The book does describe a few solutions that are waiting in the wings, including a "hypercar" developed by the Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado.
When it comes to homes, the book illustrates the fact that a lot of the current technology can be incorporated cost-effectively into new construction. While those faced with making an older home more energy-efficient have a greater challenge, there remains a surprising array of cost-effective options.
Focusing on technological breakthroughs as a solution to environmental woes can easily lead to the perpetuation of our patterns of excessive energy use. Lest we fall into that trap, the editors of the Guide remind us in their introduction that "It is always environmentally preferable to reduce our energy consumption."
Converted April 11, 2000 - Lg
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