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Ask HN: Book recommendations for renewable energy and climate change?

25 points| fredrb | 4 years ago | reply

I'm trying to figure out what are the classic books and authors on the topic. There seems to be a plethora of books on climate and energy out there and every blog recommends a completely different list. As I'm not that familiar with the topic, I'm ideally looking for a book that gives an overview of the different types of energy and their practicality.

29 comments

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[+] leephillips|4 years ago|reply
The expensive _Managing Global Warming_ is useful because it has chapters on various renewable energy and related topics, each one written by some kine of specialist in that field, and will bring you up to date as of 2018. There may be better such books, but I’m biased because I wrote the solar energy chapter:

https://www.elsevier.com/books/managing-global-warming/letch...

[+] compressedgas|4 years ago|reply
David MacKay's Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air
[+] ZeroGravitas|4 years ago|reply
This is really outdated, so unless you want to marvel at how wrong even a smart and well-meaning person could be in the face of rapid technological change, probably not worth revisiting.

There's been a few attempts to update it with modern numbers but they're so different it effectively nullifies the whole point of the book.

[+] cjmcqueen|4 years ago|reply
Amory Lovin's "Reinventing Fire" is a commonly held classic. Disclosure, I work for RMI the consulting firm he founded.
[+] credit_guy|4 years ago|reply
Bill Gates “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need”.
[+] muldoc|4 years ago|reply
It doesn't seem smart to me to take advice from a got-lucky, business billionaire that brought us Windows, with a cult following and marketing power of a country, than any run-of-the-mill real scientist.
[+] newyankee|4 years ago|reply
I found a typo in one of his solar calculations, which seemed weird given how influential the book is going to be.
[+] itzprime|4 years ago|reply
Energy Return on Investment: A Unifying Principle for Biology, Economics, and Sustainability
[+] aborsy|4 years ago|reply
Sustainable Energy – without the hot air, by David J. C. MacKay.
[+] dagw|4 years ago|reply
While certainly a classic and highly influential book in the field, be aware that it is very out of date and based on 15+ year old data. This means that most of the conclusions the book comes too are no longer necessarily relevant or correct. So read it more as a historical snapshot of the thinking of the time as opposed to a guide to relevant energy policies in todays climate.
[+] ComradePhil|4 years ago|reply
Not really what you asked for but I think they are more important to gain perspective:

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein

The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World Without America by Peter Zeihan

[+] agmand|4 years ago|reply
If you speak spanish there's a really good book doing now the rounds by an skeptic of the long-term economical viability of renewables (and fossil fuels, nuclear, and more): Petrocalipsis, by Antonio Turiel. It's very clear, concise and data-driven, so it's one of those books where even when you disagree with a point it forces you to research why.

An ok alternative in english would be Facing the Anthropocene, by Ian Angus (but the scope of that book is way more limited, and it's markedly political, specifically ecosocialist)