Summary

"Energy for a Warming World" challenges the commonplace notion that the amount of power which mankind can potentially harness from renewable resources is more than large enough to assuage future demand levels.

By examining the renewable issue from an electrical engineering perspective, and exercising due regard for the limited capability of current and future electrical generation and transmission systems, this book attempts to provide more realistic statistics for the levels of power which could be extracted from sustainable resources in the critical time frame of 30 to 40 years. The engineering logic leads inexorably to the importance of taking a global outlook on the switch to renewable power supply and transmission - an outlook which has some surprising and uncomfortable ramifications for mankind.

"Energy for a Warming World" provides a new perspective on renewable resources for academics and researchers in environmental or electrical power engineering, as well as to students in related areas.

Choice Review

This work is another volume in the publisher's "Green Energy and Technology" series. The book is organized around the question of whether renewables can realistically provide for the world's future energy needs. Sangster (emer., Electromagnetic Engineering, Heriot-Watt Univ., Scotland) uses nontechnical language and easy-to-follow logic to assess the limitations of different renewable energy resources and to address one of the main unsolved issues of the renewable energy industry: the intermittency of renewables and the storage problem. The book starts with an introduction covering global warming and population growth; a very basic chapter titled "Energy Conversion and Transmission" follows. The next two chapters discuss different forms of renewable energy and limitations on the exploitation of each kind, and different means of storage to overcome intermittency in power generation. Sangster concludes with suggestions to policy makers and researchers in the renewable energy field. Readers must have a basic qualitative knowledge of renewable energy to follow this monograph. The book can serve as a complementary resource for upper-level undergraduate and graduate-level energy courses. It is also useful to general readers with an interest in energy, to researchers and investors in the field, and to policy makers in particular. Summing Up: Recommended. Only comprehensive energy collections serving upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers. M. Alam Massachusetts Institute of Technology