100 Per Cent Renewable - Energy Autonomy in Action
A 100% renewable world is inevitable. Not only do a growing number of initiatives and plans dare to make the change but many have already achieved it. This rich collection presents a series of pioneering efforts and their champions, and the paths to their successes. Ranging from initiatives by individuals to actions by companies, communities and countries, it defeats tired counter-arguments.
The time has come to abolish the combustion of coal, oil and gas for energy generation worldwide, along with the nuclear power threat. This is the historical challenge of today. It is unlike any other that preceded it in the emergence of human civilization. It is unprecedented because it involves a collective choice to be made across a wide array of technological, social and economic conditions – to go beyond the slow and messy process of blind evolution. A global renewable energy base is the very foundation of sustainable life on this planet. Only with it, massive afforestation efforts and lifestyle changes to higher quality and dramatically lowered material consumption become the essential elements of hope. A worldwide move to sustainable economic practice beyond green lip service may just still carry this promise: to rebuild the inherited system of wasteful abundance for the few into a basis for sustaining human life in a steady-state economy for all.
"100 per cent renewable" means an entirely renewable power base for the global economy, across the lifecycle of energy flows, embodied, operational, transport or stationary. In this world steeped in expensive and toxic hydrocarbon fuels and products it does not seem easy for anyone but isolated indigenous tribes to live up to this ideal. Nevertheless, the aim to rely on the abundant and largely free sources of the sun is clear, and it is necessary. A wave of innovations rises in infrastructure systems, personal transport or community development, successfully procuring non-polluting local electricity and thermal resources. Manufacturers begin to develop renewable production processes, and increasingly, producers of closed-cycle materials are keen on eliminating fossil carbon combustion content. This book is a snapshot of a dynamic picture, a world well on the path to sustaining human civilization on a renewable planet.
Contents
1. 100% Renewable Energy: The Essential Target
2. Institutions for a 100% Renewable World
3. The Renewable Imperative: Providing Climate Protection and Energy Security
4. 100% is Possible Now
5. C02-Free Munich
6. 100% Renewable Champions: International Case Studies
7. Feed-In Tariffs: The Policy Path to 100%
8. How to Achieve Renewable Energy Regions and Advance Sustainable Development: Integrated Models and Processes in Germany
9. Renewable Regions: Life after Fossil Fuel in Spain
10. 100% Renewable Transport
11. Better Place
12. How to Grow Food in the 100% Renewable City: Building Integrated Agriculture
13. Oil to Solar: The Masdar Initiative
14. Masdar City Master Plan: The Design and Engineering Strategies
15. Urban Energy Potentials: A Step towards the Use of 100% Renewable Energies
16. Closing the Planning Gap: Moving to Renewable Communities
17. Community Life at 100% and Beyond: How to Raise a Renewable Family without Even Trying
18. 100% Renewable Life: One Man's Stand Against a Fossil-Fuel World
Edited By Peter Droege, published by Routledge
Related links:
The 100% Renewable Website:
http://www.100-percent.org
About the author
Peter Droege is Professor and Chair of Urban Sustainability, Climate and Planning Education at the University of Liechtenstein; and Conjoint Professor, Faculty of Engineering, University of Newcastle, Australia. He chairs the World Council for Renewable Energy for Asia Pacific.