Energise! is a book that every aspiring sustainability consultant and architect with green leanings should be forced to read. Government ministers, MPs, local authority officials and everyone with an interest in the environment should also read it because it takes a cold, hard look at the planet’s energy needs and solutions without the usual hype. Authors James Woudhuysen and Joe Kaplinsky both have strong backgrounds in scientific exploration and writing and have carried out extensive research into the subject of energy. In this book, they dispel many common myths and challenge accepted views. Unlike most environmental analysts, they celebrate the use of energy for all the benefits it brings to civilisation.
It is unusual to read, for instance, that energy consumers have no need to feel guilty: ‘you’re not a needy greedy energy addict and you shouldn’t worry about your carbon footprint.’ One message is made clear throughout, that ‘consuming more energy isn’t a problem if the right level of supply can be arranged’. At first, I thought this might have been commissioned as part of a propaganda machine to justify George W Bush’s excesses, but the book actually takes a refreshingly pragmatic, scientific view of the use of energy in our society. According to the authors, ‘this book offers a radically new perspective on energy and climate change. It covers not just the technology, economics, science and politics of these two issues, but also their sociology: how people perceive energy and how they organise it.’
It contains some extremely disparaging comment on the ever- burgeoning Green Movement and the British government’s rather impotent attempts to enforce energy savings on us as individuals. It is here that I have reservations because I still see a need for restraint. I read this book on a trip to Dubai where I witnessed the full effects of unbridled consumerism, and it was enough to make me look favourably on Gordon Brown’s more puritanical approach to life in the UK. I can see no sense in wasting energy, however easy it is to produce, and the current global recession has served as a prescient reminder that the world could use some restraint.
Reading Energise, I was reminded of James Lovelock’s statement that ‘for millennia, humankind has exploited the earth without counting the cost. Now, as the world warms and weather patterns dramatically change, the earth is beginning to fight back.’ In his 2006 book, The Revenge of Gaia, Lovelock, one of the great environmental thinkers of our time, argues that although global warming is inevitable, we are not too late to save human civilisation; an approach Woudhuysen and Kaplinsky seem to share. In chapter three, they deal with the subject of climate change in some detail but maintain that ‘mankind shouldn’t lose its nerve. It has some years yet to develop a more rational energy supply.’ While this is somewhat reassuring, I can’t help thinking that I would rather play safe than gamble with our future existence.
It was therefore intriguing to read their approach to the various energy supply options. Not surprisingly, they are firmly in favour of nuclear power as a means of supplying clean, low-carbon energy, (again in agreement with Lovelock, who comes to the same conclusion). Woudhuysen’s research into the political economy of nuclear energy comes into full effect here. He carefully deals with popular concerns about the risks attached to the production of nuclear power, the storage of spent fuels and frightening accidents such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Of course, these are cause for great concern but lessons have been learned and there would appear to be no other energy solution in the short term that will provide us with the power we need without damaging our climate. The chapter, A New Carbon Infrastructure, deals with the obvious concern that we cannot continue to rely so heavily on fossil fuels which generate CO². It is impressive that this is so astute and up to date, and cites Barack Obama’s recent policy statements including his views on oil production: ‘we cannot sustain a future powered by a fuel that is rapidly disappearing. Not when we purchase $700m (£500m) worth of oil every single day from some of the world’s most unstable and hostile nations’.
Energise is also informative about renewables, or as the authors’ prefer, ‘astronomicals’. As with the rest of the book, this subject has been given clear, scientific and rational evaluation which draws on some interesting points, in particular, that ‘renewable energy is limited only by humanity’s political will and engineering talent to capture it…. wind, solar, water and geothermal sources of energy have one thing in common: they’re about capturing continuous flows of energy over the earth as an astronomical entity, not mining it as a stock of geological fuels’.
The in-depth analysis of these clean energy sources is fascinating and I was pleased to learn that they have the potential to provide such a high proportion of our energy needs. Energise provides a thorough review of the planet’s energy requirements and the likely solutions for the next 50 years that will allay climate change. It’s a heavy read but you will feel better for having set aside the time to consider this information that is too important to ignore.
Energise! A Future For Energy Innovation, By James Woudhuysen and Joe Kaplinsky is published by Beautiful Books, £12.99
Chris Wilkinson is a founding partner of Wilkinson Eyre Architects
