Customer Reviews

Sustainable Energy: Choosing Among Options

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This was a well written text book that gives an introduction to a great number of important fields. It does a particularly good job giving a fair treatment to some options that are often overlooked in books on sustainable energy such as geothermal and nuclear energy. It also gives a good background in the economics of electricity and liquid fuels.

It is however already quite dated. The book was published right before the price of oil started to soar, and completely didn't see it coming. Many statements support the idea that oil will be cheap for many decades to come. They certainly were not alone in not seeing this coming, but it is sometimes hard to take them seriously on other subjects when they keep referring back to the low price of oil.

I've been working in the energy field for the past few years, and this is one of the few references I've found that describes all of our energy options with real depth. Information is well organized and systematically laid out. The book is, as others have pointed out, unfortunately already outdated.

If you're a beginner or someone with more experience, this is the "one book" to purchase in the area of energy and sustainability. Useful, practical content at a level that allows you to refresh or build on your knowledge in the area.

We are consuming our world, there is no doubt about it... the main problem today are greenhouse gases and the planet overheating... but the truth is that earth passed during the past milleniums trough a serie of climate changes, some of them with the presence of human beings, some other without humans. Our kind already faced one ice age, but... are we ready to face a new climate change?, the earth will survive, but, if we are not ready to face this changes, will we survive this??
This book is a overview of what human activity have done to our planet, and some answers on how to reverse the situation. Maybe we still have some time to react...

A great book if you are interested in sustainable energy technologies and the ways the affect our world.

Unfortunately, I bought this book for a class before realizing that I could have managed just as well by getting all the information that I needed from the internet and saving myself $70. The book lacks depth and could have been better organized. Having already some knowledge about sustainability and energy issues, I found that I could more efficiently answer any questions I had about sustainable energy issues by searching online. There is so much information online and much of it comes from reputable sources, such as the Energy Information Administration.

This just goes to show that even though you might have a dozen authors from MIT, they still can't manage to write a coherent, readable book. The organization of the book is horrible, with hardly any sub-sections and massive blocks of text--this makes it almost impossible to find the information you're looking for without digging through the index. The ordering of the chapters is haphazard and they range in quality from extremely basic to completely esoteric. I would strongly recommend against using this book if at all possible, as there are better written, more contemporary works available that address this subject.

AMAZON IS THE WAY TO GO WHENEVER YOU WOULD LIKE TO PURCHASE ANYTHING. I WILL ALWAYS BE A LIFELONG SUPPORTER AND BUYER!

Useful book to collect all in one the main subjects about the topic. Useful handbook to have at hand a rigorous point to start to study the subject without loosing between information.