The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook: Community Solutions to a Global Crisis
Solar roof panels, backyard wind turbines and biofuel stills: in this  how-to vision of a future without hydrocarbon fuels, small really is beautiful.  Faced with the paired (and frightfully imminent) dangers of global warming and  the point at which half the total recoverable oil on Earth has been extracted  and production begins to decline, Pahl champions a spectrum of alternative  energy sources. Separate chapters on water, geothermal and biomass (firewood  and plant matter) energies in addition to solar, wind and biofuel (the  distillate of corn, soy and other crops) sources are both practical and  inspirational. First comes technical information; then Pahl reports on  community and cooperative alternative-energy successes. In Asheville, N.C., 24  clustered townhouses use solar panels for heat and hot water. Toronto powers  250 homes with a cooperative-owned lakeshore wind turbine. Micro-hydro projects  (100 kilowatts or less) power small businesses and homes in Nepal, Pakistan and  off-the-grid American communities. A short-run train in Sweden—a nation  committed to achieving an oil-free economy by 2020—runs on biogas generated  by fermenting cow guts; it gets about two-and-a-half miles per cow—proof, as  this readable book illustrates, that ingenuity and small-bore efforts are one  way to deal with an energy crisis.(Mar.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.