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I recently started reading "Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air"[1], which is available as a free book, and it's been a wonderful introduction to reasoning about alternative energy. The author also gave a talk a few years ago that is very approachable[2].

[1] https://www.withouthotair.com/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFosQtEqzSE

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It's interesting, but his solar PV assumptions are pretty outdated in the book. He talks about utility scale solar being 10% efficient, where as it is around 17% now. Even at 10% efficiency, he says it's feasible, but too expensive. We are now at 2.42 cents per kWh unsubsidized for utility scale solar, in the best case. He says solar PV is 4x as expensive as conventional electricity production, which is clearly not true anymore. And the trend says PV will be 4x cheaper than coal within a couple of decades.

It would be cool to maintain a fork of the book with updated figures. Is the tex source available anywhere?

EDIT: What seems to be the latest version of the source files is hosted at http://www.inference.eng.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/book/tex/.

He addresses that in the book as well. His goal is to give rough estimates and a framework to reason about energy sources, not provide conclusions.

Watching the talk, now at 22 minutes. So far: highly recommended.

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