The wind analysis was reasonable for the time, iirc the main error there was that he failed to foresee offshore wind dropping in price so much.
And graphs like the one comparing wind turbine output to petrol car consumption are inherently deceiving. Two values are put side by side with the same units and then talk about directly as if they are comparable. But they simply are not. A kWh of chemical energy and a kWh of electricity have as much in common as a US dollar and a Jamaican dollar.
1. Sad that he died from cancer
2. Noticed he compared primary energy and felt stupid for missing that
MacKay's "renewables can't work alone" claim always seemed carefully scoped to the economics of 02008 (when solar modules cost 33× as much as they do now) and also his own densely populated, rather polar country. Renewables were already working nearly alone, at scale, in equatorial countries and more sparsely populated countries; I live in Argentina, whose grid was mostly hydroelectric at the time, and next door to Brazil, where a large fraction of the automotive fleet ran on sugar-cane-derived ethanol, which is a viable renewable energy source (unlike, apparently, corn ethanol).
There's some incredible progress for electricity generation, but there's still huge amounts of energy being used in ways that are not currently electrified and not close to electrifiable in the short term.
We should celebrate the forward progress, but also not be blind to what is not yet feasible (while also hoping that it may soon be so).
(Yes, I know that makes me sound like an LLM.)
Thankfully, energy storage is being deployed worldwide, so this is a moot point, and renewables can and will replace fossil fuel electricity generation.
I saw him present 18 years ago, and asked him why: he said that he didn't want to rely on any predictions or models, but only discuss real data. Which is sort of defendable as a position, but ignored the fact that renewable energy was progressing so incredibly fast, and that these engineering predictions were not speculative but very much concrete.
Similarly the silicon solar panel industry in 2008 had a roadmap to get to £1/Wp over the next few years (which they did, and which led to the ~2012 explosion in solar installations), by mass producing the 'expensive' ~20% efficient (mono-crystalline silicon) technology. Mackay uses a 10% figure throughout.
So overall this was a bit like making predictions in the year 2000 assuming everyone will be stuck on 56k dial-up forever, because most people are on 56k dial-up.
These biases are present in all of the discussion of renewable technology, yet nuclear gets a free-ride / magical thinking in terms of uranium extraction, waste disposal and cleanup. And then there is the persistent obsession with land use in the book.
This led me to the conclusion (which I still hold) that this was an example of the tail wagging the dog: David MacKay wanted the 'obvious' physicists answer of nuclear power to be the natural conclusion, and by construction made it so in his book. Just because you are a Bayesian does not mean that you are unbiased!
David MacKay was an amazing scientist, but I do not think this book is accurate (even for its time), or that useful in public understanding of what we now call 'Net Zero'. It certainly popularised the idea of actually thinking through individual energy budgets, which can only be a good thing, but it was a massive missed opportunity to treat heat (chemical) energy (maximum entropy) and electrical (which can directly do work) as equivalent, just because they have the same unit.
Later on, as the 'Climate Tsar' he made a web app where you could play with the future balance of generation with a simulated model of the UK, and set your own costs for the different technologies, which I thought was much more useful. You could choose your own energy mix, and understand some of the tradeoffs.
And yes, very sad that he died so young. In the context of this book it would have been interesting to see how he dealt with the increasing mismatch of reality and his predictions as time passed.
> There is this appalling delusion that people have that we can take this thing that is currently producing 1% of our electricity and we can just scale it up and if there is a slight issue of it not adding up, then we can just do energy efficiency,” he said. “Humanity really does needs to pay attention to arithmetic and the laws of physics – we need a plan that adds up.”
> Prof MacKay had previously avoided being drawn into the political debate about energy, but told Lynas: “I have always tried to avoid advocating particular solutions but maybe because time is getting thinner I should call a spade a spade.”
> The key for the UK, he said, was a zero-carbon solution that works in the winter, when energy demand is highest but sunshine is lowest and winds can drop for days at a time. “The sensible thing to do for a country like the UK, I think, is to focus on CCS, which the world needs anyway, and nuclear,” said Prof MacKay.
> The decision on a new nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point, which the government hopes will be the first of a new generation of plants, has been delayed until September.
> “Then if you ask what is the optimal amount of wind and solar to add in then the answer is going to be almost zero,” he said. “I love wind turbines – they are the cathedrals of the modern age – but they are a waste of money if you have a low carbon solution that gets you through the winter … because when the wind blows you are going to have to either turn them down or something else down that you have already paid for like nuclear or CCS.”
Maybe he would have changed his mind as prices and delivery timelines diverged but many of the people who were most enthusiastic about his work because it reflected their nuclear preference didn't, so who knows.
Though maybe his kind of person that liked nuclear and heat pumps and EVs all just changed their mind based on new evidence and we are left with the people who mysteriously like nuclear but don't want to use the output for heat and transport.
There's something really important to understand when evaluating non-fiction books: nobody reads the later chapters, and the authors generally know this. They can present tremendously one-sided information in the first few chapters, giving the spin that they want, and then in later chapters give a more balanced approach to shield themselves from criticism. Almost everyone who reads the book will read only the spin, but any criticism levied against the author will be met with "but I specifically say, in the later chapters ...". It's a slimy technique that you start to see everywhere once you're aware of it.
Asserted without evidence, and I very much doubt that it's true. I suspect it varies dramatically by subject matter, intended audience, book length, data density, and more. I have no evidence for any of that. Do you?
Not necessarily saying this generalises to all non fiction books though