http://www.ck12.org Chapter 2. Numbers, Not Adjectives
As we estimate our consumption of energy for heating, transportation, manufacturing, and so forth, the aim is not
only to compute a number for the left-hand stack of our balance sheet, but also to understand what each number
depends on, and how susceptible to modification it is.
In the right-hand, green stack, we’ll add up the sustainable production estimates for the United Kingdom. This will
allow us to answer the question “can the UK conceivably live on its own renewables?”
Whether the sustainable energy sources that we put in the right-hand stack areeconomicallyfeasible is an important
question, but let’s leave that question to one side, and just add up the two stacks first. Sometimes people focus too
much on economic feasibility and they miss the big picture. For example, people discuss “is wind cheaper than
nuclear?” and forget to ask “howmuchwind is available?” or “how much uranium is left?”
The outcome when we add everything up might look like this:
If we find consumption is much less than conceivable sustainable production, then we can say “good,maybewe can
live sustainably; let’s look into the economic, social, and environmental costs of the sustainable alternatives, and
figure out which of them deserve the most research and development; if we do a good job, theremightnot be an
energy crisis.”
On the other hand, the outcome of our sums might look like this: