Updating David MacKay's 'Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air'

Current progress can be found here.

---

My experience of David MacKay was of a brilliant, patient, and kind person who I was fortunate to have had some, albeit it too few, conversations with.

Looking back on his book and on our email exchanges¹ I realise now how huge an inspiration his approach was for my life trajectory: I was equally bemused by the hot air of confusing conversation, so much so that I quit my PhD in biotech at Cambridge to try to build some kind of new medium for collective sense making. Fast forward 15 years and I'm still trying, but feel like it's closer now, and again I find myself returning to his work to act as another foundational pillar and guide in that journey.

His book "Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air" is a rational and strategic assessment of how the UK might power itself sustainably.

As we approach the 10th anniversary of his death I was reminded by Anil Madhavapeddy of a plan to update the book with the changes to the UK's energy system that have occurred since the book was published in 2009.

This is a big undertaking and one that I will not be able to complete myself so the plan is to make it into a wiki which will allow it to be kept updated at by anyone going forwards. I have a few questions:

1. Who should I ask for permission to modify David's work?²

Anil and Pilgrim have kindly directed me to Cambridge Philosophical society who have forwarded this message on so hopefully there may be a conversation to decide if this project should proceed or not.

2. I'm not sure how to update the book and publish it respectfully

I think it would be best to publish it under the same name of "Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air" but I've never done anything like this before so I don't know what's either considerate, possible or wise? Any thoughts or guidance on this would be gratefully appreciated.

3. Who would like to help with this project?

I have started with chapter 6 on Solar by copying some of the key numbers and equations onto the WikiSim platform which I am building.

It will certainly be a case of many hands making light work. If you'd like to help please let me know by email.

The current plan is to copy the key numbers and equations from each chapter onto the wiki, and produce the summary of the bar charts showing the different sources of energy and where it is consumed.

Current Progress

It currently looks like this. This is a temporary micro-site though so expect its link to be broken when the project moves.

The current micro site also has its code embedded within my larger personal website so needs a little work to stand it up independently of my site, or shifted somewhere else.

But before doing any of that work on the book itself it makes sense to answer questions 1 & 2 above first.

WikiSim

Whilst I think it is a suitable platform for this project if there is one with a better fit please let me know. WikiSim is all open source, and all open data, so the data would be trivial to scrap, and republish to another platform.