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LOW←TECH MAGAZINE

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Embodied Energy of Renewable Power Plants

How to Escape From the Iron Age?

We cannot lower carbon emissions if we keep producing steel with fossil fuels.

How to Build a Low-tech Solar Panel?

George Cove, a forgotten solar power pioneer, may have built a highly efficient photovoltaic panel 40 years before Bell Labs engineers invented silicon cells. If proven to work, his design could lead to less complex and more sustainable solar panels.

How to Make Wind Power Sustainable Again

If we build them out of wood, large wind turbines could become a textbook example of the circular economy.

Reinventing the Small Wind Turbine

A wooden rotor and tower greatly increase the net energy output over the lifetime of a small wind turbine.

How (Not) to Run a Modern Society on Solar and Wind Power Alone

Matching supply to demand at all times makes renewable power production a complex, slow, expensive and unsustainable undertaking.

How Sustainable is Stored Sunlight?

Energy storage is often ignored when scientists investigate the sustainability of PV systems.

How Sustainable is PV solar power?

Almost all solar PV panels are now produced in China, where the electric grid is about twice as carbon-intensive and about 50% less energy efficient than in Europe.

Bike Powered Electricity Generators are Not Sustainable

The present approach to pedal power results in highly inefficient machines.

Small Windmills Put to the Test

Wind power rules, but commercially available small windmills are a swindle.

Urban windmills harm the environment

A small windmill on your roof or in the garden is an attractive idea. Unfortunately, commercially available micro wind turbines deliver hardly enough energy to power a light bulb. Their financial payback time is much longer than their life expectancy and in urban areas they will not even deliver as much energy as was needed to produce them.

The Ugly Side of Solar Panels

Researchers are overly optimistic when they present the sustainability advantages of solar PV panels.