In his signature style, Allan Drummond tells the story of the largest solar plant in the world, the Noor Solar Power Plant in Morocco's Sahara Desert, in Solar Story—by relating it to the everyday life of a schoolgirl in a small village next to the plant. As we see on a class field trip, the plant is not only bringing reliable power to the village and far beyond, but is providing jobs, changing lives, and upending the old ways of doing things—starting within the girl's own family. Blending detail-filled watercolors, engaging cartoon-style narration, in-depth sidebars, and an afterword, the author showcases another real-world community going green in amazing ways. A “powerful” addition to the author’s acclaimed series about conservation and renewable energy innovations in everyday life.
From Space to Earth tracks the evolution of the technology of photovoltaics, the use of solar cells to convert the sun's energy into electricity. John Perlin's painstaking research results in a fascinating account of the development of this technology, from its shaky nineteenth-century beginnings mired in scientific controversy to its high-visibility success in the space program, to its current position as a versatile and promising power source.
This books tells the story of solar power: what it is, what it can do, and how we can use this energy to help us have a cleaner planet for the next generation.
Solar energy is a substantial global industry, one that has generated trade disputes among superpowers, threatened the solvency of large energy companies, and prompted serious reconsideration of electric utility regulation rooted in the 1930s. One of the biggest payoffs from solar’s success is not the clean inexpensive electricity it can produce, but the lessons it provides for innovation in other technologies needed to address climate change. Despite the large literature on solar, including analyses of increasingly detailed datasets, the question as to how solar became inexpensive and why it took so long still remains unanswered. Drawing on developments in the US, Japan, Germany, Australia, and China, this book provides a truly comprehensive and international explanation for how solar has become inexpensive. Understanding the reasons for solar’s success enables us to take full advantage of solar’s potential. It can also teach us how to support other low-carbon technologies with analogous properties, including small modular nuclear reactors and direct air capture. However, the urgency of addressing climate change means that a key challenge in applying the solar model is in finding ways to speed up innovation. Offering suggestions and policy recommendations for accelerated innovation is another key contribution of this book. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of energy technology and innovation, climate change and energy analysis and policy, as well as practitioners and policymakers working in the existing and emerging energy industries.
This inspiring book presents the true stories of 12 people from across North America who have done great things for the environment. Heroes include a teenage girl who figured out how to remove an industrial pollutant from the Ohio River, a Mexican superstar wrestler who works to protect turtles and whales, and a teenage boy from Rhode Island who helped his community and his state develop effective e-waste recycling programs. Plenty of photographs and illustrations bring each compelling story vividly to life.
“How do we recognize the moment our future has been written for us? In To Keep the Sun Alive, as the Islamic Revolution looms just outside the gate of an Iranian family orchard, Rabeah Ghaffari has built a world so lush, so precise that you will find yourself rewriting history if only to imagine it could still exist.”—Mira Jacob, author of The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing "[A] tenderhearted début novel . . . A wide–ranging narrative, showing the enduring ramifications of filial and political violence." —The New Yorker The year is 1979. The Iranian Revolution is just around the corner. In the northeastern city of Naishapur, a retired judge and his wife, Bibi–Khanoom, continue to run their ancient family orchard, growing apples, plums, peaches, and sour cherries. The days here are marked by long, elaborate lunches on the terrace where the judge and his wife mediate disputes between aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews that foreshadow the looming national crisis to come. Will the monarchy survive the revolutionary tide gathering across the country? Will the judge’s brother, a powerful cleric, take political control of the town or remain only a religious leader? And yet, life goes on. Bibi–Khanoom’s grandniece secretly falls in love with the judge’s grandnephew and dreams of a career on the stage. His other grandnephew withers away on opium dreams. A widowed father longs for a life in Europe. A strained marriage slowly unravels. The orchard trees bloom and fruit as the streets in the capital grow violent. And a once–in–a–lifetime solar eclipse, set to occur on one of the holiest days of year, finally causes the family—and the country—to break. Told through a host of unforgettable characters, ranging from servants and young children to intimate friends, To Keep the Sun Alive reveals the personal behind the political, reminding us of the human lives that animate historical events.
A hilarious nonfiction picture book from the New York Times bestselling author and creator of Awkward Yeti. Oh hey, guess what? The Sun never stops working to keep things on Earth running smoothly. (That's why it's been Employee of the Month for 4.5 billion years.) So why does the Sun get to be the center of attention? Because it's our solar system's very own star! This funny and factual picture book from Awkward Yeti creator Nick Seluk explains every part of the Sun's big job: keeping our solar system together, giving Earth day and night, keeping us warm, and more. In fact, the Sun does so much for us that we wouldn't be alive without it. That's kind of a big deal. Each spread features bite-sized text and comic-style art with sidebars sprinkled throughout. Anthropomorphized planets (and Pluto) chime in with commentary as readers learn about the Sun. For instance, Mars found someone's rover. Earth wants the Sun to do more stuff for it. And Jupiter just wants the Sun's autograph. Funny, smart, and accessible, The Sun Is Kind of a Big Deal is a must-have!
From Pulitzer Prize finalist Linda Hogan, Solar Storms tells the moving, “luminous” (Publishers Weekly) story of Angela Jenson, a troubled Native American girl coming of age in the foster system in Oklahoma, who decides to reunite with her family. At seventeen, Angela returns to the place where she was raised—a stunning island town that lies at the border of Canada and Minnesota—where she finds that an eager developer is planning a hydroelectric dam that will leave sacred land flooded and abandoned. Joining up with three other concerned residents, Angela fights the project, reconnecting with her ancestral roots as she does so. Harrowing, lyrical, and boldly incisive, Solar Storms is a powerful examination of the clashes between cultures and traumatic repercussions that have shaped American history.
Jay Cantrell will find his family…or die trying. He had the perfect life as a small-town librarian: married just over a year to his second wife, an airline pilot, he also has a daughter in college studying to be an astrophysicist. He's ready to celebrate the first year of his new marriage as he adjusts to an empty nest and a new stage in life. But the sun had other plans and sent a coronal mass ejection as an anniversary present. Awakened before dawn one morning in mid-December by northern lights that blanket the sky—in central Illinois—Jay's world changes in the blink of an eye. Flying a planeload of passengers to Hawaii, his wife Kate experiences the CME in a whole other light and must fight to stay alive every step of the way. Leah, Jay's daughter, witnesses the impact through the eyes of a student far from home. Jay must decide to stay and wait for news of his wife or leave before things get worse to find his daughter. The problem is, with no electricity, he doesn't know how bad it is...anywhere. Will he set out to rescue his daughter and make a harrowing journey through a post-apocalyptic wasteland only to find the power is still on, two states away? In a world where electricity is a thing of the past, can there be any hope for the future? After all, it's not a matter of if a CME will strike the earth, but when.
An engrossing, satirical and very funny new novel on climate change. Michael Beard is in his late fifties; bald, overweight, unprepossessing—a Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. An inveterate philanderer, Beard finds his fifth marriage floundering. But this time it is different: she is having the affair, and he is still in love with her. When Beard's professional and personal worlds are entwined in a freak accident, an opportunity presents itself, a chance for Beard to extricate himself from his marital mess, reinvigorate his career and very possibly save the world from environmental disaster. With a global scope, Solar is a comedy dealing directly with the crises of today. A story of one man's ambitions and self-deceptions, it is a startling and stylish new departure in the work of one of the world's great writers.
