Earlier quoted context omitted.
Solar and wind alone won't work without support by gas or other non-renewable sources. Try to find a single scientific study that gives a detailed overview of how the German energy mix is supposed to work and that explains how supply will be matched to demand 24/7 all year round. None exists. The whole "Energiewende" is built on the hope that either our neighbors will produce the necessary base capacity to stabilize…
>Sustainable Energy: Without The Hot Air This book has come up on Hacker News before, and I've read it, and it has a crucial flaw, well, two actually: - It underestimates the efficiency of solar panels by quite a bit, supposing that 10% would be a lofty goal (and arguing on this basis that solar farms are not economically viable). In fact, panels on the market are approaching 20% [1], and 25% seems well within reach.…
Where it feels a little parochial, is its focus on the UK as if the GDP or population of the UK matters in the context of a global issue like sustainable energy.
It simply doesn't and he has enough facts and figures available even at that time to put that together, but probably fell into the classic british position of assuming they are more important than they really are in a global context.
Anyone outside the UK must read it in the same way people in the UK would read a small island dweller writing "Yes this might work for most of the UK but the Isle of Man would need to import power, which is simply unthinkable, even though it already does, so maybe we should build nuclear there instead to maintain the islands sovereignty".
Or maybe we can discount the needs of half a percent of the population if they run counter to the needs of the other 99.5% and focus on the big picture?
In the end we didn't need to as the wind power, heat pumps, EVs and carbon fees required for the UK overlapped heavily with other nations but this was a clear blindspot which I think you are charitably interpreting as a silly mistake when really it's more akin to arrogance.