Source: The Ecoten Blog
Date: September 2, 2009

Is green, renewable energy a sexy enough topic to be the centrepiece of a coffee table book? Tom Rand, who leads cleantech development at Toronto’s MaRS Centre, believes so. In fact, he figures that it’s just such a book that will expose a broader section of the population to the issues, technologies and opportunities around renewable energy. Rand has written a soon-to-be-released book called Kick The Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies To Save Their World. The “their” being our children and their children and so on. The technologies or subjects under the spotlight are solar, wind, geothermal, biofuels, hydropower, ocean (tidal and wave), smart buildings, conservation, transportation and the energy Internet.
Now, there’s no shortage of books out there about green energy, but there’s little that explains it so simply and with the graphics and beautiful pictures that show how it’s done and how it can help change our world for the better. This is an accessible package, cleverly assembled and pleasant to look at, while at the same time making it enjoyable to learn about the technologies that, while seemingly “alternative” or “new” today, are destined to become a dominant and permanent way of energizing future generations and the economies that support them.

I’ve written about Rand before. He’s one of a handful of ambitious business leaders who is trying to convince our federal and provincial governments to create “green bonds” that can be sold to the public and used to finance renewable-energy projects across the country. Sadly, our political leaders have been slow to embrace the idea. Rand describes his upcoming book as “advocacy, pure and simple.” The plan is to distribute it through mainstream outlets such as Starbucks to coincide with the big climate-change conference coming up in December in Copenhagen. It will be released in October.

I’m not usually a fan of these kinds of book, but when the format embraces a serious subject — as opposed to movie stars and dogshow pooches — the larger mainstream awareness that can result is too rare in a society overloaded with information. For this reason, Rand’s book should be on every coffee table, out in open view for family and guests to see.

~Tyler Hamilton

Source: The Huffington Post
Date: April 17, 2010

A funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century: we got hooked on fossil fuels. And now, much as we'd like to kick the habit, we're finding it really hard to do.

Tom Rand thinks he can help. He's written a book about clean technologies that says we can change to 100% renewables, Kick The Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World. As you'd expect, the book includes detailed descriptions of the technology we need to get there - solar, wind, geothermal and more - but it goes much further. Kick's big idea is that scale is what's going to make renewables a viable alternative. "We'll need to deploy resources on a scale not seen since World War II, generate international co-operation, and develop rules to put a price on carbon."

One example of the kind of scale he's talking about. "Solar thermal plants built on just one percent of the surface of the Sahara could provide the entire world's electricity demands," he writes, adding that this "is not an idea resting on the loony fringes." He points out that the British Prime Minister and French President have expressed support for a transmission super-grid to connect North African desert solar farms to Europe.

Tom is an engineer, an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and philosopher. When we met at his book launch at MaRS - an innovation hub in Toronto where Tom works as an advisor to clean-tech entrepreneurs - it was also clear that he is a hunk of burning love ... clean-burning love, of course! Check out the video for his book to see what I mean.

All punning aside, Tom is a passionate advocate and this is a serious book. We talked about how he and his family used to have table-pounding conversations about climate change. "The conversations continue," he said. "But it's now abundantly clear that severe climate change is coming and it won't be pretty." Tom's not talking about hotter summers (something people have a hard time getting worked up about), scarier storms, or rising sea levels. "We'll soon have trouble growing enough food. It is life itself we're going to be scrambling to preserve."

There's a second big idea at work in Kick is equally interesting - it's a gorgeous coffee-table book. Why? It acts as a Trojan horse. "My idea is to get this book into people's homes. It will sit on the coffee table, people will flip through it, and..." "And maybe there'll be some more table-pounding conversations around the dinner table?" I interrupted. "Exactly."

As I was leaving, one of Tom's friends approached me. "I overheard you asking Tom why he did a picture book," he said, and then opened his bag to show me the six copies he had just bought. "Sure, I want to support my friend. But I'm also going to give these as gifts. You wouldn't do that with George Monbiot's book, would you?" Activists - and publishers - take note.

Source: www.treehugger.com
Date: May 11, 2010

Tom Rand is one of the smartest guys in the room, having been a software entrepreneur, a venture capitalist and a philosopher. Now he is an author and proselytizer of clean, green energy with his new book Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit. . It is three pounds, five ounces of unbridled optimism, starting off with "When humankind really wants to do something, our ingenuity, resources and determination are breathtaking!" and then gets positive.

Rand performs a valuable service with this book; He takes ten technologies that are sometimes hard to explain and makes them comprehensible and almost obvious, with gorgeous photography and graphics.

The "ten clean technologies that will save their (our children's) world" include:

Solar- with good coverage of both large centralized systems and smaller rooftop installations.

Wind- Macro and micro;

Geothermal- Tom is a big fan of Geo-exchange, or GSHP (ground source heat pumps) and has built a demonstration project in Toronto, a hotel heated and cooled by geo-exchange. He is careful with his language, knowing that everyone uses geothermal interchangeably now, and comes up with the term :"hot geothermal" for the high temperature heat that he calls "the only meaningful source of renewable energy that is not directly reliant on the sun." This is a useful distinction.

Biofuels, where he is appropriately dismissive of first generation fuels from corn, and looking to third generation fuels from algae and halophytes.

Hydro Power What's not to like about hydro? How about relocating millions of people in China and drowning natural wonders. But in the end Rand says "these projects are so massive, and displace so much fossil fuel, that its hard to argue, given intelligent management, that there's no net benefit." Some would disagree.

Oceans: tidal and wave power get good explanations.

Smart Buildings: From the small scale residential (earth ships and passivhaus) to reskinning. His thoughts on building codes are simplistic; he calls it a "no-brainer" and it isn't. What is the point of making "Passivhaus the standard model of suburban development" when the problem is suburban planning, not the house?

Transportation: Rand covers everything from airships to bicycles, but also gets the key point that "smart urban design is the bedrock of clean transportation."

Efficiency and Conservation- Now that's a no-brainer.

And finally, the Energy Internet, redesigning our electrical distribution system to create a really smart grid.

Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit is an important book; it puts together a lot of knowledge in one easy to read package, a great gift for your neighbourhood sceptic who doesn't believe we have any alternative to more tar sands, more offshore drilling, more coal plants. Tom Rand almost convinces even a pessimist like me that we really can have a clean, shiny future.