Book Review: Mad like Tesla, Underdog Inventors and their Relentless Pursuit of Clean Energy
Hamilton, T. 2011, ECW Press, Toronto, Canada

Wind turbines, photovoltaic cells, biofuels, tidal power… yes, yes, same old, same old… We know renewables exist, what they look like, how it will happen – albeit rather slowly – tell me something new. Well here it is: “whatever they’ll think of next” is coming to a street near you.

The author of this really interesting book is a Canadian journalist (not the sportsman by the way) with a huge interest in clean technology and renewable energy in general; he has been indulging his interests in his blog Clean Break for the past few year, and decided to expose some of the most varied and promising ideas in a book.

In his view, these driven and visionary researchers, challengers of the “ it cannot be done” mantra, may bring us tomorrow’s essential technology, just like Nikola Tesla who was well ahead of his time (magnetic fields, AC current, wireless communication etc), but was also regarded as mad by some.

Alternating between technical explanations and stories about the entrepreneurs and their difficulties, the concepts are so unusual you cannot help but keep on reading. Here you will find the most eclectic range of energy production, from bizarre to mysterious, to… well, seemingly wacky or unlikely… See for yourself:

• Believe it or not, someone is thinking about creating huge man-made tornadoes – under very controlled and rigorous circumstances you understand- to run turbines generating electricity.

• Another company is looking at launching serious mirrors and solar panels into space, converting the electricity generated in situ into microwaves. These would be beamed back to receiving stations on earth 24/7- where they would be turned back into electricity.

• Efficiency could – and should- also be part of the equation, so someone has managed to copy nature’s perfect spiral shapes to build state-of-the-art, high efficiency propellers and turbines based on fluid dynamics,

• A new type of incredibly efficient lightweight rechargeable ceramic batteries using ultracapacitor technology is being developed in great secret in Texas. These promise lightweight, clean, safe usage as well as hyper-fast recharge and long-life ….

• My real favourite though was Algenol’s process from blue-green algae, converting salty water and CO₂ into water and ethanol: surely this would be a fabulous development to multi-task in this way and reduce CO₂ whilst providing drinking water and greener energy.

There are a few more ideas in this book, all of which with the real potential to change the world forever – because do not be fooled: although these ideas may seem extreme or strange, we are not talking about nutty professors in their garden sheds here. Every one of these technologies is being prototyped, produced and tested as we speak. It is true that funding issues, development and scale are forever mentioned throughout, but these companies are successful, have marketable patented products and carry on with their research because as you would expect their potential is huge despite the mountains to climb.

After all, incredibly novel and unlikely devices, the stuff of science-fiction, ended up in our pockets within a few decades, so why not expect these will too?

Laurence Menhinick