Making local energy futures, from marine energy to hydrogen fuel, at the edge of the world. The islands of Orkney, off the northern coast of Scotland, are closer to the Arctic Circle than to London. Surrounded by fierce seas and shrouded by clouds and mist, the islands seem to mark the edge of the known world. And yet they are a center for energy technology innovation, from marine energy to hydrogen fuel networks, attracting the interest of venture capitalists and local communities. In this book, Laura Watts tells a story of making energy futures at the edge of the world.
Orkney, Watts tells us, has been making technology for six thousand years, from arrowheads and stone circles to wave and tide energy prototypes. Artifacts and traces of all the ages--Stone, Bronze, Iron, Viking, Silicon--are visible everywhere. The islanders turned to energy innovation when forced to contend with an energy infrastructure they had outgrown. Today, Orkney is home to the European Marine Energy Centre, established in 2003. There are about forty open-sea marine energy test facilities in the world, many of which draw on Orkney expertise. The islands generate more renewable energy than they use, are growing hydrogen fuel and electric car networks, and have hundreds of locally owned micro wind turbines and a decade-old smart grid. Mixing storytelling and ethnography, empiricism and lyricism, Watts tells an Orkney energy saga--an account of how the islands are creating their own low-carbon future in the face of the seemingly impossible. The Orkney Islands, Watts shows, are playing a long game, making energy futures for another six thousand years.
在世界邊緣，從海洋能源到氫燃料，打造地方能源未來。
位於蘇格蘭北部海岸的奧克尼群島，距離北極圈比倫敦更近。這些島嶼被狂暴的海洋環繞，常常籠罩在雲霧之中，似乎標誌著已知世界的邊緣。然而，它們卻是能源科技創新的中心，從海洋能源到氫燃料網絡，吸引了風險投資者和當地社區的關注。在這本書中，勞拉·瓦茨講述了在世界邊緣打造能源未來的故事。
瓦茨告訴我們，奧克尼已經製造技術六千年，從箭頭和石圈到波浪和潮汐能源原型，各個時代的文物和痕跡隨處可見——石器時代、青銅時代、鐵器時代、維京時代、矽谷時代。當島民們被迫面對一個已經不再適合他們的能源基礎設施時，他們轉向了能源創新。如今，奧克尼是歐洲海洋能源中心的所在地，該中心成立於2003年。全球約有四十個開放海域的海洋能源測試設施，其中許多依賴奧克尼的專業知識。這些島嶼產生的可再生能源超過其使用量，正在發展氫燃料和電動車網絡，並擁有數百個當地擁有的微型風力發電機和十年的智慧電網。瓦茨將敘事與人類學、經驗主義與抒情主義相結合，講述了一個奧克尼的能源傳奇——這是一個關於這些島嶼如何在看似不可能的情況下創造自己的低碳未來的故事。瓦茨展示了奧克尼群島正在進行一場長期的遊戲，為未來的六千年打造能源未來。
Laura Watts is a poet, writer, ethnographer of futures, and Interdisciplinary Senior Lecturer in Energy and Society in the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh. As a science and technology studies scholar she has explored the effect of "edge" landscapes on how the future is imagined and made. She is coauthor of Ebban an' Flowan, the world's first poetic primer for marine renewable energy, and in 2017 she won the International Cultural Innovation Prize with the Reconstrained Design Group for a community-built energy storage device designed from scrap.
