ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to present the fundamental ideas and methods of transition engineering. The majority of this book has provided technical information for renewable energy conversion. The rst chapter gave an overview of the issues with the unsustainable exploitation of energy, water, and land, and the issues of population growth and environmental disruption. After studying the chapters of this book, you should have a good understanding that the availability of fossil fuels, water, land, and mineral resources will not continue growing into the future as they have grown in the past. You should also be able to quantitatively demonstrate how and why renewable energy cannot directly substitute for current patterns of fossil and nuclear fuel use. After studying this chapter, you will understand the complex and dynamic nature of energy and environment systems. You will be able to formulate engineering change projects and propose and evaluate innovate adaptive designs. You will learn several new strategic analysis methods for transition projects. You will also be able to use a holistic perspective without getting bogged down in conicting ideologies. The relative roles of human behavior, policy, and economics should become clear, as will the critical role of the emergence of the eld of transition engineering.
