LOW-TECH MAGAZINE

Heat your House with a Water Brake Windmill

Renewable energy production is almost entirely aimed at the generation of electricity. However, we use more energy in the form of heat, which solar panels and wind turbines can produce only indirectly and relatively inefficiently. 

A solar thermal collector skips the conversion to electricity and supplies renewable thermal energy in a direct and more efficient way.

Much less known is that a mechanical windmill can do the same in a windy climate -- by oversizing its brake system, a windmill can generate lots of direct heat through friction. A mechanical  windmill can also be coupled to a mechanical heat pump, which can be cheaper than using a gas boiler or an electric heat pump driven by a wind turbine.

Keeping Some of the Lights On: Redefining Energy Security

As a society depends more on energy sources for its daily functioning, it becomes more vulnerable if the supply of energy is interrupted. This obvious fact is ignored in current strategies to achieve energy security, making them counter-productive.

How Circular is the Circular Economy?

The circular economy – the newest magical word in the sustainable development vocabulary – promises economic growth without destruction or waste. However, the concept only focuses on a small part of total resource use and does not take into account the laws of thermodynamics.

How to Build a Low-tech Website?

Low-tech Magazine was born in 2007 and has seen minimal changes ever since. Because a website redesign was long overdue — and because we try to practice what we preach — we decided to build a low-tech, self-hosted, and solar-powered version of Low-tech Magazine. The new blog is designed to radically reduce the energy use associated with accessing our content.

The solar powered server that runs the new website.

Could We Dredge the Netherlands Without Fossil Fuels?

The dredging industry has been the backbone of the Dutch economy for centuries. If canals, harbours and rivers would not be maintained for a few years, the whole country would literally grind to a halt.

Today, dredging happens with oil powered ships, which burn up to 3,000 litres of fuel per hour. However, in earlier times, the Dutch waterways were dredged mostly by hand, using simple but ingenious tools.

Manual dredging was heavy labour, especially when waterways became deeper. Therefore, it was supplemented by animal power, wind power and tidal power. However, in some parts of the Netherlands, people chose a different strategy: they designed a new type of cargo ship that could sail in shallow waterways. 

1699 scale model of a scratcher rigged with sails. Credit: Maritiem Digitaal

We Can't Do It Ourselves

How to live a more sustainable life? This question generates a lot of debate that is focused on what individuals can do in order to address problems like climate change. For example, people are encouraged to shop locally, to buy organic food, to install home insulation, or to cycle more often.

But how effective is individual action when it is systemic social change that is needed? Individuals do make choices, but these are facilitated and constrained by the society in which they live. Therefore, it may be more useful to question the system that requires many of us to travel and consume energy as we do.