David MacKay’s 2008 book Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air has been kept current through a community edition that tracks revisions chapter by chapter. The changes page reports that 35 chapters have been revised so far, with 113 individual updates incorporated since the original publication. Each update is presented with the original 2008 text struck through and the revised text highlighted, accompanied by a date and source citation.
This image illustrates the changes page described in the article, which tracks revisions to MacKay’s book from 2008 to 2026
The revisions reflect major shifts in energy policy and technology. For the motivations chapter, the page notes that the UK’s Climate Change Act was amended in 2019 to set a 100 % net‑zero greenhouse‑gas target by 2050, tightening the earlier 80 % reduction goal. In the balance‑sheet chapter, it updates the cost of UK domestic electricity from about 10p per kilowatt‑hour in 2008 to roughly 26p per unit in 2026, attributing the increase largely to the 2021‑22 energy crisis. The cars chapter highlights that, while the original 40 kWh per day per person estimate assumed a 2008‑era petrol car, by the mid‑2020s new‑car fuel economy had improved and over a fifth of new cars sold worldwide in 2024 were electric.
Because the updates are generated directly from the chapter markdown by a script, the changes page stays accurate as further revisions are made, but it does not re‑argue the book’s central conclusions; it merely shows what has changed since 2008. The page also records the author’s death in 2026, updating the biographical note. Thus the community edition offers a transparent, sourced record of how the energy landscape has evolved, leaving readers to judge whether MacKay’s overall analysis still holds.