> So if/when fusion power is to hand, it will add to or replace existing decarbonised power sources. There are a few misconceptions about energy I think it's i

> So if/when fusion power is to hand, it will add to or replace existing decarbonised power sources. There are a few misconceptions about energy I think it's important to clear up. - New energy sources have never replaced older ones. Instead they were just added to the pile. We are currently burning more biomass and more coal than ever before. So-called decarbonized energy sources have never replaced fossil fuels. - There is an interdependency, a symbiotic relationship if you will, between different energy sources. To pump oil you need steel, which means burning coal. To mine coal you need diesel-powered machines. To build solar panels you need to mine minerals with diesel-powered machines. To make wind turbines you need steel, and thus burn coal. To build nuclear reactors you need lots of steel, lots of cement, which also means burning coal. Even to be able to burn biomass (renewable, carbon-neutral, yay) on an industrial scale you need machines to cut all those trees, powered by fossil fuels. And so forth and so on... - The mining activity related with so called "decarbonized energy" (solar, wind, nuclear, lithium batteries etc) is heavily based on fossil fuels. This, in addition to its multiple disastrous environmental impacts: destruction of ecosystems, water pollution, air pollution, aquifer poisoning. - The global economy is still totally dependent on fossil fuels - for mining, global transport, food production and to a large degree manufacturing. Just about any object in your house or in your pocket was manufactured and delivered to you using fossil fuels. Those Teslas everybody is so enamored with won't exist without the coal burned to make the steel they contain, the oil burned to mine all the other metals (actually a substantial chunk of the periodic table), and also the oil burned getting them delivered to you. Not to mention the fact that you'll still need to burn some gas and coal in order to charge them. For nuclear fusion, even if the technology is advanced enough to create a stable reaction that releases more energy than it consumes, personally I highly doubt it will be sufficient to ween us off fossil fuels. Nuclear fission (the most dense energy source we currently have) has never done that.