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Human energy use isn't going to continue to grow exponentially for the next 500 years. The world population is predicted to peak about 30% above where it is no

Human energy use isn't going to continue to grow exponentially for the next 500 years. The world population is predicted to peak about 30% above where it is now and then fall back -- maybe to 7 billion people sustained. We seem to need about 200 GJ per person to be really happy [1], so let's assume 300 GJ per person. We should be able to get by, happily, on 2000 EJ per year sustained. By your figures, that's less than 1% of what the sun provides. [1] https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.3978 https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2...

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
littlestymaar 3y ago
> We should be able to get by, happily, on 2000 EJ per year sustained. By your figures, that's less than 1% of what the sun provides. Then at that rate we'd have 100,000 years of Tidal energy available even if we used it for the totality of our energy needs (and 10,000,000 years if we use it for 1% of our needs as taken in the paper). And that was basically the point of the person you're responding to: it's not so much that tidal energy is non-renewable, the problem is that the paper assume exponential consumption growth, and exponential growth is unsustainable no matter what.