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Thought of mine from 20 years ago is the power available from fossil fuels has been limited since around 1970. Which is it's very price inelastic. And there wil
by Gibbon1 3y ago
Thought of mine from 20 years ago is the power available from fossil fuels has been limited since around 1970. Which is it's very price inelastic. And there will never be enough to pull the remaining 2/3rds of humanity out of poverty. The Chinese managed what they did by burning 2/3rd of their total coal reserves in the last 40 years.
But what we're now seeing is the vastly larger availability and price elastic supply of solar and wind power. All this stuff, solar, wind, batteries are getting cheap and commodified. The result is the world economy isn't energy constrained for the first time in 50 years.
- epistasis 3y agoGood points. One thing about raising most of the world out of poverty, however, is that even with the current energy mix, it would not take much more fossil fuels, and only raise emissions by 5%. A very recent paper with this (somewhat surprising) modeling: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03627-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03627-w