5 ms·

US spends a whopping 8.3% of GDP on energy. Cheap(er) abundant(er) energy would be great but not transformative.

Guvante 13y ago
We don't pay a lot for electricity we use, but industrial places do pay a lot for electricity they might use.
voidlogic 13y ago
Maybe not transformative if you are talking about just replacing the cost of what is used now, but if energy is extremely cheap we will actually use more of it. For example: Tired of landfills? Recycle everything! Tired of plowing your driveway, heat it! Tired of polluted air? Break water down into pure air for your house! etc
HCIdivision17 13y ago
Just a number check: eight percent of the US GDP is well over a trillion dollars. That is, over $1e12, or more easily understood as over $1,000,000,000,000. I think the trick here is a lot of energy is consumed by heavy industry. An single line in a plant can consume megawatts of power, and refining processes are flat out extravagant in consumption. If this energy was conserved or near free, we would see those savings passed onto lowered cost of goods or in process improvements/expansions. I think that's likely qualitatively different from just the Fed pumping cash into the system, and the impact would be impressive.
pknight 13y ago
I think you're vastly underestimating what it means to have (virtually) unlimited energy. Things that we are not doing now because it's not economically viable, become viable. Water filtration for drinkable water is huge and also happens to be one of the main problems in the world. That problem becomes more approachable when you have an excess of energy at your disposal. Recycling materials is also heavily constrained by energy costs. With so much energy available you can employ recycling techniques that are not viable right now and/or do it at a larger scale. There are also huge reductions possible when you have abundant energy. Take out costs associated with driving your car, or the cost of cleaning up ongoing pollution, or the costs of extracting energy from scarce resources. Those could all be dramatically reduced once abundant energy becomes a reality. It will be impactful for people who are not rich (99% of the planet), not having to pay huge chunks of income for energy. After rent costs, the biggest part of my living costs come from energy production (elec, gas, water etc). Abundant energy also makes a more distributed form of general production more viable. The more communities become self reliant, the less vulnerable the world becomes to localized disasters (political and environmental) and the stronger our ability to help out communities that are suffering. All the costs we are making (money & environmental) for the purpose of transporting goods and resources around the world can be scaled back. Think about this for a minute, if you have access to cheap abundant energy, you have some source of water and the technology to filter it than you have all the basic necessities to supply basic survival needs to a community. That is huge.
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago
  In fact you've overestimated it. The processes you describe may be energy intensive, but the systems which surround said processes - and the design required to deploy them - are intensive in man hours. Labor is of course a far larger portion of GDP, and lowering the cost of labor would of course have a far more dramatic impact on our lives than would lowering the cost of energy. Prof Hanson has written on this subject if you care to read a more comprehensive academic take on it. In summation, much of the focus people place upon lowering the cost of energy is misplaced and quite silly when one stops to think about it in an unbiased manner.

We don't pay a lot for electricity we use, but industrial places do pay a lot for electricity they might use.

Maybe not transformative if you are talking about just replacing the cost of what is used now, but if energy is extremely cheap we will actually use more of it. For example: Tired of landfills? Recycle everything! Tired of plowing your driveway, heat it! Tired of polluted air? Break water down into pure air for your house! etc

HCIdivision17 13y ago

Just a number check: eight percent of the US GDP is well over a trillion dollars. That is, over $1e12, or more easily understood as over $1,000,000,000,000. I think the trick here is a lot of energy is consumed by heavy industry. An single line in a plant can consume megawatts of power, and refining processes are flat out extravagant in consumption. If this energy was conserved or near free, we would see those savings passed onto lowered cost of goods or in process improvements/expansions. I think that's likely qualitatively different from just the Fed pumping cash into the system, and the impact would be impressive.

pknight 13y ago

I think you're vastly underestimating what it means to have (virtually) unlimited energy. Things that we are not doing now because it's not economically viable, become viable. Water filtration for drinkable water is huge and also happens to be one of the main problems in the world. That problem becomes more approachable when you have an excess of energy at your disposal. Recycling materials is also heavily constrained by energy costs. With so much energy available you can employ recycling techniques that are not viable right now and/or do it at a larger scale. There are also huge reductions possible when you have abundant energy. Take out costs associated with driving your car, or the cost of cleaning up ongoing pollution, or the costs of extracting energy from scarce resources. Those could all be dramatically reduced once abundant energy becomes a reality. It will be impactful for people who are not rich (99% of the planet), not having to pay huge chunks of income for energy. After rent costs, the biggest part of my living costs come from energy production (elec, gas, water etc). Abundant energy also makes a more distributed form of general production more viable. The more communities become self reliant, the less vulnerable the world becomes to localized disasters (political and environmental) and the stronger our ability to help out communities that are suffering. All the costs we are making (money & environmental) for the purpose of transporting goods and resources around the world can be scaled back. Think about this for a minute, if you have access to cheap abundant energy, you have some source of water and the technology to filter it than you have all the basic necessities to supply basic survival needs to a community. That is huge.

alexeisadeski3 13y ago
In fact you've overestimated it. The processes you describe may be energy intensive, but the systems which surround said processes - and the design required to deploy them - are intensive in man hours. Labor is of course a far larger portion of GDP, and lowering the cost of labor would of course have a far more dramatic impact on our lives than would lowering the cost of energy. Prof Hanson has written on this subject if you care to read a more comprehensive academic take on it. In summation, much of the focus people place upon lowering the cost of energy is misplaced and quite silly when one stops to think about it in an unbiased manner.