An outstanding Ted Talk by energy entrepreneur Matt Tillieard. He very concisely and cogently lays out why renewable energy technology and its economics are so much more powerful than the economics behind fossil fuels. Technology, especially if it gets manufactured at scale, just gets cheaper and better as it follows Wright's Law. Think of the falling price of flat screen TV's – and solar panels which are now so cheap that poor farmers in Pakistan are deploying them en masse to replace their old diesel water pumps.
And clean energy can't be controlled by a cartel. Once the solar panels are put up, they work for 25+ years. They don't depend on a constant supply of oil that is pumped out of the ground and controlled by a few nations. Lithium, copper and other minerals required to build clean tech is abundant. And with the arrival of Sodium Ion batteries at scale next year, batteries for energy storage will get even cheaper.
Matt says that the future belongs to countries that can invent, manufacture and scale these technologies and sell them cheaply. That unfortunately looks like China unless the West wakes up. The US is too focused on energy sources of the past and protecting the enormous profits we continue to generate from our legacy energy sources. But the economics of technology will clearly win in the end, and China gets that.
An outstanding Ted Talk on the future of energy, and why clean energy technology will inevitably win in the long run over the economics of commodities like fossil fuels
byu/Epicurus-fan inenergy
by Epicurus-fan
3 comments
I notice the relentless articles about the lack of minerals for the energy transition have pretty much disappeared in the last year.
…. What long run….
Where the factories are that make these technologies does not matter. All that matters is having access to what they make and deploying it successfully.
The USA has prospered with information technology. There is nothing wrong with someone else having something to make. The US can and should trade what it makes for what foreigners make, as dictated by comparative advantage.
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