[strken]

Why can't we have an energy surplus and also need to reduce consumption of carbon-intensive goods? It's not clear to me why they'd be mutually exclusive.

If e.g. smelters still need to use coal, then an energy surplus doesn't help them. If carbon capture is expensive even with virtually free power due to wages and infrastructure, the capture cost was reflected in the price of steel, and demand for steel is elastic, then we'd both capture more carbon and reduce steel consumption.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Why can't we have an energy surplus and also need to reduce consumption of carbon-intensive goods? It's not clear to me why they'd be mutually exclusive.

The vast majority of carbon-intensive goods are related to energy production. Even when people talk about things like transportation and agriculture and construction, a major proportion of their CO2 emissions are from burning fuel.

> If e.g. smelters still need to use coal, then an energy surplus doesn't help them.

Smelters are using coal for heat. Burning it directly on site is more efficient than burning it in a power plant, losing most of the heat to conversion inefficiency, losing some of the electricity to distribution and then turning what's left back into heat.

If you had cheap electricity that didn't come from burning coal they could just use electric heat. At which point there would be no need to reduce steel consumption.