[okanat]

Unless you colonize it, you cannot utilize 50% of the Earth's energy. If it proven anything, what the war in Ukraine showed us is how terrible of an idea to outsource energy, especially to nations who don't share interests with us.

[janalsncm]

It would be interesting if there was a global grid and market for (hopefully clean) energy so that a joule of energy could be sold anywhere instantaneously, just like any other commodity. This would allow countries to quickly power up without even building a power plant. It would also allow large base load power stations (like nuclear) to have permanent demand.

Of course there are technical challenges of building out UHVDC everywhere. This probably means a joule isn’t perfectly fungible.

Perhaps Europe’s problem was being overly reliant on only one supplier.

[IMTDb]

A global and free market for electricity means that African citizens are going to have to outbid bitcoin miners and ai trainers for electricity.

I would much rather see a world where governments are at least partially in charge of the grid to ensure that their population gets their share of the capacity.

[npoc]

It will be almost impossible to not outbid bitcoin miners for electricity due to the fact that mining is a non-geographically constrained free market where miners are not profitable unless their electricity cost is very close to zero (i.e. otherwise wasted energy). As soon as there's other demand for the same energy, bitcoin mining will instantly become unprofitable in that area and they will need to relocate.

[BobaFloutist]

Well they didn't say a free market. I would certainly hope for some treaties making sure everyone gets a baseline before extras get put up to bid.

[metadat]

This is a nice fantasy, but you still need the infrastructure to efficiently transmit said energy.