[DaoVeles]

>This is why I'm bullish on solar, BTW. It's better to have SOME energy, even if it's only daytime, than none at all if the Middle East decides it wants to veto the US again.

Having worked with solar for a long while, I am always trying to tame people expectations of it. I think that and most renewables are awesome but we are trying to make them match the societal paradigm of fossil fuels and I think that is a fools errand.

We are going to go to a green energy grid eventually (fossil fuels are limited) and it will mostly likely have a lower total energy per capita than what we have today. Combine this with technology innovations, personal reductions in demand and the end result won't be so bad. It isn't going to be a dystopia but I don't think we will be living the same level of today's abundance.

[defrost]

> I don't think we will be living the same level of today's abundance.

I don't think we will be living the same level of today's waste.

Already per capita energy consumption has ceased to grow in countries such as the US and elsewhere, this is due to better effeciences in energy use.

It's not just solar, across the board there is more and more research on better ways to make hydrogen from water, better ways to make cement, battery chemistry not just for cars (cheaper but much heavier batteries per kWh are suited to grid storage), improvements on steel making, etc (it's a long list).

It's not crazy to imagine lower per capita energy consumption and an increase in goods and living standards for more people.

[DaoVeles]

I agree with your core idea, lower energy requirements are coming. Heck, ICE vehicles turn about 70% of their energy into heat - electrification is going to do a lot to help reduce our energy needs.

But the issue is a lot of the slightly more pessimistic smart money is betting on us going from a 20 TwH society to a 5TwH society. That is a sizable drop that efficiency alone cannot account for. That will also lead to a societal change that could potentially be for the better.

To go Y contaminator on this, with fossil fuels we have funded a lot of companies but as we more to the more sustainable long terms energy flows we will have to find out what can genuinely last. Like warren buffet said "When the tide goes out, you figure out who is skinny dipping".

On a deeper level, in a sort of Yin and Yang kind of way; the good news if we don't manage to keep up our consumption is that it means the rest of the world will get some relief from the tyranny of man. Is this good or bad? That dependents on the ethics of the individual.

[kmeisthax]

I think I heard something like 30% of all energy production gets turned into waste heat somewhere in the grid? Home supplies in the US are 120VAC60, you have high-voltage transmission lines at all sorts of voltages, and then most of our electronics have to rectify that to DC. I have to wonder how much of that loss goes away when the majority of household power is consumed in the same building it is produced.