Powering the Future

distant time, will still drive cars? After a few moments of thought, nearly everybody answers yes to this question, even though they're not quite sure where the energy would come from. The reason, they say, is that cars will be things that people desperately want, if only because they're status symbols, and they'll therefore pay any price, whereupon entrepreneurs will step forward to find a way to make the cars available. We can also ask whether these people of the distant future will still fly in airplanes. That's a little harder, for it's easier for us to imagine living without airplanes than without cars. However, again nearly everyone concludes that people of means living at that time will want the speed and convenience of air travel, and thus that ordinary folk will be able to fly too, although not necessarily cheaply. Then there's the question of whether the lights will come on, that is, whether electricity will be available at reasonable prices whenever users want it. Everyone answers this one yes very quickly, reasoning that government's foolish enough to let the lights go out will not be in office for long. With the basic features of the future energy landscape thus determined, important technical details now fill in easily. If people are flying in airplanes, they must have something to power those planes. It can't be petroleum distillates, because there isn't any petroleum. The fuel, whatever it is, has to be light, compact, and safe, because otherwise the airplanes won't fly, or will blow up occasionally if they do fly. The only such substance elementary chemistry allows is the very jet fuel we use today, so these people must be synthesizing jet fuel from raw materials, presumably with help from an outside energy supply of some kind. Likewise, if people are driving cars, they must be powering them somehow. The power source might also be synthetic fuel, or it might be something else, such as batteries or third rails, but it will definitely be the least expensive option. These people won't like wasting money any more than we do, and they especially won't like wasting it on energy companies. If people's lights come on when they flip the switch, then the power again must come from somewhere. It could be from the sun, the wind, or nuclear reactors, but where it will actually come from is the producer with the lowest delivery price. We might worry at this point that these people fib to us about their world having sufficient energy resources to cover their needs, but a quick check dispels that worry. There is more than enough supply by a wide margin, notably from the sun and its proxy, the wind. It's just a matter of what has the lowest cost. Not only have these folks not fibbed, but in fact they seem to be stuck in exactly the same rat race of production and delivery cost minimization that we are in today, only with different details. The nature of the future energy enterprise our armchair journey reveals isn't directly relevant to any present-day energy controversy, for we live in a time when fossil fuels dominate prices. It matters peripherally, however, because the seeds of what we should do now are contained in what will be. If, for example, we think that carbon is destined to play a central role in energy long after fossil fuels are gone because it's indispensable for air travel, we might want to start being nicer to our carbon industries. If we think that synthetic fuel manufacture is destined to materialize no matter what, we might want to encourage its creation now so that we don't have to build plants in a panic when the crisis is upon us. If we think that nuclear power is destined to impose a price ceiling on electricity no matter what, we might want to develop it properly and keep it standing by, whether we deploy it or not. If we think solar and wind power are destined to be a central energy source no matter what, we might want to develop ways to bank the energy they produce in extremely large quantities, even though doing so is expensive. We can predict the energy situation so far in the future reasonably reliably because it's circumscribed by elementary things. In this, it's different from, say, the weather or an election return. We know that the laws of economics will still hold, even if the direst predictions of global warming come true, and even if there is serious military conflict between now and then. The people of that time will be just as selfish as we are, just as ambitious, just as motivated to protect the children, and just as clever, thanks to the magic of genetics. Also, energy differs from other aspects of human life.