Issue #04 - The Future of Energy is Cool
Issue #04 - The Future of Energy is Cool
Renewables, solar & even nuclear fusion are BOOMING!
The last two centuries were the most prosperous centuries out of humans' 300,000-year history. At the start of the 1800s, 87% of humans lived in poverty, now just 7% do. GDP was $1-trillion, now it is a modest $104-trillion. In all that time, women, ethnic minorities, homosexuals & disabled people have all been granted the best gift a human could ever receive, rights & subsequent freedom.
But all of this growth & greatness stems from one event in the scientific revolution. When we discovered new ways of creating energy. In the 1800s we discovered that we could leverage coal, oil & natural gas to provide us with energy. That energy ended up fuelling our transportation, our houses, our workplaces and our entire development. These fossil fuels are the backbone of our society.
Now in the early decades of the 21st century, we are entering another paradigm in which our relationship with energy is changing. As we unlock new ways of creating energy, notably sustainable ones, we will also create new things, and do things that were previously unimaginable.
• I was surprised to hear that in most parts of the world, renewables are the cheapest energy type to produce, even without subsidies!
• Singapore is building the world’s largest solar farm. That was something I never expected to read, given their extremely limited land size. Turns out that the solar farm will be located in a desert in Northern Australia and a cable crossing 3,800km underneath the ocean will connect it to the island of Singapore. When complete, 20% of the country’s energy will come from that uninterrupted, eco-friendly, solar source of fuel in Australia. Singapore is just too cool man...
• You may have heard of Costa Rica's recent efforts, because they've been exemplary. For the third year now, the small country of Costa Rica have produced 100% of their electricity through renewable power. They're also striving to be carbon neutral by December. Despite, solar and wind currently standing as the frontrunners in the clean energy revolution, 67% of Costa Rica’s electricity actually comes from hydropower, and a further 14% from geothermal sources; highlighting the flexible nature of renewables and their potential.
• I'm not sure about you guys but I thought I had had enough of Elon Musk this week. From his wild tweets, to his latest JRE appearance; yet here I am…writing about Elon. So aside from PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, Neural Link, The BoringCompany, Electronic Music Producing, Open AI and Hyperloop, Elon Musk also has a company called SolarCity. In late 2019 they unveiled their ’solar glass roof’, which is actually proving to be cheaper than a normal roof when you take into account tax credits and energy savings. A whole country of houses with solar panel roof tiles sounds fucking awesome to me. Pretty certain now that Elon will go down as the Thomas Edison of our generation.
• Fusion - AHA! No piece of writing exploring the future of energy would be complete without out mentioning nuclear fusion. The claim that nuclear fusion can solve our pollution crisis and create a world of unlimited clean energy has been made once or twice in the past so I'll refrain from doing that.
Whilst research into fusion is both slow and immature, advances within it are being made. The number of projects working to make nuclear fusion a reality has never been so high. Google, MIT & the Chinese, Russian & British governments are ‘looking into it.' Fusion research is becoming cheaper, the demand for it is rising and the world has more wealth to fund these projects now than back in the 1930s when first talks of the nuclear fusion utopia were held.
We had the Stone Age.
We then had the Copper Age.
We are currently in the Fossil Fuel Age.
Will the Renewable Energy Age be next? And what will it bring with it?
3 Great Bits of News
Scientists from Kenya and the U.K. have discovered a microbe that shields mosquitoes from becoming infected with malaria, potentially allowing humans to control the disease.
Banksy has been creating & donating COVID-related art to NHS hospitals for them to auction. The 21st century Stoic.
Decentralised contact tracing apps that put privacy rights first, like the ones using the Google + Apple API , seem to be doing a better job at helping us fight COVID than centralised, government-controlled ones, like that of the UK & Australia. I'll be speaking more about this in next week's issue.
Best of the Week
Song of the Week
Been on a big Biggie vibe this week so here's a Biggie song that I've been vibing big too.
Wisdom of the Week
Young people; don’t think about getting a job. There are none. Think about solving problems. There are many.
Random Fact
So last week we established that Bangkok is the most visited city every year.
Today you may be surprised to hear that Atlanta is the airport that receives the most passengers every year.
Random Resource
This is a good 'un. I've been using Medium for about 2 years now and upon reflecting on this today, it is easily my favourite source of knowledge online, given the abundance of high quality & insightful writing.
Shower Thoughts:
In China’s Rongcheng region, a system already deducts residents points for littering and allows them to earn those points back with hard labour.
Then add their digital currency which will give them total surveillance over all money transactions within a country of 2 billion people and you have quite the big brother.