Nuclear-fusion startup Helion, which last week announced it had raised $500 million, says it has developed new technologies that could make nuclear fusion viable—practically, economically and environmentally. It’s too early to say whether its claims will pan out, but there have been so many recent successes that they can’t be dismissed.
The prospect of carbon-free energy production raises a rarely discussed question: how much would it change the world if cheap and clean energy sources were indeed abundant?
Keep in mind that one source of cheap, clean electricity will lead to others. Maybe nuclear fusion could not be used to fly jet aircraft, but perhaps it could be used to produce relatively clean hydrogen fuel, which then could not be deployed in fusion. There will be a chain reaction, eventually bringing cheap, clean energy into the economy.
As an avid traveller, my first thought is that I will be able to get everywhere more quickly. How about supersonic or perhaps suborbital flight from Washington to Tokyo? Traveling to Antarctica doesn’t seem so difficult anymore. Many remote places will be replaced, one hopes for the better.
A second-order effect is that countries with good infrastructure planning will gain a significant relative advantage. The faster train from Paris to Nice will still be faster, but will there be trains on the Aisilla corridor?
Next in line: Desalination water will become cheaper and easier, enabling the transformation and terraforming of many landscapes. Nevada will boom, though a vigorous environmental debate may begin: How many deserts should we keep? Over time, Mali and the Middle East will become much greener.
How about heating and cooling? It may be possible to manipulate the temperature outside, so Denmark in January and Dubai in August will no longer be so unbearable. It wouldn’t be too hard to melt the ice or generate cold air.
There will also be a significant increase in salary. Not only will more goods and services be available, but the demand for labor will skyrocket. If flying to Tokyo is easy, the demand for pilots will be high. Eventually, more flying will become automated. Robots would become far more abundant, establishing more second- and third-order influences. Cheap energy will make supercomputing more available, crypto more convenient, and nanotechnology more likely.
Because of the relative abundance of material goods, people can invest more resources in their search for status. Buying membership to specific clubs—select groups that owned the original Van Gogh—can be relatively more expensive.
And limiting climate change may not be as easy as it might seem at first glance. Yes, nuclear fusion can replace all those coal plants. But the secondary results do not stop here. As water desalination became more feasible, for example, irrigation would become less expensive. Many areas would be far more green, and people could raise more cows and eat more beef. In turn, those cows could release far more methane into the air, worsening a significant set of climate-related problems.
But all is not lost. Because energy would be so cheap, protective technologies – for example, to remove methane and carbon from the air – are also likely to be more viable and affordable.
In general, in a world free of carbon emissions, the stakes will be higher for a larger subset of decisions. If we can clean the air, great. If not, the overall increase in radical change would create a whole host of new problems, one of which would be greater methane emissions.
The ‘race’ between the destructive and restorative powers of technology will become even more consequential. High quality institutions will cost a lot, which can be a concern in many parts of the world.
At least in the short term, fossil-fuel-rich nations like Saudi Arabia and Russia will be the losers. In the long run, commodity-producing countries will have to worry, as it may be easier for countries like China to overproduce their soybeans and stop buying from Brazil and Argentina. Deserts and drought-prone regions with water problems but civilized institutions could be among the winners; Perhaps the US-led West will continue to benefit economically from the East. That extra land could be put to more productive use, but improving New Jersey could prove difficult. As is often the case with new technology, the challenges are real but the possibilities are enormous. I, for one, look forward to whenever this new world passes.
Tyler Cowen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and professor of economics at George Mason University
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