Infinite Energy, Infinite Destruction and a Limited World

Abundant or infinite energy may not be the utopia that we think it is

Photo by Nicolas HIPPERT on Unsplash

The US National Ignition Facility announced today a breakthrough in energy technology¹, the grand objective has been reached - fusion ignition has been achieved! Hailed as “an announcement decades in the making” by the US Energy Agency, it truly is a momentous occasion and one that is causing much jubilation amongst commentators about the possibility of unlimited ‘clean’ energy. At a time when energy markets are in turmoil due to the Russian-Ukraine war and energy prices are reaching unprecedented highs for businesses and households alike, today’s news seems like a burst of light at the end of a bleak tunnel.

For environmentalists, too, there is supposedly much to cheer about. The global demand for energy is not going to abate anytime soon, so the possibility of substituting dirty coal, oil, and gas along with their climate-changing greenhouse emissions for ‘clean’ hydrogen fusion is to be celebrated. Perhaps this means that the predicted severe impacts of future global warming will be averted after all. So, can we all breathe a collective giant sigh of relief?

Not so fast.

Firstly, the technology is still in its infancy and there is no guarantee it can be sufficiently scaled up to satisfy growing global energy demands. Even if it can be scaled, we will have to wait perhaps 20-30 years before the technology and infrastructure needed for widespread fusion is in place and operational. In the meantime, carbon emissions will continue their rapid ascent, edging us closer to ecological and hydrological tipping points that lead to significant biological, climatic, and social change.

Secondly, there is one gigantic sector that is not cheering today’s news - the fossil fuel industry. Nuclear fusion threatens the fossil fuel industries’ dominance of energy markets and the huge profits that can be reaped by reigning supreme in the energy sector. Shareholders, investors, and CEOs all have a vested interest in the energy status quo remaining as it is. We can assume that they will try to discredit and downplay the technology and hamper efforts for the widespread deployment of nuclear fusion. A large part of the reason for this is the system lock-ins surrounding fossil fuel technology and infrastructure². Debt remains to be serviced on pipelines, power stations, and mines, and investors are committed and “locked” into these projects. If these projects, technologies, and industries become redundant, not only will millions of jobs be lost, but trillions of pounds of investment will go up in smoke on the now useless infrastructure that will be left to rust away. This is a crisis that “big oil” will wish to avert with every ounce of its being.

Thus a healthy dose of scepticism is called for on whether nuclear fusion will become an everyday part of our lives and at the very least, the fusionists must be very patient. But there is a deeper reason to be cautious about today’s announcement. To put it simply, if nuclear fusion were to become a reality it would put seemingly infinite energy in our hands - which is a power we are not wise enough to use well. Power corrupts, as the old adage goes, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In light of today’s news, we can go a step further - infinite power corrupts infinitely. If we are not incredibly careful, that will be the eventual outcome of today’s announcement.

A modern-day sage first alerted me to the challenges that infinite energy brings - Wendell Berry. In his seminal essay, The Use of Energy, he posed the fundamental question ‘Do we know how to use infinite energy well?’. His answer? A resounding no and he further states it is stupid to think that we do. Our track record with limited forms of energy is a portfolio of chaos: trails of destruction in our natural environments, mass consumerism, wasteful production, and the levelling of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If all this chaos has been caused by the use of limited energy, it is scary to think what will result from our use of infinite energy.

The problem of destruction arises because even though our sources of energy may change, our fundamental human nature does not. We remain naturally greedy, wasteful, selfish, and arrogant. With infinite energy at our disposal, we are not going to suddenly become wise and benevolent stewards of this earth and its resources. No - infinite energy just gives us additional capacity to produce and consume the resources of this world at a seemingly ever-increasing rate, enabling levels of greed, growth, consumption, and materialism that the most covetous of us could only have dreamed about.

That is until resources become scarce (or vanish).

For what these jubilant commentators forget is that although energy may become practically unlimited, the natural resources and “human capital” that are equally required to produce goods and services are fundamentally limited - and will always remain so³. As we use up more and more of the earth's resources, we will have to mine and exploit increasingly marginal reserves. These include deposits that require more destructive extraction and reserves that are yet untapped because to exploit them would be almost sacrilegious - such as those beneath the rainforests and areas of astounding natural beauty. We already remove mountaintops to get at the coal that is underneath them⁴. To feed the global growth engine the resources it needs to make use of the infinite energy, more mountains, more forests, and more indigenous lands will have to be sacrificed, and the speed at which these habitats can be mined, plundered, and destroyed will be too rapid for us to really consider just what it is we are doing to this planet we call home.

Not only are limited resources used up to fuel growth, but production leads to waste - both materially and energetically. Current levels of mass production which fuel our throwaway society result in huge quantities of waste materials and products that our overwhelmed waste disposal systems cannot cope with. The fact that many watercourses in the developing world are choked full of single-use plastics is stark evidence of this. An increase in mass production driven by infinite energy will burden our waste storage capacities to levels yet unseen.

Additionally, (and more insidiously) production and industry create pollutants - be they chemicals or waste energy (heat and noise). Under low intensities of emission, our natural systems are able to absorb, process (or disperse), and detoxify many pollutants through natural processes and cycles. However, like all biological processes, this capacity is limited - and is already in overdrive. Indeed, many natural environments do not have any ‘sink’ or remediation capacity left to safely deal with pollutants as dead zones in the oceans and widespread polluted soils amply make plain. Infinite energy will burden our ecosystems and landscapes with even more pollutants pushing them towards tipping points where ecological functionality rapidly deteriorates and ecosystem structure breaks down.

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So, at this moment of potentially great change and jubilation, let us listen to Berry and heed the warning he gives: “by abuse of our finite sources [of energy] our lives and all life are already in danger. What might we bring into danger by the abuse of ‘infinite’ sources?”. Unless our human nature fundamentally changes to become less consumptive and full of vice (and that will not happen) - the arrival of infinite energy will not lead to the utopia we envision, but potentially to the dystopia that we are capable of. If we blindly and unthinkingly embrace this technical and energetic “saviour” we must not be surprised if we reap the infinite chaos that we have sown.

A caveat

An objection must be addressed. Some will undoubtedly view this as a pessimistic response to “truly wonderful news” (and I admit it is pessimistic). They will cite the potential this technology has to alleviate poverty (especially energy poverty) both in the developed world and especially in the developing world. In places such as sub-Saharan Africa, such technology could be used to power hospitals, electrify rural areas, and speed economic development. All this is all good, and I hope energy security will become a reality for these areas. But history shows that energy wealth and new energy technologies tend to become concentrated in the hands of those who already have power, who are the most productive, and who already have the greatest access to energy. New technologies benefit them first, while those most in need must wait until those who already have more than their fair share increase their share further. The first fusion reactor will not be sited in Africa. It will be sited where the technology has been birthed, which is perhaps the last place on earth that needs it.

1. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/12/us/common-questions-nuclear-fusion-climate/index.html

2. https://www.wri.org/insights/carbon-lock-in-definition

3. Unless we start to mine space, but even then space cannot provide all the respires we need.

4. https://earthjustice.org/features/campaigns/what-is-mountaintop-removal-mining