All of Casey Handmer's Comments + Replies
Radical Energy Abundance
Solar panels are more economically productive than any unused land, forestry, or agriculture, and even some land uses in built up areas, such as car parking. What this means is that deploying solar upgrades utility.
There is a question whether there is enough land. The short answer is yes, easily, it's not even close. Something like 4-5% of Earth's land surface with solar can provide enough energy for 10 billion people to live at current US levels of energy consumption, and more than 35% of Earth's land surface is essentially uninhabited deserts, moun... (read more)
27moStrictly speaking, Kardashev level 1 requires control over a whole planet's
energy budget such that we are capable of using it. It says nothing about what
we do with it. "Choose to not use it and leave some spaces wild, when we could
easily choose otherwise" seems like a perfectly valid way to meet that criterion
(that we don't yet meet).
37moSurely, long before we pave over the earth, we will have expanded into space for
energy, farming and minerals, and probably living as well.
All forms of energy have all kinds of subsidies, and Nuclear probably more than any other on a "per kWh generated" basis.
Nuclear fission is awesome technology but will it be able to compete with solar on price - seems unlikely to me.