# Energy Future

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Category: Future
Slides: 14
Updated: 2026-05-17T20:51:50.789Z
Tags: future, energy

## Summary

A guide to the technologies that will run the next century — solar, fusion, storage, fission, hydrogen, geothermal — and the messy real-world transitions in between. Key sections include: The energy question.; Where the energy comes from; The story is solar; The 30-years-away technology, perhaps not; How a tokamak confines plasma; Batteries, and beyond batteries; Fission's second chance; The molecule with a marketing problem; The dark horse; Who to read.

## Slide Outline

1. The energy question.
2. Where the energy comes from
3. The story is solar
4. The 30-years-away technology, perhaps not
5. How a tokamak confines plasma
6. Batteries, and beyond batteries
7. Fission's second chance
8. The molecule with a marketing problem
9. The dark horse
10. Who to read
11. Recommended source
12. Three energy futures
13. Indicators · 2026–2030

## Slide Transcript

### Slide 1: The energy question.

- Volume 6 · File 07
- A guide to the technologies that will run the next century — solar, fusion, storage, fission, hydrogen, geothermal — and the messy real-world transitions in between.

### Slide 2: Where the energy comes from

- § Vital signs · 2026
- Global primary energy
- ~620 EJ
- Up ~2%/yr long-term · plateauing in OECD
- Fossil share
- ~80 %
- Down from 86% in 2000 · slow grind
- Solar+wind share
- ~15 %
- Of 2024 global electricity. Doubling every ~4 yr
- Nuclear share
- ~9 %
- Of electricity. Flat to slightly growing

### Slide 3: The story is solar

- §1 · The solar S-curve
- Solar PV cost has fallen ~90% since 2010. Module prices crossed $0.10/W in 2024. Levelized cost of utility solar is now below $30/MWh in best sites — cheaper than the operating cost of paid-off coal. Kommersant, IEA, Bloomberg NEF, RethinkX all project the trend continues.
- Why it ate everything else
- Wright's Law learning rate: ~28% per doubling
- Modular: deployable from rooftop to gigawatt
- No moving parts; falling balance-of-system costs
- Capacity factor now 18–28% with trackers
- forecast Solar passes coal globally as the largest power source by 2027–28; passes everything else by 2035–40.
- Photo · utility solar · cheaper than the cheapest fossil power, in most insolation bands.

### Slide 4: Slide 4

- §2 · S-curve · figure
- After IRENA, Lazard LCOE, BNEF tracker. Schematic.

### Slide 5: The 30-years-away technology, perhaps not

- §3 · Fusion
- Fusion has been "30 years away" since 1955. The 2020s have changed the picture in two ways: NIF achieved net energy gain (Q>1) on shot N221204 in December 2022; and a wave of well-capitalized private fusion companies (CFS, TAE, Helion, Tokamak Energy, ZAP) target pilot plants in the 2030s.
- PlayerConceptPilot targetNotes
- ITERTokamak (D-T, superconducting)First plasma 2034 (delayed)~$25B+ international consortium
- Commonwealth Fusion (CFS)Tokamak (HTS magnets)SPARC ~2027 · ARC ~2032MIT spinout; HTS magnet bet
- HelionField-reversed config (D-He3)Polaris 2024–25Direct electrical conversion
- TAEFRC, p-B11Late 2030sAneutronic ambition
- Tokamak EnergySpherical tokamakDemo 2030sUK · STEP collaboration
- ZAP EnergyZ-pinch (sheared flow)Pilot 2030sCompact, cheap if it works
- scenario First commercial-scale fusion electron added to a grid: optimistically 2032, more plausibly 2035–40. Fusion does not solve the 2030 climate problem.

### Slide 6: How a tokamak confines plasma

- §4 · Tokamak diagram
- Magnetic confinement of D-T plasma · neutron flux × Li blanket → tritium breeding + heat → steam turbine.

### Slide 7: Batteries, and beyond batteries

- §5 · Storage
- Li-ion · LFP
- $~80/kWh
- 2024 spot · CATL, BYD. 4-hour grid storage now competitive.
- Sodium-ion
- $~60–70/kWh
- Stationary & entry EVs. CATL Naxtra, HiNa, Faradion.
- Iron-air
- 100-hr duration
- Form Energy · ~$20/kWh capex target. Multi-day storage.
- Vanadium flow
- decoupled MWh
- Long cycle life; vanadium price volatility.
- Pumped hydro
- ~95% of installed
- Still the dominant grid storage by GWh worldwide.
- Thermal
- molten salt · sand
- Antora, Rondo, Polar Night. Industrial heat.

### Slide 8: Fission's second chance

- §6 · Nuclear
- Public opinion on nuclear has reversed in many countries since 2020 — pre-pandemic skepticism gave way to climate-driven pragmatism. France ordered six new EPR2 reactors in 2022; Sweden reversed a phase-out; Japan restarted idled units; the US passed the IRA's nuclear PTC.
- Three nuclear bets
- Conventional Gen-III+ — AP1000, EPR, APR1400. Proven, expensive, slow to build in West (Vogtle 3/4 12yr +$30B over budget).
- Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) — NuScale (cancelled 2023 first project), Holtec, X-energy, Rolls-Royce. Factory-built, target $100/MWh. First operating units 2028–32. scenario
- Gen-IV — Natrium (TerraPower, Wyoming), Aurora (Oklo), molten-salt (Kairos, Terrestrial Energy). 2030s timelines.
- Fuel: HALEU bottleneck (high-assay low-enriched uranium). Russia is the dominant supplier; Western capacity ramping but tight through 2030.

### Slide 9: The molecule with a marketing problem

- §7 · Hydrogen
- Most hydrogen today (~95%) is "gray" — made from natural gas, emits CO₂. The clean alternative, "green" hydrogen from electrolysis, currently costs $4–7/kg vs $1–2 for gray. Bloomberg, IEA, Liebreich agree: hydrogen will play a real role in steel, ammonia, shipping, aviation — and will be a bad fit for cars and home heating.
- Hydrogen Ladder · Liebreich
- Tier A: fertilizer ammonia, refining, methanol, hydrogenation
- Tier B: steel (DRI), high-grade industrial heat
- Tier C: long-haul shipping (NH3 carrier)
- Tier D: aviation (synfuel feedstock)
- Tier G: home heating, light vehicles, peaking power — bad fit
- forecast Green H2 reaches $2/kg in best sites by 2032; mass deployment in tier A/B follows.

### Slide 10: The dark horse

- §8 · Geothermal
- Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) take the well-drilling expertise that the shale-oil revolution built and turn it on hot dry rock. Fervo Energy's Cape Station (Utah, 400 MW under construction 2024–28), Eavor's closed-loop concept, and the DOE's Frontier Observatory have moved EGS from concept to early commercial.
- The promise: 24/7 dispatchable clean baseload, geographically widespread, drilling depths of 4–7 km. The hard part: cost-down to $50/MWh-equivalent, and inducing seismicity safely.
- scenario 50–100 GW of EGS by 2035 in optimistic deployment scenarios. Could be the second large dispatchable clean source after nuclear.

### Slide 11: Who to read

- §9 · Voices
- Vaclav SmilEnergy scaling realism; How the World Really Works
- Saul GriffithRewiring America; electrify everything
- Hannah RitchieOur World in Data; Not the End of the World
- Jesse JenkinsPrinceton ZERO Lab; transition modeling
- Michael LiebreichHydrogen ladder; energy realism
- Bret KugelmassLast Energy; nuclear advocacy
- Daniel YerginEnergy historian; The Quest, The New Map
- Ramez NaamSolar S-curves; technology forecasting
- "The energy transition is happening. It is also happening too slowly." — a paraphrase of every honest analyst.

### Slide 12: Recommended source

- §10 · Watch
- Real Engineering · "The Truth About Solar" / "Why ITER Will Take Forever"
- Brian McManus's deep-dive engineering channel. Pair with Just Have a Think (UK) and Practical Engineering for grid topics.
- youtube.com/@RealEngineering →
- Kurzgesagt · "The Pursuit of Wonder · Fusion"
- 10-minute primer on why fusion is hard, where the milestones are, and what NIF actually accomplished.
- youtube.com/@kurzgesagt →

### Slide 13: Three energy futures

- §11 · 2050 scenarios
- A · The cheap-solar world
- Abundance
- Solar+wind+storage default. Electrification of everything; H2 for hard-to-abate. Fusion arrives, doesn't displace solar.
- B · Mixed bag
- Nuclear + renewables
- SMR fleet of 200+ units; geothermal scales; gas remains as transition fuel longer than expected.
- C · Stuck transition
- Coal endures
- Permitting, grid, materials bottlenecks limit clean buildout. Climate path closer to SSP3-7.0.

### Slide 14: Indicators · 2026–2030

- §12 · What to watch
- Solar deployment rate · 600 GW/yr → 1 TW/yr inflection
- Battery prices crossing $50/kWh
- SPARC first plasma · 2026–27
- First operating SMR (US, UK, Canada) · 2028–32
- Permitting reform in US, EU — grid interconnection queues
- Critical-mineral supply chains (Li, Ni, Co, rare earths) — recycling & sodium swap


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