By James Pethokoukis

The continuous flow of affordable energy is something the residents of rich countries take for granted. Well, at least until the flow gets a lot more expensive and less reliable. A few headlines:

• Texans Brace for Possibility of Rolling Outages
• Bitcoin Miners Shut as Texas Power Grid Nears Brink
• Germany declares gas crisis as Russia cuts supplies to Europe
• Biden faces two dilemmas: A world short on oil and a nation short on capacity
• Japan at Risk of Another Power Crunch in Upcoming Winter
• Why is inflation still surging? Blame eye-popping gas prices.

As Vaclav Smil writes in Energy and Civilization: 

Energy is the only universal currency: one of its many forms must be transformed to get anything done. Universal manifestations of these transformations range from the enormous rotations of galaxies to thermonuclear reactions in stars. . . . Humans depend on this transformation for their survival, and on many more energy flows for their civilized existence.

Given both the recent energy news and the need to replace dirty energy with clean energy, it might seem crazy to think about a world with a greater need for energy. But imagine a world possessing true energy abundance. Think of things that might be possible but are currently impossible or super-hard to do because of energy constraints.

And I’m not just talking about Bitcoin mining. How about, say, vertical farming? With rows of various crops piled on top of each other, in an indoor facility several stories high, output per acre dramatically increases—all without pesticides or herbicides. It’s never too hot or cold, too dry or wet. And, as a recent Financial Times story on vertical farming notes, “because vertical farms can, in theory, be located just about anywhere, produce can be grown in an industrial park beside New York City rather than having to truck it across the country. That means it can be shifted from a cutting machine to a store shelf in hours—not days.” The sector has been getting a lot of investor interest, the piece goes on to note, including from Jeff Bezos. (Maybe he’s thinking about space farming.)

But there’s one especially big hitch:

As with any vertical farm, energy is one of the biggest issues. In addition to the lights, it also powers automated systems to tend the plants and massive heating and ventilation systems that maintain the environment. “If you solve the energy problem, you win the vertical farming game,” Grimmer says, estimating that electricity accounts for about half of Crop One farm’s operating costs. But what type of energy? As with electric vehicles, vertical farmers’ claims of environmental virtue are somewhat undermined if the copious amounts of energy they consume is generated from fossil fuels. Bowery is using 100 per cent renewable energy at its farms. Bethlehem, for example, is powered by hydroelectric. Still, choosing renewables, the company acknowledges, is more cumbersome than simply plugging into the existing grid.

Imagine vertical farms everywhere (maybe even in orbit or on the Moon). Imagine machines everywhere that can vacuum carbon from the sky. Imagine far more desalination plants. I wonder what other amazing ideas technologists and entrepreneurs would devise in a world of superabundant energy? Maybe it’s a question we should start asking in a way that we haven’t since the 1960s.

The post Thinking about Energy—And What If We Had More of It appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.