We made almost 8 billion humans that are alive on Earth, and we need to make enough energy to take care of them. We see this at the most fundamental of all problems to solve. If we solve energy, we can solve a lot of other problems for free. Americans get about 9 times as much energy as the average person in the world. This means unlimited access to clean water, the health benefits of sanitation, the safety of light all night, refrigeration to preserve food & vaccines. We take all this for granted, but over 3 billion people live on less energy than a single toaster consumes.
The real goal is to deliver as much energy
for every human on Earth
as we do for an American.
We never see the target set that high. What will it take to produce 10 times as much energy globally? It sounds impossible, but we’ve done it before. Over the last century we’ve done just that. Over the next century, we’ll grow from ~160,000 terawatt hours to ~1.6 million terawatt hours, but it doesn’t need to take that long, we could do it in a few decades.
The upside is almost unfathomable. What if every human on Earth could have the same living standard as an American? Abundant, clean, low cost energy means we can scale clean water, sanitation, recycling & food production. When people have access to the resources they need to support their lives, they have a lot less to fight over and we can expect a more peaceful, prosperous & ethical world will continue to evolve.