I'm going to bet power consumption is like hard drive space, the more you have the more you use.
There is of course some thermodynamic limit to the amount of power we can use before over heating
There is of course some thermodynamic limit to the amount of power we can use before over heating
Cheap energy is an extraordinary economic driver. Cheap green energy is a double win.
Sorry if this makes you feel more guilty.
There is always going to be a sink for more power, because all else failing electricity can produce more aluminium products, and aluminium is one of those wonder materials that there will always be uses for. We know that energy efficiency can just as easily cause consumption to rise as to fall [1].
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/214236/thermal-coal-pric... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
And there are also some technologies, that while very energy hungry, can help fix many of the pressing world problems (large scale desalination, plasma waste processing, large scale CO2 capture, various benefiting megaprojects, etc.).
World power consumption is going up largely due to a rapidly growing middle class, but within that class, not so much.
So we might expect an increase in per-capita demand for electricity, if not for total power.
The benefit of solar is that no new energy is produced this way. You consume what hits the Earth anyway.
Things might change if and when we cover so much ground with panels, we change the global albedo significantly. But we're a long ways off from that.