Radical Energy Abundance

I agree with the trendline for PV prices in Wright's law (cumulative production) terms, and the idea that electricity storage has its own Wright's Law curve.

Handmer glosses over a few things, though. First Amdahl's law, and thus any estimate of how long it will take to get to his promised land. Ramping up panel prodution might as well be instantaneous, and ramping up stoage production nearly so. But those are not the only things that need to change. As I read it, I thought "yeah, by 2125 maybe", "yeah, by 2200 maybe", "yeah, by 2300 maybe", and so on.

Legislation, vested interests, culture and institutions take a long time to change. How long will it take Greenpeace to accept that pumping water into the headwwters of the Colorado is a good idea, for instance?

In the mean time there are going to be a host of other issues that could add friction. Fertility collapse, for one.

Variation in governance ability, motivation and incentives across countries and regions, and internally within countries is going to be another source of friction.

Secondly the historical decrease in energy intensity may be there not because of high energy prices, but because of exogenous changes. Moving up Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, in a way.

180 years ago the big items in household budgets were food, fuel, and to a lesser extent clothing. Today, the big items in household budgets are education, healthcare, security (insurances of various kinds; services which we think of as security services; and the component of taxes that pays for police and border control defense forces), and housing itself.

It is not obvious how reducing energy costs to near-zero makes these dramatically cheaper, so it is also not obvious that welfare would increase as much as Handmer claims. Somewhat cheaper in the case of housing, yes. The others, not so much.

The response function may be logarithmic or less. It's highly likely to be sublinear.