Ramez Naam Debunks Energy Doomer Claims on US Efficiency and Supply

Mutual admiration but I disagree.

Flying cars have a large number of challenges that are binding long before energy cost. Otherwise we would see their use at the very high end. And we do in helicopters, but you can see how many ways factors other than economics constrain them.

For a couple decades it was just so much more profitable to make money doing things that use little energy (services, software) that we pivoted hard to that. Energy supply wasn't the motivator. It was profit margins on the less energy intensive sectors.

China uses 2x as much energy in aggregate, but has a lower GDP and a substantially lower GDP per capita. I admire many things about their economy, but fundamentally they're producing less value per unit energy and lower per capita income because their economy is more energy intensive.

I do think we have a real challenge with time to power! We need to get our utilities back to the mode they were in in the 50s and 60s where they could build quickly, and we need to change and reduce regulations in order to do so. That's where I agree most. Not a deficit in electricity supply (demand is the driver) but a deficit in time to deliver new energy, especially new electricity.