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Comment by Night_Thastus | Hacker News Reader

We will not be "energy starved" anytime soon, short of an actual apocalypse happening. What we use for energy may change, but energy won't.

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We live on free energy, free as in "dig a hole and voilà": energy. No nuclear, no solar, no wind can replace the sheer amount of energy we extract out of oil and coal. I’m afraid privacy in cars is going to be the least of humanity’s problems unless we make fusion working.

> No nuclear, no solar, no wind can replace the sheer amount of energy we extract out of oil and coal

What are you basing this on? You realise we have localised grids that go 100% renewable regularly, and could easily keep doing that with electrified transport?

Well, global surveys show how oil, gas and coal are going.

https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption

Well sure, we’re consuming more fossil fuels because they’re cheaper. Nothing I’ve seen suggests we can switch primary production to clean sources. It would be more expensive. But that’s far from a hard limit.

I’m genuinely curious if someone is credibly speculating we are unable, versus economically unwilling, to replace fossil fuels with clean options.

My understanding is that there are no clean sources able to replace fossil fuels. Or we would need to cover useful land with solar panels (largely produced in China with coal electricity btw).

Anyway, we should transition to EV and these cars manufacturers bad practices are just keeping old inefficients cars on the streets.

> we would need to cover useful land with solar panels

About the land area of New Mexico, if we went 100% solar [1]. Remove current hydroelectric, potential geothermal and then mix in wind and nuclear, and you have a realistic mix that could replace fossil fuels.

[1] https://www.axionpower.com/knowledge/power-world-with-solar/

If only there was some giant naturally occurring fusion reactor that we could siphon a bit of power from to power our things.

Exactly! But if it’s energy density hasn’t increased since the middle age it’s probably only good enough to support middle age lifestyle.

As fossil fuels get more expensive to acquire and renewables get cheaper and cheaper, it's really a self-solving problem.

Energy is necessary for modern society to function. It's not going anywhere nor will it decrease just because one source of it is inconvenient.

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