That is neat, how does your friend foresee free electricity coming about? Something specific like "alternative energies," fusion, etc.? Or just the general trend of people trying to develop and diversify sources of energy?
He was talking fusion, but I don't have enough background in the hard sciences to really make sense of the nuances of personally. He did give me some impressive general numbers about how a single reaction could power New York City for something like 10 years. Maybe fusion will happen, or perhaps something else, but a lot of the most talented people on the planet are working on more/cheaper power so I'd bet on something breaking through.
I always thought our current problem is not really producing energy but rather transporting it? So if you have a reactor in New York City it'll be rather useless for the people in, say, Moscow. That's the reason nobody is doing this power the world by establishing solar power plants in the Sahara project. Could someone clear this up?
If you have all the free energy you need, doesn't that make it easier to transport?