this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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Solarpunk utopias are not energy-poor utopias. Quite the contrary. They are what happens once we have decorrelated CO2 emissions and energy use.
When I was a kid, my parents brought me weekly at the town's library, and about monthly at the city's bookstore. There is some margin before a computer usage comes close in terms of CO2 emissions.
Most AI companies "offset" their carbon footprint. I guess a part of that accounting is greenwashing but some are doing that directly with solar panels. I would argue that in such a case, their energy usage is irrelevant. And I trust that they probably do what they claim because it does save them a lot of money to do so.
Also "a lot of energy" is really debatable. Even if they used power directly from the US grid, the Llama 2 models (which fuel a democratization of LLMs like none before) have emitted about the same as one international flight for their training, that needs to be done only once and that is now free for everyone to use. There are not a lot of fields that have such an impact for such a low footprint. One international conference bringing people from many countries would have 10x that footprint already.
I guess you can decorrelate CO2 emissions, but in turn will have to put up with similar disadvantages caused by mining pollution, solar panel production, etc. Sometimes it seems that the proponents of an energy rich future still dream of having a free lunch and eating their cake too because 'renewables', but these technologies need resources and infrastructure as well, which an energy hungry population might not be able to provide in a sustainable way (can't burn the forest faster than it grows back, can't cover the entire surface of the earth with solar panels).
Sometimes it feels that people living in the fossil fuels world have a hard time understanding that the fossil fuel maths is not universal. A fossil fuel world requires extraction per kWh (energy) used, a post-fossil world requires extraction per kW (power) installed. Once your solar panel installed, whether they produce or not does not change the environmental impact. Actually one could argue that not producing energy is what causes waste and environmental impact. Also, panels are highly intermittent. At noon you will likely have a spike of free energy. Yep, that's a free lunch with a cake and cherry at the top.
A portion of the Sahara or of any ocean would be enough for several times the current world consumption. And if we start deploying in space (we have the tech for btw, yes including microwave transmission, tested over long enough distance) there is basically no limit before Kardashev II.
The biggest problem about Saharan solar farm is how are you going to get the power to where it needs to be?
It has been studied, partially funded, called DESERTEC, put on hold since the Arab Spring.
Basically: big DC power lines. The tech is known and exists.
I don't know if the various hydrogen production or methanation processes are advanced enough to consider these as an alternative though.