The World Grid and New Geographies of Cooperation

The global grid concept is a fascinating piece of infrastructure engineering.

But the anti-market rhetoric here feels completely backwards. The article cites Shell building Europe's largest renewable hydrogen plant, BP's $30B Australian investment, and major moves by other energy companies... then somehow spins this as evidence that corporate involvement is problematic?

Market incentives and existing energy infrastructure expertise are exactly what's driving the current clean energy buildout at scale.

I wish this was presented as the interesting systems engineering challenge it is, rather than wrapped in reflexive anti-corporate ideology. The technical aspects deserve serious analysis without the political baggage.

The dymaxion projection is my favorite map projection, and I love the idea of more resilient energy grids (and solar panels, while we're at it). But the problem here is that the dymaxion projection turns out to be terribly misleading in this context. By relying on the dymaxion projection alone it makes it seem inevitable that you'd have to have to traverse the bottleneck of the Bering Strait, but in the realm of what is both practical and achievable it makes absolutely no sense to make that the lynchpin of a global grid. Presumably the idea is that when the western hemisphere is lit it would be sending power to the eastern hemisphere (and vice versa), but, no, you're not going to be building a global backbone capable of powering half the world at a time across five thousand miles of near-uninhabited wilderness. You need infrastructure that pays for itself by connecting geographically-proximal, densely-inhabited population centers. And that might very well mean that it's more realistic to run a cable between (for example) Boston and Ireland, which is not apparent from looking at the dymaxion projection.

Yes, the geopolitics puts a major brake on the idea. Perhaps this is why some are looking towards space-based solar. I'd be happy if either became economical and feasible. I'd sooner place my bet on storage, whether it be batteries and/or stored entirely chemically via hydrogen, ammonia etc- particularly in places where geography limits hydro or anywhere off-grid.

The US can not build a unified grid. Japan still suffers from the moronic 50/60 Hz split. Energy rich regions in the eastern Russia have tiny energy links with the energy hungry regions of China. And you still want to seriously claim that the world grid could be practical in this century?

Markets are societal structures, as are corporations. They can be hijacked by special interest groups. They aren't inherently bad or good. But since citizens united there has been an enormous amount of maleficence and 'markets' often become a byword for this because of how pervasive it's become.

It saves time to say 'market logic' or 'corporate' whatever then to qualify the whole thing and the language patterns settle into the lowest energy configuration like everything else.

Instead of building a trillion dollar superconducting distribution network to overcome the inherit flaws of intermittent, low density renewable energy, invest it into clean nuclear and drop it in where we already have coal and gas.

And second, maybe instead of spending so much on consultants with insanely bad takes like this one, we can spend it on STEM education, and train the next generation of nuclear engineers.

The quote at the beginning of the article tells it all: "However, none pretend to describe optimal pathways for achieving a sustainable, equitable and secure energy outcome for all. Instead, they settle for “practical” solutions that avoid rocking the ships of states".

It’s an article written by a proponent of the new economy which is officially alter-globalization. It’s actually internationalist in its vision, opposed to free markets and wants a solution which is equitable for all. Everything old is new again, a spectre is haunting the new economy, the spectre of…