A guest editorial by Thomas Fuller on the site “Watts Up With That” notes he was right about 2 big issues well ahead of the crowd (I’ll let you read to discover what they were!), and says he has the same kind of intuition/vision now about global energy demand.  In a nutshell, he says it will be 2-4X the accepted predictions for 2030-35.  The article then goes on to discuss how that could/will be met.  (See att. graph) Lots of good comments, with a number of references to fusion, culminating in a comment by Dave Springer that materials science will never be able to produce substances able to withstand fusion energies.  I commented then, as follows:

About fusion;
Dave S. is correct to state that materials able to withstand fusion are not going to happen.  This, IMO, rules out what I call the “meso-fusion” (human-scale) regime.  Stellar mega-fusion and micro-fusion remain.  Until we become a Type II civilization, able to harness the full output of our star, mega-fusion is not accessible (as a direct tool; I’m not talking about converting radiant energy to electricity).  But micro-fusion, now ....

There is a firm, LPP, Inc., which is working with a process called Focus Fusion. Containment is magnetic, within a sub-microscopic “plasmoid” generated by kinking a magnetic filament in plasma just so.  It is completing its preliminary D-D calibration runs and tweaks now, and will be moving into the final proton-Boron11 regime within a couple of months.  This is a waste-free, non-neutron-emitting fusion.  It claims to have solved (in theory and simulation) the X-ray cooling problem by tuning the High Magnetic Field Effect some had predicted so that electron heating is minimized.

It won’t be free, but the planned “product” is a 5MW generator installed in about the housing size of a home garage, with capital per-watt costs and output pricing at source per kwh both around 1/20 of current best N.A. retail, or maybe 1/50 of European prices.  It is easily adapted to distributed generation, and could end up bypassing most of the current grid, if necessary. 

Timeline around 3-5 years to come up with a proven licensable design, to be made openly available at reasonable prices to all manufacturers wanting to produce and distribute it, world-wide.

The growth in demand and use he is predicting is staggering; given availability of FF, I suspect he may even be low by another factor of 2 or so!

Here’s a few similar graphs from a recent talk I went to, showing demand from OECD, FSE(Former Soviet Union), and developing countries (primarily made up of India & China).  Its a bit of and odd split, but shows a similar rise in demand.  It assumed OECD rise in demand would be offset against efficiency savings

The other one is a different mix of energy production from an EDFA/TIMES model - it weighs a little too heavy to wind in my opinion.  It also assumed fusion would not be cost effective until the availability of cheap uranium becomes a factor in 2090 or so.

I tweeted with a link to this thread: billions in poverty in even best case scenarios means we MUST take lots of diverse risks on real clean energy 4 every1!

Great article, thanks to Brian H for pointing it out and to Thomas Fuller for stating the obvious!