this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2025
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I think if we figure out nuclear fusion there will be induced demand for energy, in applications that were previously infeasible: desalination via distillation instead of reverse osmosis, direct capture of CO2 from the atmosphere, large scale water transport, ice and snowmaking, indoor farming, synthesized organic compounds for things like carbon sequestration or fossil fuel replacement or even food, etc.
Geoengineering might not be feasible today, but if energy becomes really cheap we might see something different.
This seems like a pipe dream but I don't disagree that it could open up some new applications
The specifics are a pipe dream but the general principle holds: if energy suddenly becomes more plentiful and cheaper by orders of magnitude, society will find a way to use that new plentiful resource in ways that we can scarcely imagine today. That's always been true of new inventions, where much of the post-invention innovation comes in the form of finding new applications for a thing that has already been invented.