1% of the Sahara
“This is a story of Napoleon III. He invited over to dinner the king of Siam. Napoleon’s troops were fed with silver utensils, Napoleon with gold utensils. But the King of Siam — he was fed with aluminum utensils. You see, aluminum was the most valuable metal on the planet, worth more than gold. Aluminum is 8.3% of the Earth by mass, but it doesn’t come as a pure metal — it’s all bound by oxygen and silicates. Then “electrolysis” came along and made aluminum so cheap that we now use it with throw-away mentality.
So let’s project this analogy going forward, and think about energy scarcity. We are on a planet that is bathed with 5,000 times more energy than we use. It’s not about scarcity, it’s about accessibility. But there’s good news here. By the end of this decade, in the sunny parts of the US, solar will be $0.06/kWh.
-Peter Diamandis, TED Talks 2012
Peter Diamandis, the futurist, the co-founder of Singularity University, and the founder of the X Prize Foundation, didn’t dream big enough. We hit Peter’s 2020 prediction in January. That’s right — 3 years early.
