Too Cheap to Meter

Just imagine that in the 1960s the world had built ten (or a hundred) times as many nuclear power stations than it did, so that the use of coal or gas or oil for power generation had been completely removed by, say, 1980. You could use hydro or tidal or geothermal or solar thermal, all technologies that existed at the time. Of course, this would have been difficult. Fossil fuels were cheap and efficient, but it's not as though we didn't build lots of nuclear power stations. Of course, with lots of 1960s- and 1970s-era nuclear power stations, we are going to get lots of nuclear disasters and well as the usual radiation releases, probably at least one full meltdown, but there are ways round that and it might still be preferable to climate breakdown. Nuclear proliferation is going to be a big issue in this world as everyone has nuclear power stations, so might not be a utopia.

You have to get rid of the use of gas for heating, cooking, but, again, that could be OK. We had an electric cooker. You can use hydrogen in internal combustion engines and fuel cells already existed, so you can go down that route too. Glass microbeads might be the safest approach, but I suspect we would also see FeTi, compressed gas, liquid hydrogen at 20K, slush hydrogen, lots of possibilities. Planes, trains and ships could all use hydrogen. So, by 1990 or, we could have completely decarbonised the economy. Of course, it would have been expensive and there are going to be lots of issues, though there would be incentives to make things safer, but this doesn't require any new technology just will. Of course , that was never going to be there and here we are. 

Comments

[Celestial M Weasel]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F

[Celestial M Weasel]

I think I showed you the graph of our electricity price going briefly negative this week. During that period we used negative 20p of electricity.

[Eddie Cochrane]

I was given a lift in one of the GM EV1s in that documentary in 2002. Amazing experience at the time, and I could see why the owners were sad to see them go. It would have been 2020 before I rode in an electric car again.

[Dr Paul M. Cray]

There are plenty of EVs here in Seattle, although a lot fewer than in London. It's a pity the EV1 was suppressed, although maybe the technology was premature then. I recall an article in a 1968 issue of "Drive" on the future of motoring in which a senior car designer from one of the big (British) car firms opined that when battery technology is perfected, the war between electric cars and petrol wars will be bigger than the war in Vietnam. Perhaps not quite!

[Daveon]

To be honest, with modern battery tech and the Lithium hybrid designs coming and modern charger systems we don't need esoteric designs for electric cars to just work.

We do need more infrastructure but 100 years ago the same was true of petroleum distribution.

[Dr Paul M. Cray]

Electric cars do now just work in 2025, although this was the case 30 years ago. It's solving all the other issues that's going to hard, from aircraft to trains to ships to space heating to barbecues.