1.8 trillion is currently spent globally to generate electric power.
96.5 trillion is current world GDP.
If AI automation can reduce the cost of 50% of jobs by 50%, then it’s value per year is 24 trillion. (much more because AI will enable to the economy to grow)
Obviously if fusion makes electricity cost $0, free, it’s value created per year is 1.8 trillion. More realistically, competitive fusion will probably not reduce costs at all—it will simply reduce carbon emissions, which is a cost not priced into that “1.8T” figure. If we say the cost of the carbon emissions are $75 a ton, and 36.8 gigatons are global carbon emissions for electric power generation, then $2.76 trillion is the “externalities” from generating electricity.
So if fusion costs the same as current equipment at scale, then the benefit from fusion is $2.76 trillion.
Also, electric power is usually not the bottleneck resource for economic growth. It’s a necessary condition but human labor, IP, economic systems that don’t allow mass amounts of theft and inefficiencies—these I think contribute much more.
Ok, I think I may have missed a key piece above.
1.8 trillion is currently spent globally to generate electric power.
96.5 trillion is current world GDP.
If AI automation can reduce the cost of 50% of jobs by 50%, then it’s value per year is 24 trillion. (much more because AI will enable to the economy to grow)
Obviously if fusion makes electricity cost $0, free, it’s value created per year is 1.8 trillion. More realistically, competitive fusion will probably not reduce costs at all—it will simply reduce carbon emissions, which is a cost not priced into that “1.8T” figure. If we say the cost of the carbon emissions are $75 a ton, and 36.8 gigatons are global carbon emissions for electric power generation, then $2.76 trillion is the “externalities” from generating electricity.
So if fusion costs the same as current equipment at scale, then the benefit from fusion is $2.76 trillion.
Also, electric power is usually not the bottleneck resource for economic growth. It’s a necessary condition but human labor, IP, economic systems that don’t allow mass amounts of theft and inefficiencies—these I think contribute much more.