My Top Predictions for Energy, Interest Rates, and the Economy

cmartenson · January 3, 2025, 10:35pm

Originally published at: https://peakprosperity.com/my-top-predictions-for-energy-interest-rates-and-the-economy/

Happy New Year! It’s going to be a doozy.

I’ll begin by saying that I’ve just gone through my usual year-end review of how I and the Peak Prosperity tribe did this year. Wow! What a year!

Aside from constantly parsing the signs of our times, we did deep investigative dives into The Great Taking and the Trump assassination attempt and explored the Big Theory of Everything, trying to make sense of it all, covering such foundational material as Rats In A Cage, 5th Gen Warfare, Totalitarianism, The Adjustment Reaction, and Demoralization, among many others. The goal, as always, was to explore the world with an open mind and to continue to hone our ability to see what’s true while discovering our blind spots.

In 2024 I started to re-do The Crash Course, thinking naively that putting the content into fewer long-form chapters would be a smart thing to do, but had to set that aside as events such as the Trump assassination attempts required my full attention to properly analyze and report.

In 2025 I will focus on three big areas unless some big event demands my attention:

I’m going to completely re-do the crash course but this time as (drumroll, please!) a lot of very short videos! I know, I know, I’m a genius!
Refocus my attention on all things financial/economic with a heavy emphasis on energy. Oil, natural gas, and uranium specifically.
Do what I can to help create public support for any and all transformative policies that Trump, Elon, Vivek, and RFK Jr. propose.

This is the year of the Crash Course. Remember in 2008 when I first released the Crash Course, I said:

The next twenty years are going to be completely unlike the last twenty years.

I wasn’t being vague or wishy-washy. I knew that big complex systems take time to shift. I judged that ours is such a mega-bubble of fiscal, financial, and psychological delusions that it would take some serious time for reality to penetrate our culture’s thick skull.

It turns out I seriously underestimated my culture’s commitment to ignoring reality.

As I said in 2008, the longer we ignore reality, the fewer and poorer our remaining options will be. If, for example, we decide as a culture to ignore the fact that oil and gas are finite, and instead wait until it’s painfully obvious that we are past our final peak of production before we get serious about finding the next energy source we’ll be filled with regrets and disappointments.

“Oh why didn’t we reconfigure our cities and transportation and electrical distribution systems back when oil was $70 a barrel…things seem vastly more difficult here at $300/barrel.”

Those of you who know me and have been following me won’t be at all confused about why things become more difficult as net, or surplus, energy falls.

That image comes from The Crash Course, in the ultra-important chapter on Energy Economics (Chapter 19, located here if you wish to understand this better). Briefly, you and I and everything we know and love about the economy and high living standards we enjoy live in the green zone. The red zone is the energy required to get more energy and that is shrinking with every passing year.

It’s not a mystery – the easy stuff is gone. Now we’re going after the harder stuff. It’s deeper, in tighter less forgiving rock formations, and simply costs more energy to get out of the ground than in prior decades. It’s just a fact of life, or of geology and physics if you prefer.

Currently, one of the most preposterous delusions being paraded about in the media and across political stages is the idea that we can somehow run all this on solar and wind. It’s regularly presented as if shifting away from oil and toward wind & solar is simply a matter of political will, being blocked somehow by evil oil and gas companies.

The truth is, the more solar and wind you install, the more expensive your electricity becomes.

The y-axis in the above chart is “cents per kilowatt hour” and the x-axis is “percent solar and wind” in a nation’s electrical mix. I hand-drew that sloppy red line, but it’s a decent approximation of the slope of the situation. Conclusion: More solar and wind = more expensive electricity.

And that’s with extremely generous government incentives and subsidies. Once those are withdrawn that red line will grow a bit steeper.

In one small ray of light, the scriptwriters for the Paramount series titled “Landman” which centers on the life of an oil industry landman, sure understand the issues:

Well done, Landman scriptwriters!

My predictions for 2025 are that this is the year that:

US oil production tops out, and smart investors quickly puzzle out the implications. Oil prices rise, defying all expectations.
Alternative energy is revealed to be unfit for the leading role, lacking the ability to match the performance of fossil fuels leading to …
A rapid resurgence in and appreciation for nuclear energy, especially 4^th generation modular designs.
Natural Gas production will be surprised by too much demand from a bevy of LNG and gas electrical power plants being slapped up without anybody having done the macro math on it all. Prices in the US will end 2025 a LOT higher, and as they approach actual world prices for LNG, the Trump administration will keep those exports at home. This means Europe gets stiffed.
The bond markets finally figure out that, in terms of respectability, believing in infinite exponential economic growth on a finite planet ranks barely above believing in Santa as a 30-year-old. This means interest rates go up in 2025, not down, surprising 103% of the financial media (because some of them will be surprised twice).
Because it’s been kept propped up with fake pre-election statistics and all-too-real government deficit spending that D.O.G.E. will cut, the tired economy will tip over into a pretty sizable recession.

For most people, it’s going to be a rough ride. Mainly because they aren’t paying attention and will be blindsided by the consequences of ignoring reality (and living in a delusional world).

CNN and MSNBC and CNBC and the WSJ and NYTimes are a quick way to slowly become ignorant. They mainly provide air cover for government and corporate policies and programs. As such, their relentless adherence to propaganda misinforms people, explaining their obsessive hatred of ‘misinformation.’ In psychological terms, “if you spot it you got it.” What typically drives people nuts the most are the things they most hate about themselves on a subconscious level.

This is the media. They are the largest purveyors of complete nonsense and lies, and so they put up a big show about wanting to protect feeble minds from misinformation coming from the alt-news constellation. Deep down, they know they are true culprits spreading dangerous misinformation.

The really sad part? Most of those corporate and government “programs” are grifts, scams, and outright corruption. None will be more damaging than the energy delusions and misinformation.

Over the long term, access to abundant and cheap energy is THE determinant of the vitality of any country’s economy. The connection between energy and the economy is both intuitively obvious and intellectually clear. You need energy to extract, make, and move things. No energy, no things!

Charts like this one from Art Berman tell the tale.

A “statistically perfect correlation” is a fancy way of saying “these things are inseparable.” It would be like saying “money deposited in my bank account is statistically perfectly correlated with the amount of money I have.” Duh. Of course it is.

The ‘green energy’ delusion comes with a steady stream of corporate and government misinformation dutifully relayed by the MSM as if it were capital T Truth itself. Nearly every day there’s another blathering announcement from some politician about pouring tens of billions into things such as the state of Massachusetts dedicating $10 billion to grid-scale batteries, or the UK hoping to pour 240 billion pounds into their national green energy goals.

Peel back the happy talk and you will immediately discover a vast swarm of corruption and enrichment of lobbyists, relatives, and political donors. What you won’t find is a coherent plan that will provide cheap, reliable energy to the populace.

I focus on this particular delusion, the energy delusion, because it’s the one that will absolutely crush future prosperity if we get it wrong. And we’re not only getting it wrong, we’re burning up our dwindling supplies of energy in the process.

As I said, the longer we wait, the fewer and more unpalatable our options become. Wait long enough and there won’t be anything that can be done. Except cry about what could have been (and should have been, if only we’d have let thoughtful engineers make the decisions).

It’s Not All Bad

People who aren’t prepared or aren’t willing to become prepared tend to bounce off of my messages like an unrepentant alcoholic at a surprise intervention.

For the astute, however, there are plenty of opportunities to become more resilient, mentally/spiritually prepared, and even financially wealthier. At a minimum, there’s no need for the resulting hardships to translate into literal starvation, broken spirits, and poverty. For far too many, these outcomes are already a reality, evidenced by the 18% rise in US homelessness in 2024.

At Peak Prosperity we preach the benefits of becoming more resilient. The four core areas we focus on are Home, Health, Wealth, and Community. Each of those is an entire subject all on its own, with subsets and plenty of actions to take and things to learn.

Build up your capital in each of those areas and you will weather the storms far better than those who don’t. Naturally, Peak Prosperity has a large body of resources to help anyone and everyone become more resilient.

Becoming resilient is a process. It takes time and it doesn’t have a goal line. There’s no destination on the resilience map labeled “done.” You decide how resilient you want to be and give yourself permission to adjust those levels over time given the news and other circumstances in your life.

“Predicting” The Future

It’s painfully easy to predict what comes next. You won’t need a magic crystal ball. All you need to be able to do is extrapolate the trend that’s already traveling in a specific direction.

Politicians and MSM, being energy ignorant, will not only overlook the importance of cheap abundant energy, but they will continue to do the wrong things in service to a carefully developed green energy delusion. The fact that more of their citizens are slipping into poverty with every new generation of alt-energy projects will not register in their minds as connected events.

For its part, the Federal Reserve and other central banks will find yet more excuses to try and paper over the misery with more and more money printing.

To the central banksters, financial assets M.U.S.T. always be growing exponentially up and to the right. The chart of the Nasdaq 100 is a good visual of their handiwork.

See how that chart takes off right after the 2008 Great Financial Crisis? Now take a look at this log(!) chart of central bank “assets” which is a clever word that means “stuff we bought with money printed out of thin air.”

(Source)

Want to know why groceries cost more? Look at the chart above. Want to know why financial assets have exploded higher? Look at the chart above. Want to know why the future is going to suck? Look at the chart above.

Either the central banks reel back in all that printing and cause a massive deflationary depression, or they continue the practice of printing more (more! MOAR!) at every “emergency.”

This is an easy call to make; central banks will print.

It’s what they do, and after an entire generation of doing only that, it’s ALL they know. So that’s what they’ll do. Only it’s becoming less and less effective and creating larger and larger negative effects like politically toxic levels of inflation, concentrated wealth in the hands of activist, homicidal billionaires such as Bill Gates, and a political class that no longer has any clue what a balanced budget is or how to go about negotiating to achieve one.

For those who know what is coming, steps can be taken to avoid the resulting inflation and economic dysfunctions. For those simply playing the game without paying attention to the rules and keeping their heads down and 401k drip contributions on autopilot, well, I’m not sure there will be enough future Walmart greeting jobs to go around.

Having a true risk-managed approach to portfolio management is one of the things that everybody with wealth most need to get through the eye of the needle. Most people have the exact opposite with passive exposure to financial markets. Retirement portfolios can be self-managed and exposure to gold and silver is a must, as well as other hard assets such as oil and natural gas, farmland, woodland, and mining. We cover all of these options here.

It’s Never Different This Time

You know why I am 100% confident that money printing cannot, does not, and will not lead to prosperity? Because money is not actual wealth. Real wealth consists of real things and those only ever arise from energy.

Money printing is not the same thing as oil coming out of the ground.

Money is a claim on things, not real things. Again, this is a longer conversation had in The Crash Course, but once you know, you know. It’s definitely worth your time because once you get this concept, you’ll be able to more clearly identify the true sources of actual wealth in your life and in your portfolio.

To believe that the central banks have magically unlocked the capability to print up real wealth out of thin air you have to believe in the most enduring investing delusion of them all: It’s different this time.

You know what? It’s not different this time. It never is.

Fundamentals matter. Currency units created out of literal nothingness and ‘backed’ by the same debts they enable in the first place is no way to go through life, son. If it were, we’d all be speaking Latin because the Romans were exceedingly clever people and they tried the currency debasement route over and over again, failing every time until they collapsed.

If could have been done, the Romans would have gotten it done, right after perfecting cement that cures even while submerged in salt water and building roads that would be used 2,000 years later. Figuring out currency debasement should have been child’s play compared to those feats.

You know why it didn’t work then and it won’t work now? Because it rests on the delusion that money is the real thing in the equation, not the stuff that the money can buy. It’s a completely upside-down delusion. It’s got it exactly backwards. And we’re about to relearn the lesson.

Conclusion

So, it’s going to be an exciting 2025! Let’s join forces and become healthier, wealthier, more well-connected to each other, and live in resilient homes.

My commitment is to continue to be your information scout – it’s what I am uniquely built to do – and together we’ll puzzle this all out.

But let’s not pretend that a white knight is going to appear, grab the reins, and steer the chariot of fate in a better direction.

I’ve been at this for nearly 20 years(!). We’re still just as far from the most basic of energy and money understandings among those in power as we’ve ever been. The fantasies and delusions are as powerful and pervasive as ever.

2025 is the year that the chickens come home to roost. Get ready.

aus · January 3, 2025, 11:23pm

@cmartenson, I’ve been listening to Jack Kruse, it seems Vitamin D is not required if you follow his research.

rodster · January 3, 2025, 11:34pm

It’s fairly straight forward to figure out the future global energy predicament even if you don’t know a lick about energy. It is commonsense. I’ve always seen it as, Industrial Civilization was built and created with fossil fuels and it takes the same types of energy to maintain it. The other thing is that Industrial Civilization thrived and blossomed when oil was cheap and abundant. I remember way back in the early 70’s when a gallon of gas was around 30-35 cents.

The last thing that people forget and i’m not sure if Chris has covered this but I know Gail Tverberg at OFW has, is that governments are counting on oil revenues to fund their obligations. They make more selling the stuff than they do using it. Without the revenue that oil brings to governments, they will have a hard time meeting their obligations and could find themselves facing a default. Yes Oil is that important, not only to keep your lights on and get in your car but more importantly keeping the governments lights on as well.

andys61 · January 3, 2025, 11:58pm

maybe this is the wrong category to post under, but here goes…
.
.

cmartenson · January 4, 2025, 12:55am

Jason Burak brought this article to my attention today:

(link to article)
Say wut?

Grid-scale? Shouldn’t there be a working prototype first? One that has demonstrably achieved >1 energy returns (preferably >10, tbh) for a lengthy and stable period of time?

Let’s read on:

CNN
—
If all goes to plan, Virginia will be the site of the world’s first grid-scale nuclear fusion power plant, able to harness this futuristic clean power and generate electricity from it by the early 2030s, according to an announcement Tuesday by the startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

CFS, one of the largest and most-hyped nuclear fusion companies, will make a multibillion-dollar investment into building the facility near Richmond. When operational, the plant will be able to plug into the grid and produce 400 megawatts, enough to power around 150,000 homes, said its CEO Bob Mumgaard.

“This will mark the first time fusion power will be made available in the world at grid scale,” Mumgaard said. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin welcomed the announcement, calling it “an historic moment for Virginia and the world at large.”

Hold up a dang second. Let’s go back to the very first word in this “article.”

If all goes to plan,

Hmmmm…that’s an odd way to begin an announcement for something so mind-bogglingly world-changing.

Maybe there’s something other than PR fluff down deeper?

The plant would represent a new stage in the quest to commercialize nuclear fusion, the process which powers the stars. But the path toward it is unlikely to be smooth, not least because the technology has not yet been proved viable.

You don’t say…

Maybe things get better a bit deeper down?

But taking it from research projects in labs around the world to commercial use has proved fiendishly difficult. A common joke in the industry is that, for decades, fusion has been just decades away.

It’s something CFS acknowledges. “Nothing occurs overnight in fusion,” Mumgaard said. But the startup, which was spun out of MIT in 2018 and has raised more than $2 billion so far, says it is moving at pace.

It is “deep into” building a tokamak able to demonstrate net fusion energy: meaning a reaction that produces more energy than it consumes. It hopes to produce its first plasma – the superheated cloud of charged gas in which fusion reactions happen – in 2026 and achieve net fusion energy shortly afterward.

Wait, wait wait. They are “hoping” to achieve ‘net fusion shortly after’ creating plasma in 2026? And they are planning to build in Northern VA, right where, in a massive coincidence, power-hungry data centers are being slammed in?

All the way at the very, very bottom of the “article” (it’s actually a PR news release, in the climate section of CNN, not science or business) we finally hit paydirt:

In general, nuclear fusion startups “tend to be a little aggressive in what they’re promising,” Jerry Navratil, a professor of fusion energy and plasma physics at Columbia University, told CNN last month. There’s a big difference between producing energy from fusion and having a practical system that puts power on the grid and is safe, licensed and operating, he added.

Mumgaard acknowledged “there will be bumps in the road and things won’t change overnight.” But, he added, “the designers and planners can now go from a general notion to a specific location for the next chapter in the fusion journey.”

LOL

Let me guess. Mumgaard has already burned through the $2B and is about to go on an aggressive fundraising campaign.

rodster · January 4, 2025, 12:59am

Thanks to Chris, I had NO idea that Landman was such a great show and how it depicts the Oil Industry. Yes it is raw and violent but that’s what makes the show appealing. I just started watching the 1st episode and Billy Bob depicts the Oil business no different than the drug business with its cartels and the cutthroat violent ways of doing business.

Billy Bob Thorton sizzles in his role. He’s as believable as Kevin Costner is in Yellowstone. They both steal the show with their roles.

I don’t know if the numbers are accurate but he mentioned that the Oil Industry generates 4.3T per year, wow? No doubt the governments bank on their revenue.

cmartenson · January 4, 2025, 1:02am

I 100% agree. Both are pitch-perfect in their roles. Great shows.

rodster · January 4, 2025, 1:02am

It sure sounds a lot like the Shale and fracking business where the startups were trying to find suckers…oops, I meant to say investors before those investors figured out fracking and shale required lots of debt, per Steve St. Angelo SRSRoccoreport.com

andys61 · January 4, 2025, 1:06am

asmccarthy · January 4, 2025, 1:46am

Listened to a great talk on the myths of EVs

Worth listening to.

rodster · January 4, 2025, 2:10am

It’s over tens years old but still relevant today.

“Technological Superstitions” by John Michael Greer

https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2014/09/technological-superstitions.html

mark_bc · January 4, 2025, 2:18am

This year I’d like to see a little dive into the cancer industry which is arguably as bad or worse than any other sector of the medical-food-industrial complex. We just brought our dog back from the edge of death with a giant spleen tumor, using the Joe Tippens protocol and a few other supplements. And my sister is shrinking her breast tumor. So far we have a 2 for 2 record, 100%, which is better than any highly educated oncologist. I guess we can add to the side effects of being a conspiracy theorist – avoiding myocarditis and also having a cure for cancer on hand.

These grotesque barbarians need to be exposed. But the problem is they may clamp down on fenbendazole if word catches on. Imagine the billions in revenue lost overnight, all those unemployed oncologists, all those tear-jerking commercials from cancer agencies begging for money trotting their cancer kids out on the TV because, despite spending trillions on cancer research over the decades, they “just can’t find a cure”. Most of that would disappear.

There is currently a thriving alternative market in FBZ for those people in the know. We don’t want to jeoparize that.

jhgoodwin · January 4, 2025, 3:25am

I used to live in CA. I remember when they would ask us not to water our lawns and all that. When they did, I wondered a bit about the economics of it all and how much it was really moving the needle.

As I got older, I came to realize one very important thing. In any large system, what most people think is completely wrong in understanding the system as a whole. For example, people think that if retail sentiment is good, a stock goes up. Until you find out how much money hedge funds have under management and how many multiples of leverage that they can get. It’s just pointless to believe that you have much influence.

In utility systems, we keep the rates low so the normal people can afford power. I think people won’t generally realize it, but AI isn’t going to primarily eat your jobs or become skynet, but it will compete with you for access to power, water, construction workers, building supplies, computer chips, investment capital and probably more. I think we may soon see authorities which negotiate too aggressively to supply power and water, then be left with an important question. In a time of little, will you choose the voters, or corporate interests? I don’t expect to be surprised.

th1 · January 4, 2025, 3:27am

Oh wow, 2Bn$ raised VC risky money that isnt even proven tech, not event fully taxpayer funded joint university projects where basicly every country is onboard who has any interest in this science.
I thought VC money while risky, they still want long track record, strong team who has worked together and all that… unless all this is just taxpayer funded bn$ class Theranos scam. Cool, taxpayer grants say 5-10Bn$ for next 10 years and all money is gone and CEO isnt to be found in 2030, while Panama has registered couple islands to his name (journos may find that fact in 2034).

jhgoodwin · January 4, 2025, 3:28am

Timo, I have little hope that any unproven technology is going to make grid scale power for 150k homes for $2B. Pretty sure it’s going to be a drop in the bucket (financially), 10x the time, and 1/100th the result, if it doesn’t entirely flop.

What do you think is more likely? Someone who bet $2B wising up and realizing they gambled and lost, or do you think they’re going to dip into the pockets they got the original $2B from (probably someone else’s pockets) and get more?

th1 · January 4, 2025, 3:32am

I can put SpaceX as comparable example: around 2001 or whenever Elon Musk decided to start it, space launches had been normal routine at least 20-30 years (ISS launches have like bus timetable since 1980s), Moon had been visited and countless satellites launched. Question was just to make all that better,cheaper,faster.
[And even in SpaceX case, maybe 2010s they finally got falcon 9, totally oldschool engine type, working, and contract with NASA to run ordinary launches… 2020s they got finally their demo mission to ISS with humans onboard… roughly 20 years from company founding… this point is where they started to make innovation and improvements that wasnt there before, ie self landing booster rocket couple years back]

Now, for same to happen in this case, well maybe 2070 that is possible once university reactor has been running 10 years without issues.

They want this public hype so clueless senators in white house get onboard as publicity comes when VCs have called your bluff cards and word has gotten around everywhere in those circles.

th1 · January 4, 2025, 3:39am

About this scouting report, had these comments,questions.

I’ve seen mineral deposit chart for copper and other metals. But how is uranium? Biggest downside is digging it by hand causes lot of health issues even at low radiation that rock has. Copper by hand of course also causes but some protective common equipment like gloves can alleviate lot there.
Eg copper, cobalt are allegedly mined still by hand in central africa.

So my question regarding this, knowing eg South Korea has invested in giant nuclear facilities to build heavy industries (future problem in that energy EROEI chart), that nuclear is generally underused in world until recently everyone now hopping onto it.

Question1:
Could “muscle power” ie good old humans by hand replace some of that fossil fuels used wastefully now in these processes to refine excellent energy density fuel rods for nuclear plants? To offset fossil fuel use switching it to muscle power as much as possible. Once fuel rods are coming out from factory, all is easy. (eg use some humans to work in that refining process to essentially boost EROEI)

Alternatives of course here are, force “poor africans” to dig it by hand and suffer health consequences but that can raise rioting rifle groups taking mines over when people start seeing those problems and western corporations ignore them. Then it comes to cost benefit analysis to send expensive welltrained soldiers to monitor people dig it or find mines closer to home. I would think with that prospect, having these ops far from home comes more costly via logistics issues, hostility of locals and general willingness to spend money that way (do you want to pay 20k$ a month tax money for each soldier to go there? to account for inflation and life danger and other unpleasantries patrolling far from home).
As we see from Ukraine-Russia situation both sides, they get 2000euros/dollars per month or more , locally very high pay, but even that cant recruit well anymore after people have seen news and heard what shitshow and how many came back dead there.
So money wont solve it at some point.

Add to that reduced supply from russian gas and Putin must know it, west cannot buy that or they’d have to basicly surrender to all demands from Putin. Unlikely at this nearterm 3 years forward.
Europe cant buy more from Russia, last countries now cut off. This raises local european market price for LNG and NG, which means US continent producers see how fat profit they get exporting it, thus approach even higher world market prices also locally in US.
Temptation would be blackmarket export if price is 100x or 1000x in europe vs US/Canada locally( 2022 100x wasnt that special in europe) .
Heard excellent word in other podcast for this: arbitrage. When europeans pay 100x for NG, it will over time catch up in american continent to that price (similar as carry trade in forex).

Question2: Regarding geopolitics and driving Russia-China alliance, how does this change world where majority of west+other energy poor regions demand both market access, immigration and direct monetary+energyhelp(via food or other refined products) and Russia still has plenty of fossil fuels China is happy to use and doesnt obey CO2 quotas.
What kind of world are we looking in 10-20 years from this scenario?

Suggestion:
5.: I cant quite connect dots why interest rates go higher from finite planet, and I bet millions cant, so excellent short video topic to cover this.
(I can try to google and remind what this mechanism was about, but easier to have references around who explain it better, as this will be topic repeating many times in next years)

jhgoodwin · January 4, 2025, 3:58am

I was somewhat curious if easy means physics easy, or easy also includes political. I could imagine an uncooperative government for example having abundant raw minerals that just aren’t used.

Recently, I was looking at a video report of Chinese people thrown in jail in Africa for mining. Apparently, in the area they were mining, the prior year production of gold was 42kg/yr and the Chinese brought their big equipment/chemicals and started mining 5000kg - source.

Not looking forward for the entire globe to look strip mined, though.

th1 · January 4, 2025, 4:06am

That china/africa example is very similar as near atlantic shores, nigeria maybe, where oil drilling happens, they polluted local river, so locals couldnt fish anymore so they got really angry and organized as that river was both their livelyhood and food. This looks very similar, chinese pay poverty (hunger)wages and also drinking waters and lakes get polluted. Nothing but death left.
Should not underestimate what people can do when they are cornered like this.
Locals there in africa are same as americans: they want to live (left alone to live their lives) and earn some income to support themselves. If you take that away, they can even find guns to fight back.

hurricanerider · January 4, 2025, 4:51am

This whole enterprise is utterly strange, simply because no fusion research group – let alone transition development group – has demonstrated or even pointed the way towards anything even remotely close to overall energy break-even.

Do they know something the rest of the fusion physics community doesn’t know, namely how to get a net energy output from a tokamak? I seriously doubt it. I mean, where are the publications? That’d be worth a Nobel Prize right there, and then the capital would absolutely flow in for their commercial venture.

Or are they building a shell of what they guess will be a viable reactor, hoping that something will come up that will supply the design for working innards? Possibly. Seems like a lot to bet $2billion on though. Haven’t we already been doing this for a half-century, building testbed tokamaks and trying to tweak the design into working? Sure, we’ve learned a few things, but saying “this time for sure, and all the way to the grid in one bold step!” is an awfully big leap.

Or it the entire thing an elaborate con? Maybe. Maybe a self-con. It’s hard to see how venture capitalists would fall for it, but hell, all the other harebrained schemes they’ve fallen for (Theranos! Thanks for the reminder, Timo), why not throw money down the fusion rathole next.

Anyway, I wish them all the best, but would need to see a lot more than this cheerleading before I would bet any reputation or money on the venture.