Media headlines are filled with news of shortages, energy price increases and inflationary threats. The processes leading to these headlines have multiple causes, but they all have one thing in common. They could be ended with the development of fusion energy, especially LPPFusion’s Focus Fusion.
There is no mystery why oil prices are rising, more than doubling in the past year. Oil production is controlled by the governments who are members of OPEC Plus, led by Saudi Arabia, and by a handful of giant oil and gas companies (Shell, BP, Exxon-Mobil, Total and Chevron). Right now, OPEC Plus has reduced production by 8 million barrels a day, nearly 10% of total world production. That restriction began in November 2018, well before the pandemic, but ratcheted up hugely in March of last year, when producers panicked over pandemic-induced drops in demand and prices.
This artificial shortage could not happen with fusion energy. Focus Fusion generators will produce energy that is ten time cheaper than any available now, and it would be impossible to monopolize. Instead of most energy coming from a handful of energy giants, it would come from millions of fusion generators. Boron fuel can be refined from sea salt. In Europe, these artificially-created energy shortages have been compounded by an unusual lack of wind, cutting back on wind-generated electricity. Fusion generators will be available all the time.
British motorists are being driven to distraction by endless lines at gas stations caused not by a shortage of gasoline, but a shortage of truckers to deliver the fuel. Again, since fusion fuel has a million times the energy density of gasoline, an electric-vehicle recharge station will need 5 kg of fuel a year, not 5,000 tons. A few truck drivers could supply fuel for fusion generators at all the UK’s “gas” stations, once they are converted to electric re-charging.
Energy, of course, is not the only thing in short supply. The pandemic has stopped factories around the globe for months at a time; these goods simply were not produced. But that only created shortages, and resulting inflation, because “just-in-time” supply policies, introduced 30 years ago to maximize profit, had eliminated vital inventories. Over the same period, financial demands created massive transportation inefficiencies, shipping bulky goods thousands of miles to take advantage of low wages or cheap currencies. The giant savings that fusion energy could produce by eliminating trillions in energy costs could free up the resources needed to build up inventories and to rationalize supply networks. Bulky low-value products, like steel for example, could be produced regionally while the global division of labor and long-distance shipping concentrates on compact, high-value products like machinery and electronics. Even more important, fusion energy savings can also finance the expanded global medical infrastructure that could have stopped the pandemic in the first place. Forward to Fusion!
This piece is part of the Oct 15, 2021 report. To download the report click here.
