293. Tim Morgan’s Surplus Energy Economics Data System (SEEDS}

Posted on 19/05/2026 by Barry

For newcomers to this blog, I must explain that I follow Dr Tim Morgan’s SEEDS analysis.

Dr Morgan is the former head of research at Tullett Prebon, a major British financial brokerage.

Morgan uses the acronym SEEDS to mean the “Surplus Energy Economics Data System”. It is the economic model he developed to analyse the economy as an energy system rather than as a purely financial one.

The central idea behind SEEDS is:

The economy is not really driven by money.
It is driven by surplus energy.

Money is only a claim on what the real economy can produce.

Morgan argues that orthodox economics gets this backwards because it assumes growth can continue indefinitely if central banks and governments manage money correctly. SEEDS says this is impossible if the surplus energy available to society is shrinking.

The model revolves around several key concepts.

The economy is energy

SEEDS starts from the idea that every good and service requires energy to exist:

food,
transport,
buildings,
hospitals,
computers,
the internet,
financial services,
everything.

Without energy, there is no economy.

Surplus energy matters, not total energy

This is probably the most important part of the theory.

Morgan says that what matters is not how much gross energy exists, but how much is left after obtaining the energy itself.

For example:

oil wells,
pipelines,
refineries,
wind turbines,
batteries,
electricity grids,

All require energy to build and operate.

So society must “use energy to get energy”.

The remaining amount is called surplus energy.

ECoE – Energy Cost of Energy

Morgan measures this using a metric called ECoE.

ECoE is the percentage of energy consumed to obtain usable energy.

He argues that:

In earlier industrial times, ECoE was very low,
cheap coal and oil created enormous surplus energy,
This enabled industrial growth, welfare states, consumerism, and financial expansion.

But now:

resources are harder to extract,
systems are more complex,
renewables require extensive infrastructure,
therefore ECoE rises.

As ECoE rises, surplus energy shrinks.

Prosperity is shrinking even if GDP rises

SEEDS distinguishes between:

financial growth, and
real prosperity.

Morgan argues governments disguise declining prosperity through:

debt,
money creation,
asset inflation,
low interest rates,
expanding credit.

So GDP may still rise while real living standards stagnate or decline.

Essentials squeeze discretionary spending

One of Morgan’s major conclusions is that as surplus energy declines:

essentials become more expensive,
households spend more on food, energy, housing and taxation,
discretionary sectors shrink.

SEEDS therefore predicts long-term pressure on:

tourism,
hospitality,
leisure,
luxury retail,
non-essential transport,
much office employment,
and many financial activities.

Meanwhile, essentials become dominant again.

Finance becomes detached from reality

Morgan argues modern finance increasingly represents claims on future prosperity that may never exist.

So:

debts expand,
pensions become difficult,
asset prices become unrealistic,
governments borrow to preserve living standards,
but the underlying energy base is weakening.

Eventually, he believes, the financial system must “de-financialise” and reconnect with physical reality.

This is why many people are interested in:

peak oil,
collapse theory,
degrowth,
localism,
resilience,
and post-growth economics,

To follow the SEEDS official site:

Surplus Energy Economics

And the introductory PDF explaining SEEDS is:

The Surplus Energy Economy – Introduction PDF

Tim Morgan’s latest SEEDS analysis (19/05/2026) reveals that

“…. fiscal strains are going to get relentlessly worse – the costs of social support will carry on rising even as the taxable economy shrinks.

As well as stretching social cohesion, this will undermine whatever monitoring or coercive powers states might have:

The implications might be localism, if we’re fortunate, or chaos, if we’re not.”

291. Battery Britain, the Shrinking Economy, and the Question of Affordability

Posted on 18/05/2026 by Barry

The Telegraph article on batteries helping Britain “beat the surge in energy bills” describes a rapidly expanding world of domestic storage systems, smart tariffs, and household-scale electricity management, where batteries are charged when power is cheap and discharged when prices spike, smoothing out the cost of living pressures linked to volatile energy markets.

On the surface this looks like a sensible technological response to high electricity prices. Batteries, especially when paired with solar panels or smart tariffs, can reduce bills significantly by shifting consumption away from peak pricing and into low-cost periods. But in a shrinking economy, the deeper question is not whether the technology works, but whether society can afford the continual renewal of it.

Every battery, inverter, heat pump, photovoltaic panel, control system and power electronic device has a finite life. Typically around 10 to 15 years for many components, sometimes less for heavily used systems. That means a permanent cycle of replacement, recycling, upgrading and reinstallation. Even if unit costs fall, the economy must still sustain continuous capital renewal across millions of households, transport systems, and industrial users.

In a growth economy this is assumed to be manageable because rising output absorbs replacement costs. In a shrinking economy the assumption breaks down. Income growth slows or reverses, discretionary spending falls, and both households and institutions become increasingly sensitive to upfront capital costs. A technology that reduces running costs but requires high initial investment can become structurally unaffordable for large parts of the population.

This is where the tension becomes clear. Battery systems may reduce exposure to high electricity prices, but they do not remove the need to pay for the infrastructure itself. A household battery system still requires purchase, installation, maintenance, eventual replacement, and the supporting grid and control systems behind it. Even optimistic estimates suggest multi-thousand-pound costs and lifetimes of a decade or so, meaning repeated investment over time.

If the economy is no longer expanding in real terms, the question becomes: who finances this continual turnover? Government subsidy? Private borrowing? Higher electricity tariffs to fund grid stability? Or selective adoption by wealthier households only?

This is not just a domestic issue. It extends across transport and national infrastructure. Electric trains, trams, and electric vehicles all depend on large-scale electricity supply, much of it increasingly expected to be intermittent renewable generation buffered by storage. Batteries can smooth demand peaks, and grid-scale storage is expanding rapidly, but the system still depends on massive capital investment in generation, storage, transmission, and replacement cycles.

The logical conclusion often presented is decentralisation: local generation and local storage. Solar photovoltaics on buildings, community-scale batteries, heat pumps, and local energy balancing. But this raises another difficulty. Local systems may reduce dependence on national grids, but they do not reduce the total capital burden. They simply redistribute it. Every locality would still need to finance its own generation assets, storage systems, maintenance expertise, and eventual replacement cycles.

So the question becomes sharper: can localist communities realistically fund full energy self-reliance under conditions of economic contraction? And if they cannot, what level of external support or cross-subsidy would still be required?

Electricity from photovoltaics and heat pumps is often presented as “free after installation”, but in practice it is capital-intensive infrastructure spread over time. In a shrinking economy, capital-intensive systems become harder to sustain precisely because future surplus income is smaller.

This leads to a more uncomfortable possibility. Rather than a smooth transition to decentralised clean energy, society may face a selective transition. Wealthier households and well-capitalised institutions adopt batteries, heat pumps, and electric mobility. Others remain dependent on older, more centralised systems, or face rising inequality in access to energy resilience.

The deeper issue is not whether batteries or renewables work. They do. The issue is whether a society with tightening financial capacity can continuously renew a highly engineered energy system at scale, across every household, vehicle, and transport network, without a growing burden of cost and complexity.

In that sense, the energy question is not only technological. It is economic. And in a shrinking economy, the central constraint may turn out not to be innovation, but affordability over time.

289. Trouble at the Top

Posted on 14/05/2026 by Barry

The recent article on Consciousness of Sheep raises an important point about modern politics and the impossible promises the government is now making.

The impossibility of making any promises at present is not simply political incompetence. It is that industrial society itself is encountering physical and energetic limits which top-down politics cannot overcome.

The evolution to localism is now getting in the way of government planning.

For decades governments assumed that economic growth, rising consumption and expanding technology would continue indefinitely. Elections were fought on promises of more jobs, higher spending, better public services, greener technology, cheaper energy and rising living standards. But all of these assumptions depended upon abundant, cheap surplus energy and increasingly productive industrial systems.

That world is now fading.

The industrial economy depends upon extraordinarily complex and expensive technologies – global supply chains, rare minerals, massive electricity grids, data centres, satellites, AI systems, electric vehicles, industrial agriculture, container shipping and continuous infrastructure replacement.

These systems appear efficient, but only because the hidden energy and material costs are spread across the entire planet.

As the energy cost of obtaining energy rises, the burden of maintaining this complexity also rises. More of society’s effort must go simply into keeping systems operating. Less remains available for discretionary prosperity which impacts the cost of living. It is not yet generally realised that discretionary spending is becoming less affordable, and will do so for the foreseeable future.

This is one reason governments increasingly struggle financially, even as taxes rise.

Technology itself is not disappearing. But the assumption that every new technology, including AI can be expanded indefinitely is now questionable.

Industrial society developed during a unique period of history when dense fossil fuels enabled huge energy surpluses. Those surpluses permitted the growth of mass consumerism, giant cities, global tourism, endless infrastructure expansion and vast bureaucratic states. The government is grappling with the maintenance of this system and has yet to realise that it is unaffordable.

Supposedly “green” technologies depend heavily upon mining, international manufacturing, long-distance transport and vulnerable electricity grids. Recent concerns over electricity system fragility in parts of Europe highlight the growing difficulty of maintaining increasingly complex energy systems that rely on intermittent generation.

This does not mean that UK society will collapses overnight. More likely, it will simplify.

The political implications are profound. Governments can no longer promise prosperity through growth because the underlying energetic conditions which created growth are are no longer available. This explains much of the political fragmentation now occurring across Britain and elsewhere.

Voters sense that established parties no longer control events. Governments inherit problems they cannot solve because the problems are structural rather than ideological.

In this sense, some elections may indeed become “good elections to lose.” Any incoming government, or a rearrangement of an existing one, inherits rising infrastructure costs, failing public services, unaffordable welfare systems, debt burdens, and ageing industrial systems that require vast energy and material inputs simply to maintain current living standards.

The real challenge, therefore, is not how to preserve industrial consumer society exactly as it is, but how to adapt intelligently to a lower-energy future.

This requires a complete rethink of technology itself. Which can only occur if the system of governance is changed.

Future technologies will need to be simpler, repairable, local, durable and less energy-intensive. Instead of assuming that every household needs the constant replacement of electronic devices, endless digital services, and global supply chains, the UK society will have to prioritise technologies that can operate sustainably within local resource limits.

Local food systems, simpler transport, adaptable housing, small-scale manufacturing, practical skills and durable goods will become more valuable than ever-more complex consumer technologies dependent upon fragile global systems.

This is not “going backwards.” It is adaptation.

The industrial age encouraged quantity. The future will have to favour quality, resilience and locality. Much of what industrial society currently calls “progress” may eventually be recognised as temporary surplus-energy behaviour rather than a permanent model for civilisation.

Current UK political approaches (by all parties) will be unable to solve this from the top-down.

The future will depend less on which party wins elections and more on whether the UK society begins to honestly recognise the limits of industrial complexity.

282. Wind Turbines, Warming, and the Limits of Industrial Solutions

Posted on 09/05/2026 by Barry

A recent article discussing a 2018 Harvard study has reignited debate about one of the central assumptions of modern climate policy – namely, that large-scale wind energy automatically reduces environmental harm.

The study, published in the academic journal Joule, argued that if the United States were powered predominantly by wind turbines, the turbines themselves would alter local climate conditions by mixing warmer upper air with cooler surface air, especially at night. The result, according to the study, would be measurable local surface warming.

The article presents this as a profound contradiction. If the purpose of decarbonisation is to reduce warming, what happens if one of the principal technologies used to achieve it creates warming of its own?

This issue deserves careful thought, because it reveals something much bigger than a dispute about wind turbines. It highlights the growing tension between industrial-scale technological solutions and the realities of the natural world.

The Harvard study did not say that wind turbines create new heat in the way greenhouse gases trap additional heat in the atmosphere. Instead, the turbines redistribute existing heat through turbulence. Large rotating blades disturb the natural layering of air, especially at night when the atmosphere is calmer. Warmer air from above is mixed downward, slightly raising surface temperatures near large wind installations.

The effect appears to be real and measurable at local scale. However, the way the findings are interpreted politically is another matter entirely.

Supporters of wind power argue that local temperature changes from turbines are fundamentally different from long-term global greenhouse warming.

Critics argue that ordinary people experience local conditions, not global averages, and therefore immediate warming near turbine concentrations matters greatly.

What is striking is not merely the scientific disagreement, but the scale of industrial intervention now being contemplated. Replacing fossil-fuel electricity entirely with wind would require an extraordinary transformation of landscapes. Vast areas of countryside would become energy production zones, filled with turbines, access roads, substations, transmission lines, maintenance systems, and backup infrastructure.

This is where the issue moves beyond climate science into the wider question of how industrial civilisation attempts to solve problems.

Modern societies increasingly assume that every difficulty can be overcome through another layer of technology, finance, regulation, and construction. Yet each solution creates additional complications which then require further solutions. Wind turbines reduce one category of emissions while introducing other effects involving land use, mineral extraction, intermittency, visual impact, ecological disturbance, grid instability, and now possibly local climatic alteration.

The deeper problem may not be wind itself, but scale.

Industrial societies always seek gigantic centralised systems because the entire financial and political structure depends upon continuous expansion.

Energy systems are expected to power endless economic growth, mass mobility, global supply chains, artificial intelligence, data centres, and ever-increasing consumption. Under those conditions, no energy source is ever sufficient for long.

This is why the debate often becomes polarised between supporters of fossil fuels, wind, solar, or nuclear power, when the more fundamental issue concerns the size and expectations of the economy itself.

If societies continue to attempt to maintain present levels of industrial consumption indefinitely, every energy source will face serious consequences.

Fossil fuels contribute to atmospheric carbon accumulation.

Wind requires enormous land transformation and industrial infrastructure.

Solar requires vast mining operations, transmission systems, and large areas of land coverage.

Nuclear introduces long-term waste management, security requirements, and extremely centralised political control.

None of these systems truly escapes the laws of nature. They merely redistribute pressures in different ways.

From the perspective of localism, the most important lesson may be that the future cannot simply be engineered through larger and more complex national systems. Instead, societies may gradually be forced toward lower-energy, more local, and less consumption-driven ways of living.

In such a future, the objective changes completely.

Instead of asking how to sustain infinite industrial growth with alternative energy, communities should begin to ask how to live well with less energy overall.

That change alters everything.

Smaller local economies require less transport.

Local food production reduces dependence on refrigerated global supply chains.

Repair replaces disposal.

Housing adapts to climate rather than depending entirely upon mechanical heating and cooling.

Daily life becomes physically closer to people’s homes.

Under those conditions, energy systems also become smaller, more diverse, and more adapted to locality rather than dominated by gigantic national infrastructures.

This does not necessarily mean wind turbines disappear entirely. Small-scale local generation may still have a role. But the industrial dream of covering whole continents with vast energy machinery begins to look increasingly like another temporary phase of late industrial civilisation rather than a permanent solution.

The Harvard study, therefore, matters less because it proves or disproves wind power and more because it exposes the unintended consequences that emerge whenever industrial society attempts to overpower natural limits with still larger technological systems.

The central issue may not be whether wind turbines warm the air slightly.

The central issue may be whether humanity is finally approaching the point where it must stop trying to sustain unlimited industrial expansion altogether.

279. Why the World Feels Like It’s Falling Apart: A Superorganism Speed Round

Posted on 05/05/2026 by Barry

Nate Hagens May 5

This essay is adapted from the Frankly episode posted on May 30th, 2025 titled, “Why the World Feels Like It’s Falling Apart: The Superorganism Explained in 7 Minutes.”

On this platform, the Great Simplification, we’re trying to change the initial conditions of the future. We do this by putting together a quite complex, wide-boundary overview of the human predicament, including how humans and the biosphere interrelate. We also explore what the underpinnings, scenarios, and interventions are in this predicament. It’s complex, it’s threatening, and it’s not for the faint of heart. This content isn’t for everyone.

But then there’s another filter, which is attention span. A lot of people today, including me, don’t have the attention span for a 90-minute podcast. I can interview someone for 90 minutes – or for three and a half hours in Daniel Schmachtenberger’s case – but I am just too busy and don’t have the attention span to sit and watch something for that long (or read a 4k-5k word essay). I’m sure there are increasing numbers of people falling into that category.

So, this platform’s message could be parsed into something shorter. Last year, I was in California doing a sort of pre-TED talk event called “Ignite.” The challenge offered to me was, “Nate, can you give a five minute talk, with only twenty slides?” Of course, I say, “Sure, I’d be happy to.”

It ended up being one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. When I actually presented, I only had fifteen seconds for each of the slides. The one I had prepared on the economic Superorganism, which is a central theme of this platform, ended up not working.

Because of that, I decided to take this opportunity to redo the Superorganism – in a shorter, tighter delivery. I hope this can be a helpful resource for those new to my work, and to send to those unfamiliar with the more-than-human predicament.

Surplus and Civilization

Let’s start by looking at the conditions we live in today. Modern civilization looks impressive relative to the past – invincible markets grow, planes fly, artificial intelligence has arrived. Yet, something doesn’t feel right beneath the surface. More vital signs are flashing red. There are lots of people working on “cures,” but we are mostly prescribing fixes without first diagnosing the underlying condition. The “patient” is the energy-and-materially-coupled system of the global economy embedded inside Earth’s biosphere. The symptoms we’re seeing and feeling make sense, but only once we zoom out and see how the whole system fits together.

Most people believe that money powers the world, but this is a narrow viewpoint. If we zoom out further, it’s really energy. Animals were the first investors, spending calories in order to gain more. This surplus energy built organisms, ecosystems, and eventually human cultures and the civilization we experience today.

Two centuries ago, we tapped into the stored energy of ancient sunlight in the form of coal, oil, and gas. A single barrel of oil, when combined with a machine, can do around five years of human labor for mere pennies. It’s portable, concentrated, and incredibly cheap magic. This fossil jackpot underpins the phenomenon I call the Carbon Pulse – a one-time release of energy that’s been stored over deep geologic time. In under 200 years, we’ve burned what took millions of years to form. This isn’t a paycheck that keeps showing up in our bank account, it’s a trust fund with which we’ve been throwing a planet-wide party.

When paired with machines, this huge energy surplus has done wonders. Population, production, and profits have all soared, powered by an invisible fossil army equivalent to half a trillion human workers.

But such power also comes with blind spots. Our culture confuses the tiny cost of fossil energy with the enormous value it provides us and ignores the pollution impacts almost entirely. We built a global economy that’s fully dependent on these two hidden subsidies, without acknowledging or even seeing them. Today, we remain energy blind, mistaking financial and technological growth for progress and forgetting what enabled and empowered these things in the first place.

Emergence and the Superorganism

In nature, complexity builds through flows of energy and materials. Forests, coral reefs, and even brains all emerge from this dynamic. Human systems are no exception. Cities, economies, and technologies are all self-organized as emergent structures powered by energy and shaped by matter. From simple patterns like this, nature creates beautiful patterns.

For example, a single starling follows three rules when flying in a group:

Stay close to your neighbor
Don’t run into your neighbor
Move towards the center.

From these seemingly unremarkable behaviors, a breathtaking murmuration appears – fluid, unpredictable, and alive. This is called emergence, and it happens in the human world too. Billions of individuals, businesses, and nations each follow simple cultural rules: seek profit, minimize cost, and grow. All of this is tethered to energy, materials, and ecosystem impact. The result is global physical patterns that no one designed or intended – and few are accounting for.

If we zoom out far enough, human civilization itself starts looking and acting like a giant organism with its own metabolism. Data flows, echoing neural signals, while highways and shipping lanes function like veins and arteries with gasoline and diesel as blood. Fractal nodes in the global system require a higher and higher baseline metabolic requirement each year.

What has emerged is something new and massive: a globally-synchronized economic Superorganism, built from energy, machines, and billions of human decisions, all driven by both biological and cultural incentives.

This Superorganism is mindless, unplanning, and energy-hungry. It isn’t evil, it doesn’t feel, and it doesn’t care about equity, ecology, or human wellbeing. It solely optimizes for throughput, scale, and for more – even when more becomes the problem. There is no mastermind behind the wheel, only billions of incentives aligned in the same direction toward extraction and consumption.

We’ve inadvertently built a system that rewards material expansion, not wisdom, and we’ve outsourced our decision-making to markets and algorithms. As a result, we have consumed more energy and materials in the past thirty years than all humans before us combined. Our current culture feels and acts like it will continue forever, but infinite growth on a finite planet is not possible. Technology on its own won’t save us, because it runs on the same fuel and has the same master.

The Superorganism cannot see what’s coming. It doesn’t anticipate, it only reacts – and the signals it reacts to are prices set for profits, which ignore the deeper long-term risks of constantly striving for growth.

So far, our collective response when we’ve hit limits has been to go deeper into ecological and biophysical debt. Buy now and pay later at a planetary scale, now in full effect. When central banks print money, they are not printing oil, copper, or lithium. They’re actually printing claims on those things. In other words, we can double the money supply, but the fossil fuels, forest, metals, and orangutans haven’t doubled. The financial system assumes endless growth, but the physical world, both the sources and the sinks, have limits.

Down-Slope of the Carbon Pulse

For over two centuries, growth has been our default, fueled by energy and abundance and amplified by financial systems. But we are now hitting ecological, energetic, and social constraints. The cultural story of “more” is colliding with physical reality. What if more money doesn’t help, but only accelerates our transmutation of non-renewable wealth into temporary income?

The up-slope of the Carbon Pulse brought growth and complexity. On the down-slope, the inverse will happen: less energy, less complexity, less “more.” This phenomenon is what I call the “Great Simplification,” and is also the namesake of this platform.

This Great Simplification is not a “maybe,” it’s a “when.” The economic Superorganism is not something humans plan for, nor something we wanted. It’s an emergent phenomenon of large numbers of social primates blindly interacting with a large energy surplus. Downstream of aggregate behavior, as individuals, humans continue to seek the emotional states that served our ancestors. But now we live in a world of scale, speed, and stimulation they never faced. We are a species far out of context. But we are not just individuals, we’re also deeply social animals. Our values and behaviors adapt to our cultural environment. This is the bright spot, because culture can change – sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. It’s in our nature to shift once the story shifts too.

At the end of the day, the things that truly bring us joy and meaning are not tied to material consumption once our basic human needs are met. What fulfills us is ancient connection, purpose, time in nature, and being in service to others. Humans don’t need endless growth to live rich, meaningful lives.

Responses to a Simplification

So what can we do as this Superorganism reaches old age? The responses fall into four broad categories, in my view:

Policy: biophysical realism and planning for bending rather than breaking as we approach a Great Simplification.
Cultural: new stories, less hubris, and more trust and social capital.
Community: mutual aid, more localized food and supply chains, and ecosystem repair.
Personal: skills, mindset, connection, and meaning.

We can’t easily steer or stop the economic Superorganism, but we can plant the seeds for what comes next. Each of us can be the mitochondria in the cells of a different social organism being born in the not too distant future – in communities, in bioregions, and in gatherings across the world. I talk about this more in one of my videos, 10 Qualities That Could Change the Future: The Seeds of New Cultural Mitochondria. This is already happening, and the stakes have never been higher for humans and the biosphere.

Power scales up – energy, money, control, hierarchy. Life scales deep – interconnection, regeneration, community. The future depends on which of these we feed. This is more than a crisis, it is a rite of passage for Homo sapiens. The Superorganism we are part of today is not our destiny as a species, but it is a fork in what could still be the long road of our time on Earth. So start the conversation. Build local resilience. Consider being more actively in service of life.

This was just a primer on the human predicament (the college course I taught on this was a hundred hours). There is a huge amount left unsaid here, and every sentence could have been unpacked further. That’s part of our problem, our culture has come to favor short, simple explanations, while reality is nuanced and complex. But I am confident that, over time, integration of our reality – the systems science – can help us meet the future halfway.

278. Electricity and the Transition to Localism: How the Structure of the Grid May Shape the Structure of Society

Posted on 02/05/2026 by Barry

It is often assumed that if the UK electricity grid became financially difficult to maintain, the result would be a sudden national blackout. That is very unlikely. But it is equally unrealistic to assume that the system could simply be reorganised from the centre if the financial economy itself weakened severely.

The more realistic conclusion is that the future of electricity supply cannot be predicted in detail. It depends too heavily on what remains operational in the financial system, transport, communications, and engineering support.

However, although the process cannot be predicted, the direction of change can be understood. Electricity is not just another service. It is one of the main structures that shape how society organises itself. Changes in electricity supply, therefore, help us see how the country might move gradually from a fully centralised industrial system toward a more locality-based one.

Electricity networks do not just support society. They help determine its scale.

Electricity networks reflect the economy they serve

In a growth-based industrial economy the objective of the electricity network is simple:

To supply everyone, everywhere, continuously

This assumption has shaped the design of the modern grid. It depends on:

stable finance
large contractor networks
complex control systems
national coordination
continuous maintenance
reliable fuel logistics

When those conditions exist, universal supply is practical.

But when those conditions weaken, the network’s objective changes. Infrastructure always adapts to the economy that supports it.

The question then becomes not whether electricity disappears, but what electricity networks are for.

The electricity system is not just engineering

It is easy to think of the grid as wires and power stations. In reality, it depends on the organisation.

It relies every day on:

credit
insurance
spare parts supply
telecommunications
software support
transport logistics
contractor availability
specialist engineers

If these weaken, the network weakens with them.

If they weaken severely, the system cannot simply be redesigned from the centre. Large infrastructure depends on management capacity as much as engineering capacity.

A national financial shock would affect the whole country at once

If the financial system weakened seriously, the effect on electricity supply would begin everywhere at roughly the same time.

Credit would tighten nationally.

Procurement systems would weaken nationally.

Contracting arrangements would fail nationally.

Maintenance capacity would reduce nationally.

So the change would not spread slowly from one region to another. It would begin everywhere.

However, the consequences would quickly become uneven.

Electricity cannot be reduced evenly across the country

The grid cannot simply be turned down like a dimmer switch across the whole nation.

Operators would have to concentrate effort where electricity supports the largest number of people and the most essential services. In practice this means protecting:

cities
water supply systems
hospitals
communications networks
railways
food distribution centres

This is not a political choice. It is a technical necessity.

Rural distribution would normally become less reliable first.

The network would simplify rather than reorganise

Modern electricity networks require high levels of coordination. Reorganising them deliberately would require functioning management systems, contractor networks, telecommunications, fuel supply, and finance.

These are exactly the systems most affected in financial disruption.

So the grid would not be redesigned in a planned way. Instead it would simplify itself.

Typically this means:

Maintenance concentrated where crews already exist
Complex switching arrangements reduced
Weaker circuits abandoned
Repairs are taking longer
Redundancy is gradually disappearing

The result is a patchwork system rather than a new design.

Electricity generation would also change

Different forms of generation depend on different kinds of support.

Gas generation depends heavily on fuel logistics.

Offshore wind depends heavily on specialist maintenance.

Biomass depends heavily on imports.

Nuclear depends heavily on national coordination.

Solar depends least on external systems.

Because these supporting structures would be affected differently, the exact sequence of change cannot be predicted. But the direction is clearer.

Generation would gradually become more local.

The objective of the electricity network would change

This is the most important shift.

Today the objective of the network is universal supply.

In a constrained economy the objective would become:

Reliable supply that supports the most essential activity

This produces a corridor system rather than a blanket system.

Electricity begins to behave more like the railway network before widespread car ownership. Railways connected towns, industry, and transport corridors. They did not attempt to reach every front door directly. Daily life organised itself around those routes.

Electricity networks could begin to play a similar role ⚡

Electricity corridors would shape settlement patterns

If electricity reliability is concentrated along major infrastructure routes, those routes become the framework in which economic life continues most easily.

Reliable supply supports:

water pumping
communications
rail movement
medical services
food storage
repair activity

Places within these corridors remain stable more easily.

Places outside them adapt differently.

Infrastructure shapes geography.

Local electricity becomes the branch network

If the national grid begins to behave like a corridor system, local electricity will play a role similar to that of branch lines.

Local supply might include:

rooftop solar
small wind systems
battery storage
farm electrical infrastructure
community buildings acting as supply anchors
backup generators
local electricians and workshops

These systems already exist across the country. They are normally hidden beneath the national grid because universal supply works so well.

If conditions change, this hidden layer becomes visible.

Electricity does not disappear. It becomes local 🌿

Local electricity supports everyday life

Even if national supply becomes selective, local electricity can support:

lighting
communications
refrigeration
workshop tools
medical equipment
small-scale food processing

These are the foundations of locality-level resilience.

Electricity shifts from supporting consumption everywhere to supporting essential activity locally.

The national grid would still matter

Even during severe disruption the national grid would not disappear completely.

Electricity would still be required for:

water supply
sewage treatment
hospitals
railways
communications
food logistics

The government would almost certainly protect these systems as far as possible.

The national grid would remain as a backbone.

But it would no longer be the whole system.

The relationship between national and local electricity would reverse

At present:

local systems support the national grid

In a constrained economy:

The national grid supports essential infrastructure
local systems support everyday life

This is a structural change rather than a technical failure.

The transition cannot be predicted in detail

The sequence of change depends heavily on what remains working in the financial system.

Possible influences include:

fuel distribution
contractor availability
telecommunications reliability
government coordination
engineering workforce stability
spare parts supply

Because these cannot be forecast reliably, the process must be understood step by step as it unfolds.

The direction is clearer than the timetable.

The transition is already beginning quietly

Many early signs are already visible across the country.

These include:

increasing rooftop solar installation
growing domestic battery storage
greater awareness of electricity use
alternative heating systems reducing grid demand
resilience planning for essential infrastructure
local electrical capability existing beneath the national system

Each of these developments looks ordinary on its own.

Together they indicate structural adaptation.

Transitions rarely announce themselves.

They appear through practical decisions made locally.

Electricity helps determine how society reorganises

Electricity availability shapes:

where people live
how far they travel
what work is possible
how food is stored
how medical care operates
how communication continues

For this reason electricity networks do not just respond to economic change.

They help shape it.

Electricity as a guide to the transition to localism

If the financial economy weakens, the structure of electricity supply becomes one of the clearest indicators of how society is reorganising.

A strong national backbone supports national coordination.

A corridor network supports corridor economies.

Local electricity supports local economies.

The future structure of electricity supply, therefore, helps reveal the future structure of society itself.

The process cannot be predicted precisely.

But the direction of travel is easier to see:

from universal central provision

Toward a layered system in which a reduced national backbone operates alongside growing locality-level electricity supporting everyday life closer to home ⚡🌿

271. Sustainability Is Not Sustainable

Posted on 15/04/2026 by Barry

Why the Replacement of Renewables Reveals the Limits of the Energy Transition

Public discussion about the future of energy assumes that replacing fossil fuels with renewable technologies will create a sustainable system. Yet when we look carefully at the material reality of renewable infrastructure, a different picture emerges. The evidence suggests that the modern technological energy system, whether fossil-based or renewable-based, is not sustainable in the long term.

This matters because policy is currently being built on the assumption that sustainability can be achieved simply by changing energy sources. In reality, the problem is deeper than that.

Solar Panels: A Replacement Industry, Not a Permanent Solution

https://images.openai.com/static-rsc-4/xxcf5y3ZE-YmfNYRkgZ_k7SjP6LOTDxpdBvNi1lc0LgMqJ_zvSSPS9wiY_5uF6xRRNRK5PRdhJjXcfBdHf_xwWdkNdas8r_sRL-kR_225LhhBcsF2i8HbEkpxpJCaA8VSz6Q1RLWTId0Rzo8h5N4CkKUeE8Zpl_OPiRiMSA6P1Ndn8ny88mDlpe9YML5G8F4?purpose=fullsize

https://images.openai.com/static-rsc-4/ZnXcoY7DSFhG2IEWCKiTxs3WinAxTrdT4L0oc9LMtVXSqRDvm7kZVgDLisvTVgwpbiL6J3RXy_Rv4piz3laNbAD2Znqu-NGQm7W0hFEI2-E1NdTwga-Zuh_PErQAmAUlSdzott7VKFPoxkGVi5jvZKOkrMMchwzJkKr_bvTEY7z61GTPlhResk7yaWeSJuo8?purpose=fullsize

Solar panels are widely presented as clean, long-term energy infrastructure. However, they have productive lifetimes of around 25 to 30 years. After that period their output declines significantly and they must be replaced.

This means solar power is not a permanent installation. It is a rolling replacement programme.

International projections indicate that global solar panel waste could reach tens of millions of tonnes by mid-century. Some estimates suggest around 78 million tonnes by 2050. Annual solar e-waste alone could reach millions of tonnes each year by the 2030s.

Solar panels also contain heavy metals such as lead and cadmium. These materials can enter soil and groundwater if panels are not carefully processed. Recycling remains technically difficult and energy intensive.

What appears to be a clean energy technology is therefore also a future waste stream.

Wind Turbines: Large Machines with Large End-of-Life Problems

https://images.openai.com/static-rsc-4/Prgu8uH1AqkcvMHwIPee1lAdSB9I8ZGqYdgdg1IobkxvF4FjvTFJXbWd_g9y7lklZ4qMzUdZnHIy8yTgDyVLKPWOVu-AyHTgAE9D5JDA5Tr7c4MYpgJQV6rB6xEMkQ5ktPOmm7OMti1J4rknCinY3huNRJkjR7mDdLcJPz2KFxAJnLmOqowCwoKpTbunf5ib?purpose=fullsize

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Wind turbines face similar challenges.

Modern turbine blades can weigh up to 15 tonnes each. They are difficult to recycle because they are made from composite materials. In many cases they are currently shredded and mixed into concrete, or simply stored.

Even more significant are the reinforced concrete foundations and offshore installations. These require major energy inputs to construct and will require major energy inputs to remove.

Maintenance costs also increase as turbines age. Decommissioning costs are often underestimated in project economics.

Germany has already acknowledged the scale of this issue. Millions of tonnes of turbine blade material are expected to reach end of life without a clear recycling pathway.

Wind power therefore depends on continuous industrial replacement, not permanent infrastructure.

Heat Pumps: A Quiet Example of the Same Pattern

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Heat pumps are another example.

They are currently being promoted as a key technology for domestic heating. Yet they are heavy industrial devices with compressors, electronics, refrigerants and metal components. Their expected service life is typically around two decades.

Our own experience illustrates the point clearly. A heat pump installed in 1998 required replacement after about 22 years. That was entirely normal performance.

Now imagine millions of homes installing heat pumps across the country. In 20 to 25 years these systems will also need replacement.

The energy system being built today therefore commits society to a large future wave of technological renewal.

Whether that renewal will be affordable in a contracting economy remains an open question.

Replacement Requires Energy

The key issue is often overlooked.

Renewable technologies do not replace themselves.

They must be mined, manufactured, transported, installed, maintained and eventually dismantled using large quantities of energy and materials. Much of this energy currently comes from fossil fuels.

In other words, renewables depend on the legacy energy system they are supposed to replace.

This creates a structural contradiction at the centre of current policy.

The Deeper Problem: Technology Itself Is Not Sustainable

The most important conclusion is not about solar panels or wind turbines alone.

It is about technology as it is commonly understood in modern industrial society.

Modern technology operates through cycles of extraction, production, installation, maintenance and replacement. Each stage requires energy and materials. Each stage produces waste.

There is therefore no such thing as permanently sustainable industrial technology.

What exists instead is a managed replacement cycle.

The present energy transition assumes that changing energy sources will make the system sustainable. In reality, the replacement cycle continues regardless of the energy source.

A Future Constraint That Is Rarely Discussed

There is another implication.

If future energy availability declines, the ability to maintain large technological systems may also decline.

At that point the challenge will not be how to expand renewable infrastructure, but how to replace it.

This possibility is rarely included in policy planning.

Yet it may prove decisive.

The Real Conclusion

The evidence from solar panels, wind turbines and heat pumps points toward a simple but uncomfortable truth.

The present energy transition is not moving society from an unsustainable system to a sustainable one.

It is moving society from one replacement-dependent system to another replacement-dependent system.

Recognising this does not weaken the case for renewables. It strengthens the case for realism.

If sustainability is to exist at all, it will not come from changing technologies alone. It will come from reducing dependence on large-scale replacement-based systems and strengthening smaller-scale, longer-lived local arrangements.

That is where the real transition still lies. 🌿

268. There Is No “Next Economy” If we ruin this one, well, then that was it

Posted on 11/04/2026 by Barry

The image is a pie chart illustrating the distribution of global primary aluminium production in 2025, with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries accounting for 8% of the total.

AI-generated content may be incorrect.

264. I asked ChatGPT what the UK Local Energy System will look like

Posted on 05/04/2026 by Barry

Here is a realistic sketch of what a typical UK locality energy mix might look like by mid-century if three things happen together:

fossil fuel availability declines
global supply chains become less reliable
the economy shifts from growth to maintenance and adaptation

This is not a prediction. It is a maintainability model — what is most likely to keep working rather than what is easiest to install today.

1. The biggest change: energy demand falls before supply stabilises

The first adjustment is not technological. It is structural.

Energy demand falls because:

fewer imports
less long-distance travel
smaller manufacturing sector
reduced discretionary consumption
more local production
fewer energy-intensive services

So the future system does not need to replace today’s national consumption level.

Instead, it supports:

homes
food production
local transport
essential services
repair trades
small workshops

2. A realistic locality electricity mix

A typical locality might draw electricity from a combination like this:

Rooftop solar – the backbone of local daytime supply

Already widely installed and easy to maintain.

Likely uses:

direct household consumption first
small shared storage second
limited export to local networks

Over time:

inverters become the limiting component rather than panels.

Small onshore wind – the winter stabiliser

Solar is weak in winter.

Small wind fills that gap.

Typical roles:

farms
workshops
community systems
edge-of-settlement installations

Winter wind becomes extremely valuable as heating electrifies gradually.

Micro-hydro – the hidden long-life contributor

Where geography allows, hydro becomes one of the most reliable sources:

continuous output
long lifespan
low maintenance
mechanically simple

Some systems could run for generations.

Legacy large wind farms – partial continuing contribution

Existing infrastructure does not disappear overnight.

Instead:

some turbines remain operating
some are refurbished
some are abandoned

Their contribution gradually declines but remains useful for decades.

3. Heat becomes more local than electricity

Heat dominates UK energy demand.

The locality mix likely includes:

Managed woodland

Supports:

domestic heating
small workshops
food processing
drying crops
charcoal production

Wood fuel becomes strategic rather than decorative.

Heat pumps where buildings allow them

Most effective in:

newer homes
insulated homes
shared systems
community installations

Less effective in older rural housing without insulation upgrades.

Solar thermal (often overlooked but important)

Very durable technology.

Useful for:

hot water
summer heating loads
reducing electricity demand

Lower complexity than PV systems.

4. Transport energy shifts from national to local scale

Future locality transport energy probably looks like:

walking
mobility scooters
electric bicycles
shared small EVs
electric buses on key routes

Private long-distance EV ownership becomes less common than today’s expectations assume.

Rail remains important where it already exists.

5. Storage becomes smaller and more distributed

Instead of large national battery systems:

expect more:

hot water tanks
thermal storage
gravity storage
small shared batteries
vehicle-to-home electricity use

Storage shifts from industrial infrastructure to household infrastructure.

6. The electricity grid becomes simpler, not larger

Today’s planning assumes grid expansion.

A contraction scenario suggests:

shorter distribution routes
stronger local balancing
less long-distance transmission
more neighbourhood-level coordination

The grid becomes more like a network of local systems joined together, rather than one fully centralised machine.

7. What a mid-century locality energy pattern might look like in practice

A typical locality might rely on something like:

summer electricity mostly solar
winter electricity mostly wind
continuous contribution from hydro where available
heat largely from wood + heat pumps
transport mostly electric but shorter range
storage mostly thermal rather than chemical

National infrastructure still exists, but local reliability matters more than national optimisation.

8. The most important shift: maintenance replaces expansion 🔧

The defining feature of the future system is not technology choice.

It is this:

energy systems are designed to last longer, be repaired locally, and replaced less often

That change alone reshapes:

skills
employment
settlement patterns
woodland management
building standards
local workshops
community cooperation

It is exactly the sort of transition your wider work on the emerging local economy has been anticipating.

263. Humans and Forests: An Entangled Relationship

Posted on 01/04/2026 by Barry

262. Entropia and the Disintegration of Empire

Posted on 30/03/2026 by Barry

By Samuel Alexander, originally published by Resilience.org

In 2013 Samuel Alexander published his work of eco-fiction, Entropia: Life Beyond Industrial Civilisation. It is a story that gives account of a sufficiency-based community that emerged after the collapse of industrial civilisation. Interestingly – and rather ominously – the collapse-scenario Alexander presented as the catalyst for the breakdown of civilisation was based on oil supply being disrupted due to bombing around key choke points in the Middle East in 2027. As the current situation (March 2026) around the Strait of Hormuz continues to destabilise the global economy, it is timely to return to Alexander’s analysis outlining ‘the Disintegration of Empire’ (being Chapter Two of Entropia). For those wanting to read about the simpler way society that emerged after the collapse, paperbacks of Entropia are available here and pdfs available here. The following is written from the perspective of the year 2099.

The Disintegration of Empire

The picture of Entropia that I will endeavour to paint in this book does not begin with a blank canvas. Our community was, and is, a creature of its time, and our way of life on the Isle can only be understood in relation to the collapse of industrial civilisation out of which it emerged. Accordingly, I feel the nature of that collapse must be described, or at least outlined, in order to make clear why our society took the form it did.

Before sketching that history of collapse, however, it is worth acknowledging that no matter how well our economy and broader society may be functioning today, we have not been able to escape – nor did we ever think we could escape – those darker, painful elements in life that are built into the human condition. I feel this is an important acknowledgement to make, because I do not wish to give the impression, or give rise to the expectation, that our way of life on the Isle is or has been free from difficulty, grief, and strife. I assure you, Entropia is no utopia! We are human! And that means we are as susceptible to suffering as any other community. I will not dwell on these grim themes for long, but to give some tonal balance to the picture this book will paint, some darker shades must be introduced from the outset, at least around these foundational edges.

Let me begin by stating the obvious: the Great Disruption was by far and away the most destabilising and traumatic series of events our community has ever had to endure. While I was not alive during this tumultuous period, and so cannot speak from experience, it is an historical era that is given prolonged attention in our schools and the Academy, so all of us are very familiar with it, even though we now only have the distanced perspective of historical scholarship. My understanding of this period is also enriched by the many stories my grandparents used to tell me when they were still alive. My grandmother, in particular, was an engaging storyteller, and her soft-spoken but vivid anecdotes about the Great Disruption taught me that human suffering is always personal, always specific, no matter how broadly it is shared. It hurt here, she would explain, and it felt like this. She would speak not so much of hunger in the abstract, as of the time the bean crop failed; not of loss, but of her own shattered dreams of security; not of pain, but of grandfather’s arthritis, which he endured silently as he worked in the vineyards and orchards in the hope of feeding the community he loved. She would speak of how the sparkle in a friend’s eyes forever disappeared as a result of spiralling despair, and of the quiet sadness she could see in the eyes of every parent who could not assure their children that the future would be kind and safe. Most striking of all was my grandmother’s account of the Isle’s only suicide – the melancholy story of a young Tibetan woman called Nishka, for whom the Great Disruption was too much to bear. A genuine prodigy of the violin, and blessed with a face of penetrating beauty, Nishka seemingly could not find solace even in our warm community, choosing instead to take her own life in a warm bath – violin in hand. On the wooden stool next to the bath she left a composition, entitled ‘Avoiding the Rush’, to which even today only the brave-hearted dare to listen. The melody too easily evokes the harrowing image of a girl playing her own requiem in a bath, with bloodied wrists. Naturally, such events shook the community to the core, but the gut-wrenching images and emotions they evoke help to humanise an era that otherwise might be too easily intellectualised by those of us who came later.

The first issue to highlight, then, is that the Great Disruption brought with it widespread anxiety, fear, and often tremendous suffering – like any radical discontinuity in social and economic life would be expected to do. Although we had been transitioning for many years toward self-sufficiency, our way of life at the time remained highly dependent on imports of industrially produced food and materials. What is more, despite the fact that ‘building resilience’ was high on our list of stated priorities, when the cargo ships suddenly stopped arriving, the social and economic shocks we faced were by no means painlessly absorbed. We may have been better placed than most of humankind, but as the Great Disruption shook the world and isolated us permanently from the rest of civilisation, we found ourselves grossly underprepared, both mentally and in terms of our social and economic systems. In retrospect we see that many of our attempts to build resilience were really little more than pleasant, well-intentioned games, which did little to absorb the shocks that were eventually delivered upon us. At the same time, perhaps some things just cannot be prepared for, however diligently a community might try.

In the face of civilisational collapse, the internal or psychological shocks typically hit first. Human beings are creatures of habit and custom, and we have an overwhelming tendency to assume tomorrow will be similar to today. Even when we see our world falling down around us, calling for an urgent and sustained response, we divert our gaze in an attempt to distance ourselves from the radical changes that are announcing themselves on the horizon. But wilful blindness in the face of civilisational deterioration is at best a short-sighted strategy, one that ultimately leads to the crash just hitting harder and louder, and with the distressing element of surprise. It is like watching a balloon being blown up, breath by breath, and assuming that since no breath so far has burst the balloon, adding more air should not produce any great changes. And so we go about our days, business as usual. When we wake to our new circumstances, however – as the balloon bursts violently – we find that the world we knew has been shattered, and our insides begin to twist with the angst of terrifying uncertainty. We complain that nobody warned us; that we could not possibly have known. But we were warned, we did know, and now our inaction looks not just foolish but shameful.

Coming to terms, psychologically, with the Great Disruption was challenging enough. It was as if our parent civilisation had committed suicide, tragically leaving our community orphaned and alone. Cut off from the Old World, our universe suddenly seemed a whole lot smaller and our minds had to adjust to this new cosmology. But soon the sheer physical reality hit home, which is to say, the fear of being hungry gave way to the physical experience of hunger itself. A collapsing civilisation does not wait for people to adjust mentally to the new circumstances. While everything was breaking down in chaos, testing people to the limits of their mental fortitude, it was precisely then when the physical dimensions of collapse became dominant, compounding our challenges. By this stage there was no time to sit around adjusting mentally to the new situation. Instead, urgent, practical questions had to be faced about how to secure the provision of basic material needs, especially food. Suddenly everyone was a farmer, a scavenger, a jack-of-all-trades, and an inventor.

Fortunately, as noted earlier, we had quite well-developed systems of local food production on the Isle, so nobody faced starvation, as such. Nevertheless, for some time, while we desperately expanded those systems after the crash, our diets were significantly tightened. Instead of three meals a day, we had one or two. The variety of food was also limited to the most productive and nutritious crops, such as beans, potatoes, and lentils, although people did not lament the lack of variety, for they were grateful simply to have enough food to survive. Most people began to look worryingly thin, and they carried the mental and physical strain of the circumstances in their eyes.

Innumerable things our community once took for granted – conveniences and comforts that we once considered necessities – were no longer available. Everything, it seemed, was scarce: from food, to medicine, to materials. Soon enough our material standard of living barely resembled what preceded it, in ways that will be discussed further in due course. We endured these material privations stoically, however, determined to struggle onwards through this period of trial with our community and spirit of positivity more or less intact. There were social conflicts too, of course – such as the long, heated debates over how much of our minimal oil and coal reserves to use, and for what purposes – but generally these were measured, mature conflicts. Everyone knew that there was no place for childish egoism in times of social distress and economic crisis.

My point in briefly reviewing this period is simply to highlight the fact that our community, far from having a smooth or idyllic commencement, was born of struggle and considerable hardship. Nevertheless, even the clouds of a violent thunderstorm can have a silver lining. As it happened, this early, post-crash period shaped us in ways that are still with us, for what did not kill us made us stronger.

¨ ¨ ¨

There is obviously much more to say about how our community dealt with its isolation, and this book will describe our existing way of life in detail, as it has taken form roughly seven decades after the crash. This chapter, however, presents an historical review of industrial civilisation’s rise and demise, because this is necessary to provide a backdrop against which life on the Isle today can be fully understood. At first this may seem like rather too dark and heavy a foundation, but the flourishing sufficiency economy we have created on the Isle will seem clearest when defined in contrast to the industrialised, growth economies of the Old World, which now lie in ruins.

Fortunately, I have in my possession an old essay, dated 8 June 2031, written a few years after the Great Disruption, which provides a remarkably concise, if somewhat polemical, history of this collapse. I shall reproduce this essay below, knowing that I am unable to improve it. At some stage over the course of recent generations the author’s name was lost, or perhaps the essay was originally published anonymously – a practice that was not altogether uncommon on the Isle in earlier generations. Whatever the case, that issue need not concern us presently. What is important is that our journey through Entropia is given some historical context, and the following essay serves that purpose well. As the great poet, Thomas Hardy, once wrote: ‘If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst’.

On that basis, I present the essay:

259. Rethinking Sustainable Development: Hot Water in a Post-Industrial World

Posted on 24/03/2026 by Barry

Much of what is currently called sustainable development is not truly sustainable. Many modern solutions depend on a complex industrial system that may not last indefinitely. Heat pumps, photovoltaic panels, advanced electronics and digital control systems all rely on global manufacturing, rare materials, specialist maintenance and international supply chains. If the industrial system that supports them weakens or contracts, these technologies may become impossible to repair or replace.

A different test must judge true sustainability. A technology is sustainable only if future generations, using mainly local materials and modest tools, could continue to build and maintain it. In other words, the system must survive even when the complex industry fades.

Hot water is a good example of the challenge. Every household needs it for washing and hygiene. The question, therefore, becomes: what kind of hot water system could continue to work in a simpler, more local economy?

Principles of a Truly Sustainable System

A sustainable hot water system for the long future would need several qualities.

First, it must rely on natural energy flows that will always exist, such as sunlight or wood.

Second, it must be mechanically simple, with few parts that can break.

Third, it must be repairable with basic tools and local materials such as wood, clay, brick, copper or steel.

Fourth, it should work without electronics, pumps or complex control systems.

These principles suggest a very different approach from modern industrial devices.

The Passive Solar Water Wall

One possible design is a passive solar water wall.

Imagine the south-facing wall of a house. On the outside of that wall is mounted a simple panel made from dark metal sheets or blackened copper pipes. Behind the pipes is insulation made from clay, wool or straw. A sheet of glass or clear plastic covers the front to trap solar heat.

Water slowly circulates through the pipes and into an insulated storage tank inside the house. Circulation occurs naturally by gravity through a process called thermosiphon. When water in the panel warms in sunlight, it becomes lighter and rises into the tank. Cooler water from the tank flows down to the panel for reheating.

Because the system relies on natural convection, it requires no pump or electricity.

The main parts are simple:

metal pipes or channels
a storage tank
a glass cover
insulation
two connecting pipes

All of these could be made or repaired locally for centuries.

Winter Backup Using Wood

In northern climates, sunlight is weaker in winter. A sustainable system, therefore, needs a second source of heat.

A simple solution is to connect the water tank to a wood-heated stove or range. Many traditional stoves already heated water through a metal coil or small boiler. When the stove is used for cooking or heating the room, some of the heat automatically warms the water.

Wood can be harvested from local coppice woodland, a renewable system used in Britain for many centuries. Managed woodland produces a continuous supply of fuel without destroying the forest.

The result is a dual system:

Solar heating during sunny months
Wood heating during darker winter periods

The Masonry Storage Tank

Another improvement would be to store hot water in a large insulated masonry tank built into the house structure. The tank could be lined with clay, lime plaster or metal. Thick insulation around it would keep the water warm for long periods.

Because the tank holds a large volume of water, it acts as a thermal storage device. One sunny day can provide hot water for several days afterwards.

Longevity

Such a system has remarkable durability.

Solar panels of this kind can last for decades and are easy to repair. Pipes can be replaced individually, and glass covers can be swapped if broken. The tank and basic plumbing could last for generations.

Most importantly, none of the components requires advanced industry or electronic control.

A village blacksmith, plumber or metalworker could maintain the system indefinitely.

A Different Meaning of Sustainable Development

Seen in this way, sustainable development is not mainly about high technology. It is about designing systems that continue to function when societies become simpler and more local.

The aim is resilience rather than technical sophistication.

A passive solar water wall combined with wood heating is only one possible design. Many variations could exist. But the key lesson remains the same: sustainability must be measured not by modern efficiency alone, but by the ability of future communities to build and maintain the system using local skills and materials.

That is the kind of technology that can genuinely endure.

254. Rethinking Sustainable Development: Hot Water in a Post-Industrial World

Posted on 14/03/2026 by Barry

True sustainability must be judged by a different test. A technology is sustainable only if future generations, using mainly local materials and modest tools, could continue to build and maintain it. In other words, the system must survive even when complex industry fades.

Hot water is a good example of the challenge. Every household needs it for washing and hygiene. The question therefore becomes: what kind of hot water system could continue working in a simpler, more local economy?

Principles of a Truly Sustainable System

A sustainable hot water system for the long future would need several qualities.

First, it must rely on natural energy flows that will always exist, such as sunlight or wood.
Second, it must be mechanically simple, with few parts that can break.
Third, it must be repairable with basic tools and local materials such as wood, clay, brick, copper or steel.
Fourth, it should work without electronics, pumps or complex control systems.

These principles suggest a very different approach from modern industrial devices.

The Passive Solar Water Wall

One possible design is what might be called a passive solar water wall.

Water slowly circulates through the pipes and into an insulated storage tank inside the house. The circulation happens naturally by gravity through a process called thermosiphon. When water in the panel warms in sunlight it becomes lighter and rises into the tank. Cooler water from the tank flows down to the panel to be heated again.

Because the system relies on natural convection, it needs no pump and no electricity.

The main parts are simple:

metal pipes or channels
a storage tank
a glass cover
insulation
two connecting pipes

All of these could be made or repaired locally for centuries.

Winter Backup Using Wood

In northern climates sunlight is weaker in winter. A sustainable system therefore needs a second source of heat.

Wood can be harvested from local coppice woodland, a renewable system used in Britain for many centuries. Managed woodland produces a continuous supply of fuel without destroying the forest.

The result is a dual system:

solar heating during sunny months
wood heating during darker winter periods

The Masonry Storage Tank

Because the tank holds a large volume of water, it acts as thermal storage. One sunny day can provide hot water for several days afterwards.

Longevity

Such a system has remarkable durability.

Solar panels of this kind can last for decades and are easy to repair. Pipes can be replaced individually. Glass covers can be swapped if broken. The tank and basic plumbing could last for generations.

Most importantly, none of the components require advanced industry or electronic control.

A village blacksmith, plumber or metalworker could maintain the system indefinitely.

A Different Meaning of Sustainable Development

Seen in this way, sustainable development is not mainly about high technology. It is about designing systems that continue to function when societies become simpler and more local.

The aim is resilience rather than technical sophistication.

That is the kind of technology that can genuinely endure.

250. Britain’s energy security – what the Iran war reveals and the lessons that should be learned

Posted on 09/03/2026 by Barry

Professor Sir Dieter Helm

9 March, 2026

Dieter Helm is Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford and Fellow in Economics at New College, Oxford

It takes a crisis to reveal the underlying state of Britain’s energy insecurity, and its defence. By now we should be basking in the success of “getting out of gas”. We do after all have a lot of renewables. These, we have been told, are nine times cheaper than gas. We don’t have much nuclear left, and we have got out of coal, so all our bets are in the renewables basket. We should be well on our way now to being a “clean-energy superpower”, relying on “home-grown energy” that should be bringing down energy bills by the now legendary £300.

None of this is so far realised. Britain has the highest industrial power prices in the industrial world, so no other country is looking to it to see how they could emulate it. On the contrary, everyone else wants to work out how Britain has ended up in such an unenviable position. We turn out to be utterly reliant on foreign supply chains for the renewables and the transmission and batteries needed to deal with all this intermittent generation. It turns out that we already need twice the capacity (120GW and counting), twice the grid, and all the batteries and storage, plus lots more interconnectors to service a firm-power demand peak of 45GW – which we used to meet comfortably with just 60GW of capacity.

Having got out of coal, and betting on intermittent low-density and geographically distributed renewables, it turns out that we have become more rather than less dependent on gas for our energy security. Iran’s interruption of its LNG gas shipments out of the Strait of Hormuz and the attacks on Qatar reveal how threadbare Britain’s energy security actually is. Why, given we don’t buy LNG from Qatar? Why do we seem to be worse hit than China, Japan, India, South Korea and Taiwan, all of which buy a lot of gas from Qatar? And why, given we have very little dependency on Gulf oil, compared with China (40% of all its oil coming through the Strait of Hormuz), India (15%), and Japan and South Korea (12% each)?

China, India and Japan have little gas or oil. China and India have lots of coal, with China burning more than 55% of all the world’s coal (!), and building another 400GW of coal generation capacity – all firm power, as against China’s wind (at around 24% load factor) and solar (at around 20% load factor).

Britain should be in a much better position. It has oil and gas reserves in the North Sea, and Norway nearby to provide over 30% of Britain’s gas, and it has good wind flows in the North Sea too. It is not in the league of the world’s energy superpower: the US. The US is by far the world’s largest oil producer, and its shale gas has translated it from what was supposed to be a major importer of Qatar LNG to first self-sufficiency from its shale gas, and in the last ten years it has become the world’s greatest LNG exporter. Ten years ago, it did not export gas; 20 years ago, the shale revolution had not got going.

Why, then, is Britain in such an energy mess? Part of the answer is its gas policies. Put aside the simplistic slogans about getting out of gas, and recognise that Britain will be dependent on gas for at least another couple of decades and probably more. Because of the energy mix that has been chosen (no coal, a fast decline of nuclear, and lots and lots of intermittent renewables), it will need gas to guarantee firm electricity supplies.

Whatever the political rhetoric from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, this is a reality. It is even clear in the scenarios of the National Electricity System Operator (NESO). It turns out that gas is critical to the renewables policies. It is not renewables instead of gas; it is renewables and gas. Energy security depends upon it, just as it depends on all those foreign supply chains of critical minerals and especially rare earths, and on all the solar panels and wind turbines made in China and elsewhere. If the Iran war has displayed that the emperor of the clean-energy superpower has no clothes, wait to see what happens if and when China invades Taiwan.

It turns out that our energy policies have not just weakened our energy security; it is much worse, they have undermined our defence. Why? Because they have undermined our defence industries and have also exposed us to having our energy supplies adversely hit by cutting the many interconnectors we now need to keep the lights on.

On the former, high energy prices have led to a cascade of exits from energy-intensive industries, and in short order. Gone is Grangemouth, a refinery in Scotland, one in Hull, most of the steel industry, the fertiliser industry, and the fibreglass industry. Our ability to produce the petrochemicals and refined fuels is now more dependent on imports. We don’t have our own steel in the volumes and of the quality we would need for a rapid militarisation.

On the latter, it is hard to think of a way to make Britain more vulnerable to a hostile power. Let’s call it Russia. One pipeline is responsible for 30% of our gas supplies (from Norway). We have virtually no gas storage. The cables are obvious sitting ducks for cutting. The North Sea wind farms are perfect targets for swarms of drones, the new weapon of choice in aggressive attacks. And for all this we have perhaps one boat that patrols all this offshore infrastructure.

A proper defence policy would ensure that the defence supply chain has a lot of home-grown industrial support. It might even look to provide long-term energy pricing at competitive costs. It would have a navy capable of policing and defending its offshore infrastructure. Sadly, none of this is in good shape.

Back home, the central pillar of energy policy should be security. It is no good being “green” if you cannot defend your country. In the British case, a central piece should be a gas security policy, not bleating on and on about “getting out of gas”. We need gas and we will go on needing it for a long time to come. It is essential in the renewables strategy. It is not fossil fuels versus renewables. The reality is that it is both and it is going to continue to be both.

What should a gas policy look like? It has several parts: securing sufficient gas supplies; having enough storage to withstand shocks; providing an economic framework for gas generation of electricity that takes account of the impact on intermittency from wind and solar on the demand for gas-generated electricity; and a defence force capable of protecting the offshore gas infrastructure. Britain fails on all of them.

Let’s start with gas supplies. Since we are going to burn lots of gas for a long time to come, why would it be sensible to close off the development of Britain’s own North Sea gas reserves, and penalise existing production with extremely high taxes? No other country in the world is following Britain’s “leadership” on all this. Why is it sensible to instead rely as a consequence on Norway and LNG cargoes from the US instead?

The anti-North Sea oil and gas approach is best regarded as a mix of ideology and expediency. The ideology stems from the remarkable simplicity of the idea that Britain can continue as a major world economy relying overwhelmingly on wind and solar, and the hope of further nuclear in due course. Not coal like China and India, not coal and gas like the US. The aim appears to be the first country to be overwhelmingly based upon renewables and as quickly as possible. It is a piece of progressive ideology with little evidence to support it and little environmental benefit. It is one hell of a bet, and it is one that increases emissions by using at the margin the much more polluting US shale-based LNG over North Sea pipeline gas.

The expediency arises because of the desperate fiscal position Britain has got into. It needs the money, and hence it can justify higher taxes.

The consequence of these North Sea policies – higher taxes, banning new licences – is both immediate and medium-term. It is immediate because it tells the North Sea oil and gas companies they are not welcome (as, indeed, leading politicians have told them to their faces). These companies see much better prospects elsewhere. Lots of countries are boosting their oil and gas production. Why spend at the margin on maintaining existing assets when the government is so hostile to their very existence. Time for them to look elsewhere – as indeed they are already doing.

Instead of securing our gas supplies, we become dependent on the US LNG at the margin. That is what minsters mean when they talk of being exposed to world prices. Right now in the midst of the Iran war, the US is in a great bargaining position. Everyone wants cargoes of US LNG, and in the Far East they are willing to pay top dollar for them. Britain is not top of the pile, and US companies will be mindful of the rapid deterioration of the “special relationship”. Hence the price to Britain goes up.

If instead we looked to the North Sea to provide a medium-term secure supply, the opposite policies would be the better way of proceeding. Start with asking what long-term take-or-pay contracts could be struck in return for the development of newer fields, and the continuation of production from declining fields. Tie that long-term contract price to industrial energy costs, notably for critical energy-intensive industries, and especially those necessary for the defence supply chain. Companies could have fixed-price electricity supplies, and oil and gas companies could have the security of contracts to finance their investments.

Next up is storage. Britain has very little, and for a good historical reason. In the “old days” of the “bad old British Gas”, Britain insisted that British continental shelf gas production should be landed in Britain and sold under contract to British Gas. These contracts allowed British Gas to flex its gas-take, treating the gas wells as in effect storage sites to be drawn upon as needed. It therefore did not need much storage. Germany, by contrast, has built large-scale storage, with up to three months of supplies. Britain has a few days at best. Hence the criticality of those US LNG cargoes now.

In Britain, energy storage issues are very much to the fore when it comes to renewables. The government backs pumped-hydro storage, and it is active in promoting grid-supporting batteries. But on gas it is silent. Even the Rough storage facility is under pressure. In the “bad old days”, there were big seasonal swings. Hence a gas storage facility could be filled cheaply in summer, and then sold down at higher prices in winter. The economics of renewables with zero marginal costs and the rapid decline of energy-intensive industries have undermined this. Hence the commercial case for storage has collapsed. The result is that just when we need storage, we will have almost none.

The commercial impact of renewables has one further blow for gas. Conventionally a new gas station was built and initially run flat-out, recovering its capital costs, and only later moved up the merit order to become more flexible in use. This commercial case has been turned on its head. Why? Because renewables always run when they can (when the wind blows and the sun shines). They are paid a contract-for-difference (CfD) fixed price (even if the power is not needed), and hence the fact that their marginal costs are zero does not impact on their revenues – but it does on the gas power stations. When the wind blows and the sun shines enough, the wholesale price of electricity collapses and the gas power stations cannot recover even their gas supply costs. At other times, when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine, the wholesale price shoots up and the gas power stations are needed to generate.

The result is that the intermittency of wind and solar renders the gas power stations intermittent too (and this is true for nuclear too). The consequences for the economics of a gas power station are dire. It does not know how much gas it will need and when, and it cannot contract on any basis other than “on demand”. The result is that there is little or no incentive to build new ones, and an increased incentive to close existing ones earlier.

The implication for gas policies is that if the gas is needed for security of supply and to maintain firm electricity power supplies, then it will need contracts. It is not just wind and solar that need government-backed contracts. There needs to be a strategic gas reserve, and gas power stations need to be paid to be available whether or not they are used. They could have a formal regulated asset base (RAB), like Sizewell and the electricity networks, or a capacity contract tailored to their peculiar circumstance driven by the intermittency of wind and solar.

And there we have the energy security policies. North Sea gas supplies from the British sector as well as Norway, long-term contracts for new supplies, industrial electricity contracts for energy-intensive industries – notably in the defence sector – backed by gas longer-term contracts, investment in storage, and a strategic gas generation reserve, to which is added a North Sea defence capability to protect the Norwegian gas pipeline and to ensure that the electricity interconnectors are protected from attacks by Russia or others.

None of this is anti-renewables, or against addressing climate change. Indeed, it is essential to both. The climate change agenda will not survive if the lights go out, or if security is undermined. Without gas, the energy mix will be subject to great volatility and much higher costs. Net zero and high prices have already proved difficult bedfellows.

Which brings us back to Iran and the Iranian war. One aspect of energy markets which our political leaders seem incapable of understanding is that a shock is not the same as a trend. It was a mistake made when Russia invaded Ukraine. Gas prices spiked, and politicians ranted on and on about the future of high and volatile gas prices. They are not the first to make this sort of mistake. When oil prices peaked after the Iranian Revolution back in 1979, politicians convinced themselves that the price of oil would go ever upwards, and even convinced themselves of the nonsense of peak oil. They repeated the error as oil prices peaked in late 2014.

What they forget to mention (or even notice) was that what went up came down again. After the Iranian Revolution by the mid-1980s oil prices were back down to $10/barrel and stayed there for the rest of the century, with one blip – the First Gulf War, when they went up to $30/barrel and then fell quickly back to $10/barrel. By the late 1990s, The Economist ran a front page cover asking whether oil companies could survive $9/barrel oil. After Russia invaded Ukraine the gas price fell back. By early 2026, it was 90% lower than its peak, and it had fallen 40% in 2025. The current shocks in this Iranian war are not trends, whatever the hysteria in the press. Price going up is a response to supply shocks as the market way to ration the supplies. Those without other contracted options from core supplies (like China and India with Russia) or without storage are desperate and pay top dollar. They cannot deplete storage they don’t have and wait and see, or look elsewhere.

After a shock, the reaction is typically to take more precautions against future shocks. No doubt lots of gas importers will be increasing their storage and diversifying their supplies. They will want to maximise their own production if they have it. The result is more resilience and the price falls. This time, the great gamble on the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz may greatly weaken the market power of the Gulf States. Iran, too, might start to ramp up its production, as will probably Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Markets work after a lag. For all the alarmism in the short term (and it might be tough), the consequence of the shock now is probably lower oil and gas prices in the future. The Gulf is not the monopoly it once was. The US once desperately needed Gulf oil, as Jimmy Carter found out. Now the US does not need Gulf oil or gas. The world needs US oil and gas. It is the energy superpower now. Britain should take note. It has made itself more energy insecure and dependent on the US.

242. What Futures Are Possible?

Posted on 17/02/2026 by Barry

Richad Heinberg

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People have been forecasting the future for as long as they’ve had language. Premodern ideas of what’s to come often featured either a catastrophic end of the world or an eventual paradisiacal condition of peace and plenty. This was true both for many, though not all, Indigenous peoples and for followers of the world’s missionary religions (i.e., Christianity and Islam, and to a lesser degree Buddhism). For some cultures, the arc of time was imagined as a progression from ancient virtue to present corruption and eventual ruin or salvation; for others, time was cyclical, with multiple Golden Ages and periods of decline.

Today, most scientific futurists regard such traditional concepts of collective human destiny as worthy of ethnographic study but otherwise useless. In their place, the modern futurist supplies scenarios based on quantifiable trends. Extrapolating trends in population, economic activity, and technology can lead, in their view, to projections reliable enough to be used by city planners, policy makers, and CEOs. In fact, some municipalities, like those in Oregon, are required to base their planning on population forecasts provided by the State, which are in turn based on historical and current trends.

But there’s a problem with these scenarios: trends change. They encounter limits, countervailing trends, and contradictions inherent in social systems. For example, simply extrapolating human population growth that occurred during the past century leads to a world, only eight centuries from now, where there is one person for every square foot of Earth’s land surface. That scenario won’t be realized for many reasons, including insufficient food to feed such an immense population. Long before we achieve a standing-room-only planet, our recent population growth trend will slow, stop, and reverse itself (as is already starting to occur).

Failed technology predictions make for colorful and amusing reading. Just one example: in 1959, Arthur Summerfield, the U.S. Postmaster General, forecast that “before man reaches the moon,” mail would be delivered long distances (e.g. from New York to Sydney) using guided missiles. Instead, we got email.

Socio-political forecasting has likewise produced some clinkers. In 1992, political scientist Francis Fukuyama proclaimed that the fall of the Soviet Union would usher in “the end of history,” meaning “the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” Fukuyama’s forecast seems quaint today, following the rise of Vladimir Putin in Russia and the decline of democracy in the United States.

In the 1950s, spectacular technological and scientific achievements led to bold predictions of eventual human interplanetary or even interstellar supremacy; yet, at the same time, the prospect of nuclear war posed the possibility of human annihilation. The traditional paradise-versus-end-of-world dichotomy had taken on trendy new garb—as it has done again more recently, with climate change and unregulated artificial intelligence (AI) as potential vectors of societal shattering.

In this article, we’ll explore a four-part typology of futures from the perspective of physical constraints, which are often overlooked by futurists concerned only with culture, technology, or politics. As we’ll see, this approach—like others—generates both best-and worst-case scenarios. Its main virtue is that it prioritizes future scenarios that are likely to be realized from the standpoint of physical factors like energy and materials; in effect, we’ll be sorting the possible from the purely fanciful.

The use of energy and material constraints as the basis for scenario forecasting is most famously identified with the Limits to Growth (LTG) study of 1972 (which also considered pollution, food, and population constraints). That study has shown itself to be more reliable than competing scenario forecasts that tended to ignore physical limits while simply extrapolating existing socio-economic trends. In this article, we won’t be using computer modeling (as the LTG team did); what I have in mind is less formal and more playful—think broad-brush, best-guess scenarios that lean on science fiction novels and movies rather than data and systems models.

For the purposes of this article, I’ve divided fictional futures into four quadrants. The first quadrant describes optimistic limits-blind visions of the future. The second quadrant focuses on pessimistic limits-blind visions. The third quadrant describes limits-aware pessimistic possibilities, while the fourth quadrant focuses on optimistic limits-aware possibilities. Spoiler alert: only one quadrant is worthy of our serious, long-term attention and effort.

Note: For most economists, an “optimistic future” is one in which human population and consumption grow endlessly. As we’ll see, we humans need a very different kind of optimism.

1. Optimistic Limits-Blind Future Visions

If we ignore natural constraints, lots of things—good and bad—seem possible. On the hopeful side (as economists interpret it), ignoring limits to soil and water encourages expectations of ever-increasing food abundance. Ignoring limits to energy opens the possibility of humans voyaging to other star systems and colonizing space. Ignoring limits to computer power and complexity leads to expectations of AI surpassing human beings in intelligence, thereby removing any future requirement for human toil. This kind of limits-blind speculation is widespread. Indeed, for the past few decades, even the “sustainable development” agenda of international agencies that aim to end poverty and disease has been mired in ignorance of physical limits.

Futurama diorama, part of the 1939 World’s Fair. By Richard Garrison, public domain.

Fictional depictions of resource- and energy-unconstrained futures are numerous and familiar—from the cartoon suburbia of The Jetsons to the utopian interstellar voyages of Star Trek. In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the unleashing of vast amounts of energy from fossil fuels created temporary abundance, especially in the oil-rich United States. Most science fiction extrapolated that abundance forward in time, depicting a future of technology-assisted ease and plenty. This was exemplified in the 1939 New York World’s Fair, which foreshadowed the modern suburb in its fictional “Democracity,” where nuclear families own their homes and tend their yards while children frolic on green lawns, ride bicycles, and play softball, all far from the business hub of the planned metropolis. Disneyland’s ”Tomorrowland” exhibit (originally constructed in 1955), gave visitors a view of the Interstate Highway System, which would be constructed at the cost of hundreds of billions of inflation-adjusted dollars over the coming decades. Suburbs and superhighways were built during humanity’s short period of energy super-abundance; however, we haven’t gotten around to the creation of an exploratory Star Trek-envisioned Starfleet, and it’s a safe bet that we never will.

Starting in the 1950s, with the advent of the nuclear arms race, along with growing realizations that suburban life could be less than liberating and that bigger highways just meant even worse traffic jams, many visions of the future began to have a distinctly dystopian flavor. Which brings us to quadrant two.

2. Pessimistic Limits-Blind Future Visions

With the enormous amounts of energy that are being unleashed by burning fossil fuels, and that could potentially be released by the explosion of atomic weapons, it really is possible to create hell on Earth. Not much fictionalizing is required.

Nevertheless, some dystopian visions of the future, because they assume a continuation of the growth trends of the past century, are unrealistic. For example, projecting AI growth into the coming decades can lead to expectations of universal human slavery to the machines we’ve created, as in the 1999 film The Matrix. We already live in a Matrix-like web of electronic illusion and disinformation; however, a full-scale Matrix (as portrayed in the movie) would require many thousands more data centers, each devouring energy and water at unsustainable rates. Indeed, energy and water limits are already problems for AI, and are one reason AI will probably not, in fact, take over the world (or, if it does, not for very long). The scientifically laughable premise of The Matrix was that AI was using human bodies as a power supply. Given the energy efficiency of metabolism, that will never happen.

Here’s another dystopian future we don’t have to worry about: alien invasion. Sci-fi books and movies that revolve around this theme are plentiful, perhaps best typified by the 1979 horror film Alien. But, as astrophysicist Tom Murphy has argued persuasively, space travel on any scale greater than the deployment of a few interplanetary probes is physically impossible: distances are too great, energy sources are insufficient, and space is too inhospitable.

Some climate fiction (“cli-fi”) is similarly unrealistic because of its failure to appreciate energy and materials limits. Cli-fi is, by its very nature, mostly doomy. It seeks to help readers understand how our world is changing, and will change, due to humanity’s destabilization of geosystems and ecosystems. Cli-fi that attempts to be optimistic often features fictionally portrayed climate solutions that are unlikely to be realized due to natural limits. Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2020 novel The Ministry for the Future is a case in point: in it, as horrific climate impacts ravage India, nations cooperate to reduce carbon emissions and undertake geoengineering projects. They succeed in greatly slowing climate change, and global industrial civilization persists—though with airships replacing jetliners and carbon farming supplanting conventional agriculture. However, in view of energy and material limits, even those sorts of tweaks can’t make current levels of population and industrial activity sustainable for more than another few decades.

Not doomy enough for you? Onward to quadrant three!

3. Pessimistic Limits-Aware Future Visions

The 1973 dystopian thriller film Soylent Green was an early and quintessential exemplar for this third quadrant of scenarios. By 2022, according to the movie’s plot, the cumulative effects of overpopulation, global warming, and pollution have triggered a collapse of ecosystems, leading to severe worldwide shortages of food, water, and housing. Civilization is on the brink. Most people live in squalor and eat highly processed food wafers made by the Soylent Corporation—whose latest product, Soylent Green, is purportedly made from plankton. In one of cinema history’s biggest reveals, we later learn from Charlton Heston’s cry at the film’s conclusion that, “Soylent Green is people!” Soylent Green may be the most brutal solution imaginable to the problem of too many people and not enough resources, but it’s not viable long-term, since humans would be an extremely inefficient food-energy source.

Most novels that fit in this quadrant of futures simply describe people trying to survive in a world that’s falling apart. One example, The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (2009), tells of a climate-ravaged future where fossil fuels are depleted and genetically engineered plagues repeatedly decimate the population. The story follows several characters in Thailand struggling to persist in a world of cutthroat competition for scarce food and water.

Another example, One Second After by William R. Forstchen (2009), highlights our current profound dependency on the electricity grid. In the story, an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack cripples the United States, causing civilization to collapse. The rest of the book chronicles a small town’s struggle to persist without electricity.

Post-apocalyptic fiction doesn’t always specify the cause of the disaster that has laid waste to civilization. Such is the case in The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006), and the 2009 movie based on it. These are unrelievedly grim portrayals of what the future might hold for survivors in the wake of societal collapse, whatever the trigger event might be.

4. Optimistic Limits-Aware Future Visions

Sometimes fictional collapse eventually leads to cultural renewal, a signal element of quadrant four. A classic in this vein is Earth Abides by George R. Stewart (1949), in which a virus-borne plague wipes out nearly all of humanity. The scattered survivors gradually find one another and begin to re-learn the social and practical skills of their ancient ancestors. In the ensuing three generations, humanity starts over, now living closer to the Earth.

While Earth Abides doesn’t attribute civilizational collapse to humanity’s abuse of its environment, later hopeful post-apocalyptic fiction often takes this route. One example is All the Water in the World (2025) by Eiren Caffall, in which a young woman and her family navigate a flooded, post-collapse, climate change-battered New York while trying to preserve the best of human culture and human nature.

As I wrote in a recent essay, a future long-term sustainable human culture would need to value ecosystems, cooperation, humility, and sharing; building it would effectively require us to re-indigenize ourselves. If such is our aim, then one futurist literary genre we should consult for guidance is Indigenous futurism. Walking the Clouds (2012) is an anthology edited by Grace Dillon, who coined the term “Indigenous Futurisms”; it collects a wide range of speculative fiction by Indigenous authors exploring future possibilities for Native peoples through the lenses of science fiction, alternative histories, and Indigenous knowledge. Another example is Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning (2018), which prominently features Diné (Navajo) cosmology, heroes, and monsters in a landscape reshaped by both climate change and Indigenous knowledge.

Two other sub-genres fit into this quadrant: solarpunk and eco-fiction. They are poles of a spectrum, ranging from futures bristling with high-tech sustainability solutions at one end, to stories of human re-wilding on the other. Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers, an anthology edited by Sarena Ulibarri (2018), is a good entry point for readers wanting to explore solarpunk; Diane Cook’s The New Wilderness (2020), which follows a mother and daughter who are members of a nomadic tribe living in a government-controlled “Wilderness State” after the collapse of modern society, is emblematic of eco-fiction.

Hopeful post-apocalyptic fiction often describes the breaking apart of great nation-states into smaller bioregional communities. This was a theme of Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975), which was fictionally set in the year 1999; it describes a small country that secedes from the U.S. in 1980 following an economic collapse. The new nation of Ecotopia consists of Northern California, Oregon, and Washington, and has adopted a range of solarpunk practices (though the word had not yet been coined in 1975). Similarly, in Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993), which is fictionally set in 2048, the northern Pacific coastal region of the U.S. has politically broken away from the rest of the country, which is authoritarian and corporate-controlled. The new eco-utopia must defend itself from hostile outside forces, thereby testing its people’s commitment to nonviolence, equity, and consensus decision-making.

Altogether, this quadrant of futures offers gritty realism with a dose of optimism. We have come nearly full circle, again envisioning hopeful futures, but ones far afield from the naïve imaginings of The Jetsons. The general message of most fiction in this quadrant is that humanity has already exceeded natural limits and broken boundaries; there will be consequences—some of them horrific. Still, collapse brings the opportunity to abandon global economic and political structures that have driven us to the point of ruin, and to build instead a fabric of locally adapted, rooted, re-indigenized human cultures that are both capable and worthy of thriving for many generations.

* * *

My favorite adage about the future is from what is widely considered the worst sci-fi movie ever made, Plan 9 From Outer Space (1958): “We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.” It’s essential that we imagine futures that are both possible and desirable—and then, that we work toward realizing them. Otherwise, we become irrelevant bit players in a world shaped by people who simply seek power above all. Community-scale and bioregional-scale responses to the Great Unraveling invite personal action and lead both to convivial social arrangements and to the discovery of ways to live more in cooperation with, less in domination of, the web of life.

238. They Were Never Going to Scale

Posted on 10/02/2026 by Barry

Embracing Appropriate Technology in a Contracting World

Ludovic Viger

That one simple sentence cuts through decades of hype like a knife: THEY WERE NEVER GOING TO SCALE.

It was the quiet warning from the Appropriate Technology (AT) movement—the one the mainstream green energy narrative did quadruple backflips to ignore. Vast solar farms, towering wind turbines, gigafactories churning out batteries—they promised endless clean power on an industrial scale.

But physics, geology, and economics had other plans. As we hit 2026, the verdict is in: globalist green tech was never going to replace fossil fuels at the level required to maintain an infinite-growth economy.

The Wall of Physical Reality

The math simply doesn’t track. To swap our current energy base for industrial renewables, we require a “Great Mining” of rare earths and minerals that don’t multiply on demand. As we move to lower-grade ores in politically unstable regions, the Energy Return on Investment (EROI)—the actual “profit” of energy we get back after spending energy to build the tech—is plummeting.

Add to this the 35% spikes in battery costs due to recent trade tariffs, and the “cheap energy” dream has curdled into a protectionist nightmare.

The Liberation of Limits

This isn’t defeatist. It’s liberating.

THEY WERE NEVER GOING TO SCALE frees us from the myth that salvation lies in bigger, faster, more centralized tech controlled by distant corporations. It reminds us that chasing “scale” often chains us to fragile global networks and bureaucracies that fail the moment a shipping lane is blocked or a mineral cartel raises prices.

Instead, we can turn to technology that is small, adaptable, and human-scaled. This is the philosophy of E.F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful. It’s not about rejecting progress; it’s about choosing progress that serves people and place, not abstract GDP metrics.

What is “Appropriate Technology”?

Schumacher argued for “intermediate technology”—tools more effective than traditional methods but far simpler and cheaper than high-tech industrial solutions.

The AT Manifesto:

Repairable: Fixed locally with local tools.

Capital-Saving: Prioritizes human ingenuity over massive debt.

Resilient: Works when the global “Just-in-Time” supply chain breaks.

Nonviolent: Low impact on the Earth’s finite resources.

Think biogas digesters from farm waste, hand-built solar cookers, or passive solar designs that heat homes without a single circuit board. These are technologies with a human face.

Contraction vs. Collapse

We are entering an era of economic contraction. Resource peaks and debt burdens mean endless growth is off the table. But contraction isn’t collapse if we prepare.

In a world of “Efficiency,” systems are optimized to be lean, which makes them incredibly fragile. One disruption cascades into a total shutdown. Appropriate Technology embraces “Redundancy” and “Simplicity.”

The Complexity Trap

Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies warns that societies eventually invest in so many layers of bureaucracy and tech that they reach “diminishing returns.” We spend more energy maintaining the system than we get out of it.

AT counters this by simplifying:

A community-owned windmill solves a need without a billion-dollar investment.
A backyard biogas setup turns waste into fuel without a global pipeline.
A hand-cranked grain mill works when the grid is down.

When the giants stumble, the small and the simple remain standing.

The Cooperative Engine

How do we deploy this tech without falling back into corporate traps? Through Cooperatives.

Worker-owned models align technology with local needs rather than shareholder returns. In contraction, co-ops buffer shocks: when markets falter, members prioritize livelihoods over dividends.

L’Atelier Paysan (France): This cooperative designs open-source farm tools with farmers, ensuring tech remains a tool for the worker, not a shackle.
The Mondragon Model: In the Basque region, large-scale cooperatives prove that we can have sophisticated industry while keeping benefits circulating locally.
Energy Collectives: Across the globe, neighborhoods are installing “micro-grids”—rooftop solar kits and micro-hydro owned collectively—to power homes without feeding the corporate beast.

The Script Has Flipped

The mainstream ignored this wisdom because it didn’t offer a way to get rich quick. But in 2026, getting “resilient” is the new getting “rich.”

THEY WERE NEVER GOING TO SCALE isn’t a counsel of despair. It’s an invitation to reclaim your agency. Free from scalability myths, we escape dependence on fragile megastructures. We build what we can maintain, and we own what we use.

How to start:

Audit your tech: What do you own that you can actually fix?
Join a “Library of Things”: Tool-sharing co-ops reduce the need for everyone to own a resource-heavy machine.
Invest in Low-Tech: Support local energy collectives or experiment with passive solar heating.

Small is still beautiful—and in a contracting world, it might be our only way forward.

234. Learning Where the Water Goes: Localism and the Future of Flooding

Posted on 05/02/2026 by Barry

With homes flooded, roads impassable and schools closed after Storm Chandra, the question has surfaced again, not as a surprise but as a reckoning. Flooding is no longer an occasional emergency. It is becoming a recurring condition of life in many parts of the UK.

Warmer, wetter winters mean that rivers are behaving differently. They rise faster, stay high for longer, and then fall back into drought. As Professor David Sear of the University of Southampton has observed, rivers are now shaped by extremes, more extremes of flooding and more extremes of drought. In simple terms, the land is being asked to hold more water, more often.

For most of the last century, the response has been to push water away. Ditches were deepened, channels straightened, and floodplains drained to make room for roads, houses and productive farmland. Water was treated as an inconvenience to be moved on as quickly as possible. That logic is now failing.

What is emerging instead is a quieter, more grounded approach, one that sits naturally with localism. Rather than asking how to remove water, communities are beginning to ask where it should be allowed to go.

At Wild Woodbury, near Bere Regis, this shift is already visible. The project covers land upstream of the River Sherford and uses what is known as stage-0 river restoration. Instead of forcing the river into fixed channels, water has been released from ditches and allowed to spread across the land, finding its own paths and re-occupying old routes remembered by the soil.

The result has been striking. According to project manager Rob Farrington, water that once rushed through drainage channels now spreads out, slows down, and sinks in. Minor roads that used to flood no longer do so. The land behaves like a sponge, holding water during heavy rain and releasing it slowly over time. Pools and streams have become so clear they appear almost unreal.

This is not just about wildlife, although wildlife has returned. It is about downstream villages, coastal waters, and places like Poole Harbour that receive whatever the land sends them. Slower water means cleaner water, fewer nutrients, less damage, and more resilience.

Yet even here there is honesty. Farrington acknowledges that this solution cannot be applied everywhere. It requires space. It works best on flat land. In many localities, roads and houses already sit on floodplains. The industrial system put them there, confident that engineering and insurance would deal with the consequences.

This is where localism becomes essential. National policy struggles with such complexity. It thinks in standards and exceptions. Local communities think in gradients, lanes, and memories.

Older maps tell a different story from modern ones. Villages, churches and farmsteads were once built just beyond the winter reach of rivers. People understood floodplains as seasonal riverbeds. They did not need hydrological models to tell them where not to build.

Localism allows that understanding to return, not as nostalgia, but as practical judgement. A village faced with repeated surface water flooding may decide that holding the line is no longer sensible. Instead of endlessly repairing damaged homes, it might choose to move new building to higher ground within the locality, while allowing lower land to become wet meadow, storage ground, or managed marsh.

This is not retreat imposed from above. It is adaptation chosen from within. It may happen slowly. One cluster of houses not rebuilt. A new lane laid slightly higher. A community hall relocated upslope. Over time, the village shifts, just as many have shifted before.

History offers plenty of precedent. The lost medieval town of Dunwich slipped into the sea not overnight, but over generations. Inland settlements have also crept away from waterlogged ground as conditions changed. What matters is not permanence, but continuity.

Professor Sear warns that isolated projects, however successful, are not enough on their own. The scale of change required is large. But scaling up does not mean scaling up machinery. It means linking many local decisions together, each working with natural processes rather than against them.

Localism does not deny the need for engineering. It simply puts engineering in its place. Hard defences may still protect some assets. But the broader task is cultural. It is about relearning how to live with water, not in spite of it.

Surface water is becoming a defining feature of the future landscape. Whether it brings repeated disruption or a new kind of stability depends on who is allowed to decide. When decisions are made locally, with a clear view of the land and its limits, water stops being an enemy and becomes part of the settlement again.

221. Can the Grid Carry the Power We Are Planning to Generate?

Posted on 16/01/2026 by Barry

https://www.enr.com/ext/resources/2022/09/01/Hornsea-2.PNG?height=418&t=1662166168&width=800

https://www.nationalgrid.com/sites/default/files/styles/content_embedded_image/public/images/Electricity%20Transmission%20map.jpg?itok=ufeVLjGG

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The UK’s electricity strategy assumes a rapid expansion of offshore wind. In energy policy terms this looks logical. The resource is large, domestic, and low-carbon. Renewables already provide a substantial share of national power, and offshore wind capacity is set to grow sharply over the next decade.

But futurists increasingly ask a different question. Not how much electricity can be generated, but whether the national system can carry it, store it, and rely on it when conditions change.

Carrying Offshore Wind Power Inland

Offshore wind is mostly generated far from where electricity is used. Large volumes of power must be brought ashore and then transmitted across the country. This places enormous strain on the high-voltage transmission system operated by National Grid.

Futurists point out three structural problems.

First, grid capacity is already constrained. Many offshore wind projects are ready to generate but cannot connect because transmission upgrades are years behind. Queue backlogs now stretch well into the 2030s.

Second, the grid was never designed for this pattern of flow. It evolved around centralised power stations located close to industrial demand. Offshore wind reverses that logic, pushing large, intermittent surges of electricity into a system that must then move it long distances.

Third, public resistance is growing. New pylons, substations and overhead lines cut through countryside and settlements. Planning objections are not a side issue – they are becoming a binding constraint.

From a futurist perspective, the problem is not engineering alone. It is social and political capacity to keep expanding a national system indefinitely.

The Hard Reality of Windless and Sunless Days

A deeper concern lies in the weather itself.

The UK regularly experiences winter high-pressure systems that bring days, sometimes weeks, of cold, still air. These are precisely the moments when electricity demand rises sharply, while wind output collapses.

Solar contributes little at this time. Batteries help only briefly. Long-duration storage at national scale remains limited and costly.

Futurists therefore stress that the issue is not average annual generation, but system reliability during prolonged lulls. These conditions are not rare anomalies. They are recurring features of the British climate.

This creates a growing tension. The more the system relies on weather-dependent generation, the more complex and expensive it becomes to guarantee supply during unfavourable conditions.

Can the Grid Expansion Be Funded?

Official plans assume massive investment in new transmission lines, offshore connections, substations, and reinforcement of local distribution networks.

The question futurists increasingly ask is simple. Who pays?

Grid expansion costs run into tens of billions of pounds. These costs ultimately fall on electricity consumers through higher bills, or on the state through borrowing and subsidy. Both routes assume continued economic growth and political consent.

In a future shaped by:

stagnant or contracting real incomes
rising public debt
declining discretionary spending

the assumption that society can endlessly fund large, capital-intensive national infrastructure becomes fragile.

Futurists argue that there is a growing mismatch between industrial-era infrastructure ambitions and the economic reality of a society moving into long-term contraction.

Localism as a Structural Alternative

This is where localism enters the discussion, not as ideology but as system design.

Rather than forcing ever more electricity through an increasingly stressed national grid, futurists suggest a gradual shift toward local energy systems.

These include:

local wind and solar used close to where it is generated
small-scale storage tied to communities rather than the national system
demand adapted to local supply conditions rather than the other way round

Under localism, the grid still exists, but it becomes a supporting network, not the single point of failure on which everything depends.

Local systems are inherently more resilient. When national supply tightens, local generation and reduced demand soften the impact. When failures occur, they are smaller, slower, and easier to manage.

From a futurist viewpoint, this mirrors wider economic trends. As national systems struggle with scale, cost and complexity, informal and local arrangements expand naturally.

A Change in Expectations

The deeper shift is cultural.

For decades, the assumption has been that electricity will always be available, instantly, everywhere, regardless of weather or cost. Futurists increasingly question whether this expectation itself belongs to the era of cheap fossil energy.

In a constrained future, electricity becomes something that is:

more variable
more locally managed
more closely matched to essential needs

Localism does not promise unlimited power. It promises adaptation.

The Bottom Line

Futurists are not arguing that offshore wind is a mistake. They are arguing that building generation faster than the system can carry, store and socially accept it creates new vulnerabilities.

They question whether:

the national grid can expand at the required pace
the funding model is sustainable in a shrinking economy
reliance on weather-dependent generation can be made fully reliable at national scale

Many conclude that the long-term answer does not lie in ever-larger national systems, but in a gradual shift toward locality-based energy, reduced expectations, and resilience through simplicity.

In that sense, localism is not a retreat. It is an adaptation to physical, economic and social limits that are becoming increasingly hard to ignore.

220. Herefordshire Council joins partners in testing emergency blackout communications

Posted on 16/01/2026 by Barry

Herefordshire Council has recently taken part in a major emergency planning exercise designed to test how local authorities would stay connected during a widespread power failure. This work forms part of ongoing efforts to strengthen community resilience across the West Mercia area.

The exercise, known as Exercise Echo, simulated a situation where a large-scale blackout knocks out traditional communication networks, including phone lines, mobile networks and internet services. Emergency planners from Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire counties came together with volunteer radio operators to see how they could maintain critical communications in such a scenario.

In December 2025 teams set up independent radio systems on high-ground sites such as the Malvern Hills and Clee Hill. These specialist radio relays enabled councils’ emergency planning hubs in Hereford, Worcester and Shrewsbury to transmit and receive messages without relying on the usual infrastructure. The aim was to ensure that, even if power and commercial networks were down, information could still be shared between authorities, and help could be coordinated effectively for residents.

While the likelihood of a nationwide blackout is low, planners emphasise that the value of such exercises lies in preparing for any eventuality. Large-scale power failures can arise from severe weather, technical faults or system overloads, and they create significant challenges for local services trying to support vulnerable people or maintain essential functions.

Herefordshire Council is part of the West Mercia Local Resilience Forum (LRF), a partnership of emergency services, councils, health agencies and volunteer groups working together to assess risks and prepare for emergencies. The LRF’s work includes planning for threats such as flooding, severe weather, transport incidents and loss of critical infrastructure like electricity.

Exercise Echo builds on earlier tests between Herefordshire and Worcestershire, and planners say it confirms the potential to expand and improve these alternative communications systems as part of wider emergency preparedness measures.

For residents and businesses, the council’s broader advice on emergency planning is to be aware of community resilience resources and to have personal plans in place for unexpected events.

Note: Are Parish Councils responsible for the preparation of contingency plans in the event of local power outages?

214. Will a Shrinking Economy Make Global Warming Go Away?

Posted on 08/01/2026 by Barry

As the economy shrinks, global warming will ease – but it will not disappear, and there is no honest basis for saying when it might.

Economic contraction reduces energy use, transport, construction, manufacturing and long supply chains. These are the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions. If contraction is deep and long-lasting, emissions will fall sharply. On this point there is little dispute. A smaller economy emits less carbon.

But global warming is not driven by today’s emissions alone. It is driven by the accumulation of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide remains for centuries. Methane is shorter-lived but highly potent. Even if emissions were cut close to zero, temperatures would remain elevated for a very long time. Some further warming would still occur because the climate system responds slowly.

This means there is no moment at which global warming simply stops. There is only a slowing, then possibly a stabilisation, and only much later a very gradual decline.

Some changes are already locked in. Sea levels will continue to rise for centuries. Oceans will stay warmer and more acidic. Ice loss will not reverse on any meaningful human timescale. These processes do not respond quickly to economic change.

What contraction can do is prevent escalation. It can stop warming from running away beyond human capacity to adapt. That is not a full solution, but it is the difference between difficulty and collapse.

Timing matters, and here certainty is not possible. If global economic contraction were sustained:

emissions could fall within one or two decades
temperature rise might stabilise later this century
climate instability would persist for many decades
sea level rise would continue well beyond 2100

There is no credible date at which the problem “goes away”.

The honest conclusion is this. A shrinking economy does not restore the old climate. It limits further damage and makes adaptation possible. That is not failure. It is realism. It shifts the task from chasing growth-based fixes to learning how to live within new climatic limits, locally and materially.

That is as far as authenticity allows us to go.