https://www.forbes.com/sites/walvanlier ... 7f561a7220
Net Zero Needs Fusion. What Should Investors Be Asking The Frontrunners?
Wal van Lierop
The urgency for fusion energy cannot be overstated.
No? Well I beg to disagree. In fact, I say the urgency is a SCAM to make a bunch of people rich and promote an agenda that has absolutely nothing to do with Climate Change or the earth’s temperature. And you, sir, are just a mouthpiece for that scam, hoping to enrich yourself.
There is one issue with fusion, however. No lab or company has generated more energy than they have put into a fusion reaction, let alone developed a system that could work in a commercial setting.
Yes … just a MINOR problem.
Understandably, investors wonder where fusion really stands and which projects could deliver on this multitrillion-dollar opportunity to replicate the power of the Sun on Earth.
As a long-time fusion investor, I want to discuss why fusion matters, the progress this industry has made and the questions savvy investors should be asking of fusion companies.
Ah … so he's not quite an unbiased journalist. He admit's he's a “long-time” fusion investor. So he's hoping to cash in on it. Maybe that’s why he insists fusion matters … because if he didn't, he might not see ANY return on his already invested dollars. The truth is that there needs a LOT more investment to have any chance of commercial fusion becoming a reality by … 2050 ... much less the 2030s.
At present, no energy technology besides fusion shows potential to replace fossil fuels.
At present fusion promoters haven't actually offered a convincing argument that we need to replace fossil fuels with any urgency.
Nothing else appears capable of satisfying the world’s growing demand for energy and powering air conditioning, desalinization plants, electric vehicles, green hydrogen production, etc. on the scale we need for the energy transition and life on a hotter and dryer planet.
LOL! I’m looking out the window as I type this, watching snow come down on are day with temperatures that were below the average for this day. And ironically, it’s the urgency to decarbonize that has led to country after country in Europe facing a winter with no means to keep millions of people from freezing. Ironically, it’s the urgency to decarbonize that has caused energy prices to spike ... double and even triple in some places in the United States, with more increases coming this winter and next year.
We of course need to scale wind and solar, but their land, weather and energy storage requirements mean they can’t enable a full energy transition.
Gee, that’s not what green advocates told us years and years. In fact, back in 2016, Forbes magazine published (
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016 ... cf44b9d440) an article declaring “We Could Power The Entire World By Harnessing Solar Energy From 1% Of The Sahara.” In 2021, Forbes published (
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvett ... 91583822ee) an article titled “Could Rooftop Solar Really Provide Enough Electricity For The Entire World?” that concluded “in theory,” citing an assessment in
Nature Communication from a team of energy researchers at the University of Cork in Ireland. Back in 2008, the HuffPost published (
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/can-we-p ... o_b_104355 ) an article titled “Can We Power The Whole World with Solar Power”. It looked at land requirements and concluded that “if it was spread among a few deserts (for solar thermal power) and already existing rooftops (for photovoltaic), it would be manageable." But now, all of a sudden, solar isn’t the answer?
Could that be due to all the failures in solar projects the last decade … like DC Solar, Solyndra, Amonix Solar, Bright Source, Abound Solar, Sun Power, A123 Solar, UniSolar, Evergreen Solar … just in the US. Efforts in Spain and many other countries have also collapsed. They failed, partly because of the urgency with which they were implemented. But now we’re told to forget all that … because there's and urgentnew idea … fusion.
Industry insiders believe that by 2050, fusion plants could supply anywhere from 18% to 44% of the world’s energy.
Promises, promises. Industry insiders have been promising commercial fusion in 30 years ... for more than 60 years. They, like the author of this article, have a vested interest. They too are living off the twin cash cows of fusion research and climate change hysteria.
The Fusion Industry Association reports that private fusion companies have raised over $4.8 billion USD in funding to date and more than doubled the industry’s total funding last year. Several frontrunners have made such technical progress that it is credible to assume they will bring commercial fusion to market in the 2030s. The list includes General Fusion (in which I am an investor), Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Helion, TAE Technologies, Zap Energy, General Atomics and First Light.
Some of those companies (like Helion) were among those promising fusion in a decade … 20 years ago. Promises are cheap. How many of the companies have actually kept to the schedule they promised so far? I know that Helion didn't. I don't expect any of the others to do so, either.
Each of these fusion companies intends to open a demonstration plant by the second half of this decade. These will prove whether their technology can work at scale and produce net electricity.
So you and they claim. The reality is that each of them intend to make BILLIONS of dollars trying to build a demonstration plant … that may not work at all. During that time, all those involved in those efforts are going to live VERY comfortable lives and sock away a lot of retirement money. Guaranteed.
Remember, just a couple decades ago, we were told that we needed to *invest* billions of dollars on ITER (which now is admitted to have cost over $20 billion so far with some insiders in the US government saying it will cost $45-$65 billion in total) to conduct experiments that were "needed" in order to learn how to design the demonstration plants. Now they are already starting to design and buying the land to build them and ITER isn’t even complete … won’t be for several years at least. Never mind that ITER was supposed to run experiments for decades …experiments that the industry insiders said were needed to design the demonstration plants. But then the purpose of ITER now is and also has been to provide VERY comfortable lives for all involved. Just as the demonstration plants’ purpose will be to provide comfortable lives … with no accountability when they don’t work as promised.
The wildcard is China, which is working on its own fusion technology. For obvious reasons, Western governments would rather not depend on China for this crucial technology.
Don't worry ... China won't prevent the elites from making western taxpayers or western fools pay for western demonstration plants. The only thing that could mess up such plans is China actually succeeding with their efforts in the next few years ... which won't happen. And not just China can’t be depended on to assist the West, but now Russia and bunch of other countries can't be either. In fact, all of them will be continuing down the path of using fossil fuels and generating lots of CO2, making all the efforts of the West in that regard moot. Making them more cost efficient than the West. And my, isn't that going to toss a monkey wrench in the West's economic plans. Big Science strikes again.
There is also ITER, the international, publicly financed fusion project in the south of France that hopes to deliver fusion power by 2045.
What about ITER? It seems this article is just going to gloss over what ITER was supposed to do … and how much it has already cost ... and what it will cost. And what does the author mean by “deliver fusion power by 2045”? Isn’t that what all these new companies are promising, only on a MUCH compressed timescale? Perhaps the author, if he was really trying to inform prospective investors, should explain the discrepancy in ITER’s timeline and that of all the new companies one can invest in? Maybe he should be telling governments to save the billions they were planning to still spend on ITER and invest them instead in the newer ventures. Why through good money after bad, right?
The Questions for Investors to Ask Fusion Companies
1. How durable is the machine? … snip …
2. How plentiful is the fuel? … snip …
3. How efficient is the energy conversion? … snip …
4. What additional systems complexities could prevent a timely roll out? … snip …
5. Where does the demo plant and commercialization strategy stand? … snip …
6. What will be the size? … snip …
7. Last but not least, what is the forecast cost per MWh (megawatt hour)? … snip …
Wow! That’s a lot of questions that haven’t been really answered for an industry that is supposedly going to be selling a lot of electricity in less than 15 years. Are ANY investors smart enough to discern fact from fiction? Seems like an industry just waiting for scammers to take people's money.
While these remaining challenges seem surmountable
Do they? In just 15 years? I have to disagree.
the question I asked years ago remains: Who has the guts to finance the demonstration plants and push fusion to market?
I predict that next comes the pitch to have YOU fund the effort ...
I say it’s time to finally face the music. Given the threat of climate change and growing demand for energy, fusion is critical to achieving Net Zero by 2050. No other technology can outcompete fossil fuels, make a bigger dent in CO2 emissions or do more to eliminate energy dependence on hostile regimes, like Putin’s Russia. Fusion is the gamechanger that could make energy truly local, secure and plentiful. It portends a shift from a centralized, autocratic energy industry to localized, democratic energy provision.
And fusion is not 20 years away anymore. Once the first fusion plant is commercially operational at reasonable cost, the switchover could be quick. Remember, it took centuries to develop the technologies behind an automobile, but it only took cars about a decade to replace horses in London and New York City. As soon as there is a better and cheaper innovation, it inevitably wins.
Yep. But most of you will be losers in this race ... maybe all of you. Just because you believed the scam this *expert* is trying to sell through *fear* ...
The hard truth is that without a step-change innovation in energy, we will blow past 1.5° C this century. Let’s hope fusion commercialization moves quicker than the temperatures.
By the way, it's already too late to keep us below the 1.5C boogeyman (threshold) the author mentioned at the start of his article. That's assuming the climate does what they claim ... and it hasn't been. In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that to keep the rise in global temperatures below 1.5C this century, emissions of carbon dioxide would have to be cut by 45% by 2030. Not a single fusion plant, even with the best Hopium in the world, will be producing commercial power by then. In fact, AGWalarmist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founder and director of the Potsdam Climate Institute, said a few years ago that "The climate math is brutally clear: While the world can't be healed within the next few years, it may be fatally wounded by negligence until 2020." One of the highlighted statements in the 2018 IPCC report was that global emissions of carbon dioxide must peak by 2020 to keep the planet below 1.5C. Well they haven't peaked (
https://media.sciencephoto.com/image/c0 ... levels.jpg) and it's 2022 ... so we must all be doomed.
My advice? Spend your money on something better than fusion pipe dreams and Wal van Lierop's next house or car.
Just saying ...