Pillar

Energy Abundance

Why the solar-plus-storage learning curve matters more than any forecast.

5 min read·Updated 2026-04-11·editorial

Energy abundance is the first and most load-bearing pillar of the Age of Abundance. When electricity drops below one cent per kilowatt-hour at point of use, the marginal cost of most other goods — desalinated water, compute, protein, long-distance mobility — collapses with it. The learning curves of photovoltaic solar and lithium storage are the clearest evidence that this is not a forecast but a trajectory.

The Wright-curve argument

Since 1976, the cost of a watt of photovoltaic solar has fallen roughly 20% for every doubling of cumulative installed capacity. Projecting that curve forward — not as prediction but as the null hypothesis absent shocks — yields utility-scale solar at one-tenth today's price within a decade. Batteries trail a similar curve. The policy question is whether we remove the non-manufacturing frictions (interconnection, permitting, grid capacity) that currently bottleneck installation.

Second-order effects

Cheap, clean electrons turn electricity-intensive processes that are economically marginal today into dominant ones tomorrow. Direct-air carbon capture, green hydrogen, thermal desalination, indoor vertical agriculture, and arbitrary-latitude food production all move from speculative to routine as the price of the underlying energy approaches zero. The Age of Abundance framing emphasizes these second-order effects because they are where the lived difference appears.

Why this is still contested

Skeptics point to siting conflicts, rare-earth supply chains, and the political economy of incumbent fossil interests. Each of these is real; none is thermodynamic. The contested question is not whether cheap clean energy is possible but who captures the rents and who bears the transition costs.