Imagine:
One day in the early 2030s, an engineer at a newly constructed power plant near Richmond, Virginia, in the United States, will press a button. It will ignite the same reaction that takes place in our sun’s core.
Inside a doughnut-shaped machine called a 'tokamak,' hydrogen isotopes will collide at enormous speed, fusing into helium. This reaction will produce 400 megawatts (MW) of clean, firm electricity, enough for a small city. This electricity will hit Virginia’s power grid nanoseconds later, making nearby residents the first human beings to benefit from commercial fusion power generation.
By the time their children retire, fusion may be the world’s dominant energy source, ushering in an era of energy abundance, not scarcity. And it will be the cheapest reliable power, and incidentally, the cleanest power too.
Fusion is the future of the global energy sector — the nearfuture. While it may not happen exactly as we’ve just described, the first fusion power plant will almost certainly begin operations shortly after President-elect Trump’s second term expires.
Two imperatives are reshaping the global energy market today: meeting exponential growth in demand, while achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. Fusion offers a path forward on both. Recent research, including MIT's first market analysis of fusion, projects fusion could surpass coal — which supplies 34% of global electricity — as the world's leading power source.
Yet, this is probably a conservative estimate. Fusion is zero carbon, safe, available 24/7 and the raw ingredients cover 71% of Earth’s surface: fusion plants get their hydrogen isotopes from seawater. With fusion, our oceans contain enough energy for billions of years.
Modelling the impact of fusion power — which has been compared to the discovery of fire and called "the last energy source humanity will ever need" — is challenging. But, by examining the science and markets, we can begin to understand how — and when — it could transform the world economy.
Read full article on World Economic Forum.