Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

More importantly, with fusion, energy could become significantly cheaper allowing us to do things which weren't economically viable.

Make everything out of environmentally friendly, lighter and long lasting aluminium rather than steel + concrete.

Have street lighting that is as bright as sunlight over entire cities, allowing us to no longer be dependant on time of day.

Growing food crops indoors with artificial light, saving massive amounts of land.

Desalination to make all our water. No longer extracting it from rivers and aquifers. A cleaner, less polluted water source.

A single energy source - today we use petroleum (cars), natural gas (cooking and heating), electricity (lighting etc.), diesel (transport) and many more in industry. All of those need distribution networks. A single cheap energy source could coalesce a lot of infrastructure.



> Have street lighting that is as bright as sunlight over entire cities, allowing us to no longer be dependant on time of day.

Please, no. Some of what you said I'm onboard with, but definitely not this. The human impact of perpetual day is large and negative. The negative impact of massive artificial lighting on astronomy is also quite massive.


I made me curious about something.

Will the heat from all that electricity generation affect the environment in significant ways?

At which energy usage scale humanity will be restricted by the planet environment capacity to deal with the generated heat?


If you have enough cheap energy, you could refrigerate earth and send excess heat to space.

I think we're a long way from that yet though.




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: