Politicians love to claim that “more research” is the solution to our energy problems. It allows them – and us – to evade the real challenges that face our civilization as we transition from fossil fuels to non-fossil energy sources over the next 100 years or so. Doling out the public research loot to empire-building science bureuacracies and rent-seeking special interests also increases politicians’ prestige and power.

However, here’s the reality the “more research” mantra evades: There is no energy silver bullet just over the horizon that can replace the fossil fuels which are currently the basis of our civilization’s industrial economy. They can be replaced, and there are a few authoritative sources that describe what kinds of alternatives have the potential to provide the magnitudes of energy required to allow the entire world’s population to enjoy a basic middle class, bourgeois standard of living. It’s not windmills, and it’s not biofuels. It’s nukes, and possibly geothermal, and possibly thousands of square miles of solar heat collector/concentrators in deserts.

TAANSTAFL, not in thermodynamics or economics. “More research” is primarily a politician’s and rent-seeker's evasion. More wealth is the real solution, because those other energy sources are more costly than fossil fuels - that’s why we don’t use them now. However, if the economy itself is larger, then the proportion of it used to provide energy can be relatively smaller. Meaning it will consume a smaller proportion of household budgets, even if it’s more costly in absolute terms.

We will transition to non-fossil energy over the next 100 years or so, we won't abandon the comforts, conveniences and broadened horizons that industrial civilization and its huge energy consumption provides, and we can also see those blessings extended to all the world’s people - eventually. Whether that last happens in the same time frame or takes much longer depends on whether we grow the world economy, or stifle growth with pernicious, wrongheaded public policies like protectionism, carbon cap-and-trade, economic central planning, etc. It’s in our hands.