How Do we Get Cheaper Cleaner Energy For All

Human beings have had a very deep, entangled relationship with energy over the years. Starting from humankind's most important discovery, fire. You can be certain our ancestors were deeply grateful for fire and its ability to keep us warm in the cold, keep us safe in darkness, and cook our food so it's free from bacteria that would otherwise kill us.

From the graphs below, how our use of energy has a very strong relationship with our life expectancy. This shows that in the 20th century, with the improvements of technology and energy, our lives just got better.

The 1911 heat wave in the US killed 200 people just in New York and about 3,000 across the country. That same year, almost 40,000 people died in France. Which is like crazy to think about. Thanks to cheaper, more abundant energy and air conditioning, hundreds of thousands of lives have been saved since.

The cost of energy relates to absolutely everything. Using Sri Lanka as an example, we saw how everything just went belly-up when the cost of fuel went up.

There has been a serious increase in prices of food, transportation, and absolutely everything. The increase in the price of electricity meant that a lot of people had their electricity cut off, and it just sucks. We are also having challenges with maintaining our industrial drive as a lot of factories are complaining about it being too expensive to operate here as the cost of energy is now too high.

An easy solution: Let the government subsidize electricity. Capital Alliance Limited had a superb article on why subsidies don't serve the people they are meant to; they just make the rich richer. Please read that here.

I am not an expert on subsidies and economic impacts, but one thing I have learned is that you can't mess with the Laws of Physics and the Laws of Economics.

Tagged along with all of this, we are also experiencing a lot of climate pressure. This is extremely important, but we have to be careful not to be too altruistic in our solutions. Some of the policies in the name of climate change have made things worse for the planet, all while making energy more expensive. A side note, it pisses me off that people fly in their private jets to the World Economic Forum and COP28 to talk about human impact on climate change.

The hard solution: We have to work hard together to bring the overall cost of energy down. The only way I see it is by investing in technology and innovation (this does not mean only technology). Some of the ways we can do this include lowering the cost per unit of energy generation, reducing the loss in transmission, and using more energy-efficient systems. If we can bring the cost of energy down, we can make significant improvements in people's lives.

To do the above takes resources, and for this, I don't mean just funding, and I am not talking about the Government. Money follows great people with great ideas, so if you don't have money, focus on becoming better and continuously improving your product, and the money will come to you. There is an old saying, when the student is ready, the teacher arrives. I believe that when the product is ready, the investment will arrive.

The resources I am talking about are our collective of human beings putting in time and effort to find ways to bring the cost of energy down. This collective consciousness can bring loads of innovation spiraling out across the island which can create immense benefits.

To simplify, if we in Sri Lanka had a collective drive to find out ways to bring the cost of energy down, we would unleash miracles. We keep expecting our universities and institutions to come up with innovations, but history has shown that that is not always where innovation comes from. It comes from unpredictable places from unpredictable people.

The best example is the Wright Brothers and flight, bicycle repairmen who beat the world's best and smartest in being the first to attain flight.

I really don't know how to do this, but if we can figure this out, there will be immense benefits to Sri Lanka and the world. It's good to see the youth super passionate about the climate and our passionate activists. But I feel like if you want to really make a difference, try to focus on addressing the problem and creating a viable solution that will take us towards creating “Cheaper, Cleaner Energy For All.”