The case for clean energy abundance: It’s a good idea — and strikingly different from conventional environmentalism. (Matthew Yglesias, May 14, 2026, Slow Boring)
But while this is all offered in good faith, I think it fundamentally underrates the merits of energy abundance.
For example, despite the considerable progress that’s been made with batteries, we are nowhere near being able to electrify things like aviation and maritime shipping. It is, however, chemically possible to manufacture liquid hydrocarbons (including jet fuel, bunker oil, and so forth) out of the carbon dioxide present in the air.
This is a lossy, energy-inefficient process for reasons of fundamental physics. If you snapped your fingers and generated enough clean energy to replace all the coal and gas currently burned to make electricity without raising prices for consumers and then snapped again to generate enough clean energy to electrify all cars and trucks and home heating, that would still leave you with electricity that’s wildly too expensive to make jet fuel.
But if electricity were abundant — too cheap to meter — then it wouldn’t matter that using electricity to manufacture liquid hydrocarbons is inefficient. It would still be cheaper to do it that way than to drill for oil and refine it. The problems of the “hard to decarbonize” sectors would be solved.
This is why, again, despite my disagreeable insistence on saying that clean energy abundance is different from conventional green politics, I sincerely think most adherents to conventional green politics should switch sides. A genuine abundance approach can solve the problem they’re trying to solve, and tweaking utility regulation or getting people to use better-insulated windows can’t.
Removing externalities multiplies abundance.