korrents

What Casey Handmer thinks about energy

@casey-handmer · 76 positions · 2 changes of mind

Physicist, formerly at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and founder of Terraform Industries, which is building plant to make synthetic natural gas from sunlight and air. Writes about energy, space and manufacturing at caseyhandmer.wordpress.com.

Everything they publish, on ppll ↗

Casey Handmer did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

18 dated positions, 2019 to 2025, in their own words. Our reading of what Casey Handmer has said — not written or endorsed by them.

Our readingWhere the solar positions argue about supply, these argue about what has to be rebuilt around it: seasonal storage treated as a heat problem, batteries replacing transmission, and a grid that shrinks rather than grows. The obstacle named throughout is permitting and delay rather than cost.

Their wordsDo we need to drastically expand the grid in order to metabolize renewables? No.

Batteries will replace transmission as the cheapest way to keep the lights on, and the grid will shrink rather than grow.

  1. Our readingBatteries will replace transmission as the cheapest way to keep the lights on, and the grid will shrink rather than grow.

    Their wordsDo we need to drastically expand the grid in order to metabolize renewables? No.

    ↗Energy Predictions 2025caseyhandmer.wordpress.com 1st of 6 in this piece

    batteries

    Interesting

  3. Our readingSeasonal energy storage is a heat problem rather than a battery problem: electricity is hard to store for months and heat is easy.

    Their wordsStoring electricity for months is economically difficult, but storing heat is easy.

    ↗Energy Predictions 2025caseyhandmer.wordpress.com 3rd of 6 in this piece

    batteries

    Interesting

  5. Our readingHeat pumps are spreading slowly because buying one is a twenty-year bet on the price of electricity that most homeowners will not make.

    Their wordsWhile heat pumps can achieve higher efficiency, consumer uptake has been much lower than expected because fundamentally, a heat pump is a 20 year bet on future power prices that most homeowners are unwilling to make.

    ↗Energy Predictions 2025caseyhandmer.wordpress.com 4th of 6 in this piece

    Interesting

  7. Our readingBy 2045 natural gas will be a fuel for aviation, shipping and industrial heat rather than a way of making electricity.

    Their wordsBy 2045, natural gas will be used as LNG primarily for high performance supersonic aviation, shipping, and industrial heat.

    ↗Energy Predictions 2025caseyhandmer.wordpress.com 5th of 6 in this piece

    aviation

    Interesting

  9. Our readingThe United Kingdom is the one rich industrial country that cannot run on solar alone, and it has to build wind at scale instead.

    Their wordsThe only highly populated industrial country unable to trivially meet its electricity and synthetic fuel needs with solar alone is the United Kingdom, due primarily to a high population density and high latitude. The Nordic and Baltic countries are tiny by comparison. Among other problems, the UK needs to decide if it wants the future where energy is cheap and it is rich, or the future where energy is expensive and it is poor. If the former, it is time to get serious about large scale deployment of wind power, using home-grown vertically integrated technology at prices as low as $10/MWh.

    ↗Energy Predictions 2025caseyhandmer.wordpress.com 6th of 6 in this piece

    solar

    Interesting
  10. 4 months earlier

  11. Our readingTen cents of electricity generates a thousand dollars of economic value in AI, so the price of power barely matters to the labs.

    Their wordswell their cost of serving it is is like maybe a buck per million tokens or something like that and the cost of electricity is about 10% of that. So it's like 10 cents of electricity is generating $1,000 worth of economic value.

    ↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 9th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  13. Our readingTariffs are beside the point in the energy race with China; what is actually costing America is environmental regulation, and Texas is out-deploying California ten to one because of it.

    Their wordsIn terms of things that are causing us to lose to China, tariffs are neither here nor there because, as we've discussed, we're not sensitive to cost on power. But the environmental regulations that are actively preventing us from deploying renewable energy in the United States, like this is the reason Texas is winning. Texas is out deploying California 10 to1.

    ↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 16th of 24 in this recording

    ChinaAmericatariffs

    Interesting

  15. Our readingIf the industrial stack is not off fossil fuels within ten or twenty years, the country gets poor twice over — the way Britain did when its coal ran out, and again when Florida floods.

    Their wordsthe meta problem here is if we don't move our industrial stack off fossil fuels in 10 or 20 years, first of all, we'll get poor the same way you UK did, right? Because they ran out of coal basically. And the second thing is we'll get poor because we'll flood our coastal cities in Florida underneath climate change.

    ↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 18th of 24 in this recording

    climate change

    Interesting
  16. 21 months earlier

  17. Our readingDelay in permitting clean energy kills more Americans every year than the September 11 attacks did.

    Their wordsThe terrorist attacks on 9/11 killed 2996 people in a day of singular horror. Our ongoing indifference to regulatory inefficiency, considering only the area of green energy development, kills more people every year – more than 10 people per day, and that’s only within the US.

    ↗Permitting Reform Or Deathcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 3rd of 4 in this piece

    Americapermitting

    Interesting
  18. 4 weeks earlier

  19. Our readingEvery doubling of the solar built worldwide has cut its price by 30 to 40 per cent, and that learning rate is why the price keeps falling.

    Their wordsPer doubling of production, costs have fallen a consistent 30-40% since 1970, but it’s only in the last few years that this price has become competitive with legacy electricity generation

    ↗Radical Energy Abundancecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 1st of 7 in this piece

    solar

    Interesting

  21. Our readingThe end state of the grid is not a fifth solar backed by spinning generation, but twice the demand in solar with days of storage behind it.

    Their wordsThe logical end state of this displacement is not some hybrid grid with around 20% solar backed up by spinning generation, but a much more dynamic, versatile grid with around 200% solar generation and hours to days or weeks of battery storage, fully decoupling time of generation and consumption.

    ↗Radical Energy Abundancecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 3rd of 7 in this piece

    solarbatteries

    Interesting

  23. Our readingBatteries will replace transmission as the cheapest way to keep the lights on, and the grid will shrink rather than grow.

    Their wordswe will see batteries aggressively displace transmission as the most cost-effective way to ensure continuity of electricity supply, leading to an eventual pruning of the grid and drastic reduction in the average distance that power travels between production and consumption, even as the average time that power is stored increases.

    ↗Radical Energy Abundancecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 4th of 7 in this piece

    batteries

    Interesting

  25. Our readingCheap clean energy has broken the old trade-off between raising living standards and cutting environmental harm.

    Their wordsCheap solar is the unlock that brings human progress and climate action from the realm of fundamental incompatibility to complimentary inevitability.

    ↗Radical Energy Abundancecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 6th of 7 in this piece

    solar

    Interesting

  27. Our readingMore than 95% of the energy humanity uses will come from solar panels by 2042.

    Their wordsFollowing current trends to second order, >95% of humanity’s energy needs will be downstream of solar panels by 2042, just 19 years away, and alongside enormous expansion in direct use of electricity, fuel consumption will grow to more than $25T/year in equivalent dollars.

    ↗Radical Energy Abundancecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 7th of 7 in this piece

    solar

    Interesting

  29. Our readingCheap energy will at least double global growth to 6% a year, tripling the world economy by 2042.

    Their wordsWe expect growth to at least double to 6%/year, for a cumulative tripling of the global economy by 2042.

    ↗Radical Energy Abundancecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 8th of 7 in this piece

    Interesting
  30. 8 weeks earlier

  31. Our readingYou cannot make people adopt more expensive clean energy, because higher fuel prices are political suicide under any government.

    Their wordsit is quite obviously impossible to enforce universal adoption of more expensive carbon-free energy through, eg, mandatory carbon offsets, as higher gas prices are political suicide regardless of system of government.

    ↗How to Produce Green Hydrogen for $1/kgcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 1st of 3 in this piece

    government

    Interesting

  33. Our readingHydrogen made directly from raw solar power will be the cheapest chemical energy available anywhere by the end of this decade.

    Their wordsI am 100% confident that by the time we are mass producing this system at these prices later this decade, not only will this be the cheapest hydrogen available anywhere, it will also be the cheapest chemical energy and by far the most scalable

    ↗How to Produce Green Hydrogen for $1/kgcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 3rd of 3 in this piece

    solar

    Interesting
  34. 4 years earlier

  35. Our readingSpace-based solar power will never supply electricity to Earth, because it is thousands of times too expensive.

    Their wordsMy view is that space-based solar power is impossibly expensive and will never be used on Earth.

    ↗Space-based solar power is not a thingcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 1st of 3 in this piece

    solar

    Interesting