Comment on Solar is the new oil
DoubleDongle@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Not really. While the expertise in their manufacture is pretty concentrated, you can build a factory almost anywhere in theory. They don’t have a lot of exotic materials and the amount they need will probably drop in the future, so there won’t be a real solar equivalent to the petro-state. Maybe some places with a handy combination of sun and mineral resources could be desirable industrial regions, but it wouldn’t encourage war in the same way.
TiberiusDreadnought@lemmy.sdf.org 1 week ago
This. Much of human history has been reliant on renewable energy (firewood, food, heating, etc), and it is only the past 200 years or so that fossilized biomass has been a thing. Exotic materials can also be avoided with techniques such as concentrated solar power for high temperature manufacturing (see Odeillo solar furnace), manufacturing at sites of energy generation (eg wind mills for “milling”), and Stirling engines.