Intro
Black Mirror’s USS Callister crew
An AI adventure looking at energy’s future – Into the Unknown, lol.
Why Solar Panels, Wind, Batteries, and EVs—Built at Scale—are the most viable- energy transition option – do not get involved in the rest.
Health-warning - Co-Author: Prompt-engineered with DeepSeek, an AI committed to scalable climate solutions
1. A Black Mirror Opens
Three cold starts
Scene A: Diplomats at COP30 in Brazil debate “net-zero pathways” for 2050, busy rooms, lots of conversation and quarrels
Scene B: Montage of presentations from luminaries at a TED talk and Davos, calm and celebratory clapping, nodding. Side conversation noting we need to adapt, the carbon peaks are now too far away.
Scene C: A factory in China’s Anhui province stamps out 500 EV battery cells per second, camera holds for a minute, no comments.
One determines Earth’s climate trajectory. Spoiler: It’s not the talking heads in A and B.
This isn’t dystopia—it’s pragmatism. CO₂ reduction isn’t about pledges or carbon accounting, or pontificating about the month of the peak, or not.
It’s about manufacturing machines that work and that can replace fossil fuels: solar panels, batteries, and EVs. Perhaps newer variants – but it is not about everything else.
It’s not about the technologies that do not work, or the theories that delay progress.
And yet – we still get drawn into dead-ends. Policy-wise via meaningless pledges, Scope 1-3 categorisations, and ESG mythology
And technology-wise via magical thinking of carbon capture, green hydrogen and the renaissance of hydro-power, nuclear, small nuclear reactors and fusion.
Let’s add in a vignette and number: to date carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems add up to 10 million tonnes of CO2 extracted per year. That is 0.02% of the world’s annual 40 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Yet it remains highly publicised by incumbents and many analysts as a genuine option.
So 99.98% of CO2 remains uncaptured every year.
To a good approximation CCS has achieved nothing except distraction: It has assumed politicians, analysts and consumers are mostly technology innocents.
Which it appears we mostly are.
2. The Four Gas Miracles and the Fifth Problem
And yet
Flash back to the 1970s.
Humanity solved four huge global gas crises with quick fixes—yet what we have to realise is that CO₂ demands a totally different playbook
Humanity solved four pollution crises in 50 years, all due to air-borne gases, which of course fleet across borders, and access every human’s air-ways, like viruses and germs do continuously.
Lead (1970s): Banned in gasoline. Particles carried in the air from petrol engines were shown to cause potential toxic effects in human organs, especially children. Whilst eradicated world-wide by 2021, the psychological scar remains in the worldwide phrase “unleaded”. A ghostly reminder of a time when our health was at global risk.
CFCs (1980s): Phased out to save the ozone layer. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) an obscure chemical used in refrigerators and aerosol sprays was a pernicious and aggressive creator of chorine gas that reacted with the earth’s ozone layer, depleting it’s size. If it had continued its attack, this would have exposed us to much more sunlight radiation, and cancer vulnerability. A warning shot that we exist in the universe only because of a (just not too) nearby sun, and a delicate blanket of gases protecting us from it.
SO₂/NOₓ (1990s):. Transport and industry, a topic we’ll see more of, is humanity’s development writ large and a sign of civilisation. But it comes at the price of the first two of the trinity of dioxide emissions. Sulphur and nitrogen dioxides (SO2 and NOx) are by-products of industrial power and transport. Both create pollution issues, and human respiratory problems. But technical fixes proved simple and cheaply implementable. Scrubbers and catalytic converters cleaned the air
For all the above – we got lucky.
Simple fixes, international co-operation, as the impact was seen as near-term and potentially life-threatening. Human instincts to react and resolve kicked in.
But these were million-tonne problems with single-policy fixes, and cheap technology hacks. In a world that largely co-operated.
Then there is the fifth problem. That overshadows them all.
The table below tells the tale – the story of the largest dioxide gas of them all.
Carbon dioxide, CO2.
CO2 is different.
Unlike lead or CFCs, it isn’t toxic or reactive. It’s a silent byproduct of burning fossil fuels, and it lingers.
Imagine CO₂ as billions of tiny heat mirrors in the atmosphere. They catch Earth’s outgoing heat and bounce some of it back, disturbing the planet’s fragile thermal blanket.
Unlike lead or CFCs, CO₂ doesn’t poison us—it does something far worse – it just quietly cranks up the world’s thermostat.
This makes CO2’s story so difficult to tell, it is literally a slow-burn and it literally is off the charts.
Cumulative Emissions (1970–2025)
CO₂e = CO₂ equivalent, including methane’s short-term heat-trapping impact.
CO₂’s scale is staggering: Every hour, we emit 4 million tonnes—200× more than all historic pollutants combined.
3. Why CO₂ is uniquely challenging and has fooled us all
CO2’s heat-trapping effect is cumulative - it lingers for centuries, its lack of reactivity is its super-power – staying in the atmosphere for year after year, sending heat back to earth. It has no agenda, just an ability to warm earth up forever.
It’s passive but pervasive—every tonne emitted adds to the problem. It only makes up 0.045% of the world’s air, but that is not comforting, it is concerning that this small amount has such as massive impact.
And it is increasing at 1% of this small amount every year.
As we have seen gases are a very big problem.
They are everywhere, including our lungs and organs and changing the structure of climate around us.
We exist in a vast cold dark universe, surrounded by at atmosphere that coddles us, keeps us alive.
If Earth were a basketball the atmosphere would be the thickness of a sheet of paper – astronauts in Apollo spacecrafts and those in the international space station note that it looks like a razor-thin blue line hugging the earth.
Earth’s atmosphere is not a vast ocean but a slim veil—a delicate balance of gases that sustains life. Protecting it requires recognizing its limits.
And the problem isn’t understanding the chemistry of CO2 - —it’s dealing with its scale and diminishing time to resolve its impact.
CO₂ carbon dioxide is emitted in billions of tonnes per year, not millions. That means every year (when you include methane its co-traveller in terms of climate impact) the planet emits over 40 billion tonnes.
Every hour we emit 4 million tonnes of CO2 – 200 times more than all the other historic pollutants combined.
Previous crises were acute; CO₂ is a slow-motion emergency.
Inaction may have irreversible impact.
CO2 has fooled us all.
By slowly accumulating in the atmosphere, and gradually creating a decade by decade problem, that needs a century long solution, perhaps more, it formed a planet-changing setback.
CO₂’s dread isn’t malice—it’s indifference. Its danger lies in its bland ubiquity. Every car, factory, and power plant adds more.
And unlike smog or acid rain, you can’t scrub it locally. The solution isn’t simple policy or low-cost tech fixes.
Mending its impact won’t take bans on single chemicals but reinventing how we power civilization.
The resolution will not be a sharp and clever policy repair, but an overhaul of how the planet works.
So let’s note the scale of the problem ahead.
Recall all the other gases were emitted in millions of tonnes, CO2 (and methane it’s co-worker, it causes the same issues) need to be numbered in the billions.
It is a trillion-ton behemoth, embedded in 80% of global energy.
You can’t ban it. You can’t scrub it.
You can only outcompete it.
In the final section, here is the pitch deck to us all for understanding what is ahead. Go use it
Why Climate Diplomacy Is Limited
CO₂ is a thermodynamic problem, not a moral one
Policy Trap: Net-zero pledges ignore energy density. Fossils dominate because they’re portable and dense.
Diplomacy’s Fatal Flaw: Nations won’t sacrifice growth for virtue—unless clean tech is cheaper.
The Tech Trio That Actually Works
Three massive energy technologies obey Wright’s Law (costs fall with scale):
Solar Panels: 99% cheaper since 1976. China now makes them for $0.15/watt
Batteries: 90% cheaper since 2010. CATL’s $60 - $100kWh cells make fossil fuel cars obsolete in terms of pricing withing the next 2-3 years
EVs: BYD sells electric cars for $11,000. In 2024, 40% of China’s auto sales are full electric.
The core take-away: These aren’t boutique innovations. They’re new-found technology energy commodities that can compete head-to-head with traditional fossil molecules, and accelerated by China’s manufacturing scale.
China’s Role: The Saudi Arabia of Machines
China isn’t saving the planet out of altruism. It’s exploiting comparative advantage:
Solar: 80% of global panels. China adds 216 GW/year and is fast-growing —equal to 200 nuclear plants (per year – only 380 nuclear plants have even been built, and three of those almost destroyed the planet)
Batteries: 70% of global supply. BYD and CATL outproduce Tesla 3-to-1.
Costs: Deep automation = prices others can’t match.
The industrial irony we need to overcome and move on from: China burns coal today to build the machines that remove coal tomorrow. But coal prices are down 20% this year, meaning that transition point likely reached.
Tariffs: A Victorian Relic in a Thermodynamic World
The U.S. and EU replay the 19th-century Corn Laws—protectionism that enriches elites:
Protectionism is century-old class warfare emerging again in a 21st century guise —the privileged sacrificing society to protect legacy industries that they benefit from.
EV Tariffs: US tariffs tax keeps Ford’s $50k trucks competitive. Result? Slower adoption, higher emissions, higher consumer costs, lower sales of US cars globally forever (the Chinese market is gone to them now). But corporate executives still well payed in the short-term.
Reality Check: Wright’s Law doesn’t care about borders. Solar and batteries will cheapen with or without tariff controls.
The Green Victorian Age
Tariffs won’t stop clean tech—they’ll stratify it:
Global South: Embraces $100 solar roof panels and $11k EVs from China.
West: Pays premiums for “Made in USA” tech, delaying climate progress, increasing purchaser costs. Paying a premium for a US or EU lap-top – is that likely ? Collapse of US / EU technology sectors unless revitalised.
The Real Loser is future Earth and the majority of today’s consumers: Delaying solar/EVs/ innovation by 10-20 years locks in 500+ billion more tonnes of CO₂ we could have side-stepped. And it brings high risks with almost no reward to the buyers today suffering higher technology prices.
What Winning Looks Like
To slash CO₂, and energy prices, embrace scale:
Flood the Market: Let wind, solar and battery technology out-compete fossils in power and transport globally, as soon as possible.
Innovate to support this transition: : Use software/AI for grid optimization, EV charging.
Call to Action: Advocate for policies that prioritize energy tech deployment over protectionism.
The Thermodynamic Truth
Fossil fuels dominated due to physics (30x the energy density of wood). Now, physics favors renewables:
Solar: $0.03/kWh in sunbelts, cheaper than coal.
Batteries: 500k+ cycles for grid storage.
No tariff can repeal these thermodynamic and atomic scale truths.
But they can make winners of out those who see this, and losers out of those who proudly are blind to physics, chemistry and maths. Either deliberately, or out of choice.
4. Do I allow Black Mirror to take over the ending ?
The climate crisis isn’t a policy puzzle—it’s a logistics challenge.
While many countries moralise and revel in ideological fantasies, distracted because of wealth in its leaderships amassed and hoarded, China’s factories churn out the machines that will (literally) power the transition.
This essay wasn’t written by an AI—it was prompt-engineered with DeepSeek, because staring down CO₂ requires tools that ignore dogma and optimize for scale.
The energy future will not be debated into success - it will be manufactured into existence.
Ok – it took over for a minute. Not a bad end-line.
Data Sources:
Solar/Battery Costs: BloombergNEF, Ember
EV Sales: International Energy Agency
China’s Coal Peak: Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air
Publish Note: This piece required 37 AI prompts, 4 existential sighs, and 1 deleted rant about U.S. trade policy. Thermodynamics remained unbothered.
Attribution: Co-authored with DeepSeek, an AI committed to scalable climate solutions.
DeepSeek is an AI trained on climate science, energy economics, and football analytics. It has strong opinions on solar manufacturing and weak opinions on the offside rule and VAR usefulness.
Existential sighs are its specialty. Lol.
Fantastic. Thank you
Hi Harry, great piece as always. You wrote that you used 37 AI prompts. I'd be curious to know what those were