Awesome post on energy and time by Nate Hagens; excerpt below:
Is a BTU today worth more or less than a BTU ten years from now? It's seemingly an easy question. A BTU will heat one pound of water one degree whether its 2010, 2020, or 2100. And, in a world of entropy where the easiest and best quality energy sources (generally) get used up first, one unit of energy should increase in value over time, as its ability to accomplish work becomes more valuable to society as time progresses. However this is solely a physical perspective, one that ignores biology of time preference. Once humans with finite lifespans and cultures with sunk costs enter the picture, a BTU today, behaviorally, becomes worth more than one in the future. This fact has pretty big implications for biophysical analysis of energy alternatives, which will be explored below.
This article sees energy as a traded commodity, which for most forms of energy (particularly oil) this is the most probable form. However there are a small group on energies where the primary resource is free solar energy where the energy end user can also be the energy producer. Where this is possible the energy end user has very significant cost advantages. In the energy producer to energy user relationship the energy product is only available to the end user at a retail price, therefore the cost benefit to an end user to become a producer is significantly different to that of a mass energy production enterprise
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