Great Antidote Extra: Eli Dourado on Energy Abundance

Eli Dourado recently returned to the Great Antidote podcast to talk about what energy abundance is and ideas for how to get there. Dourado was a guest on the Great Antidote for the first time in November of 2020 discussing technology and stagnation. Some things have changed in the last three years but others remain the same. Here’s the paper that is central to Dourado and Sellgren’s recent conversation, “Energy Superabundance: How Cheap, Abundant Energy Will Shape Our Future,” coauthored with Austin Vernon and published by The Center for Growth and Opportunity, a nonprofit at Utah State University. 

Dourado started his previous podcast with pessimism and ends his most recent one with optimism. In both episodes, he talks about decreases in the growth rate of total factor productivity, also known as the why-we-don’t-have-flying-cars-or-moon-hotels yet rate. 

Dourado and Sellgren spend time in both episodes talking about an aspirational future and the challenges to realizing it. Permitting, regulatory burdens, and litigious opponents are clear villains. In both episodes, you’ll hear about the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) and you can read (much) more from Dourado on NEPA here. In the recent one, you’ll also hear about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

One of the most interesting parts is hearing the differences and similarities between the two episodes. In Dourado’s first episode, “energy abundance” as a term is absent but Dourado does talk about the unrealized goal of energy too cheap to meter in a longer list that also focuses on health, housing, and transportation complacency and regulatory burdens. The past episode also inspired a chuckle from me at his description of how technology, as a sector, has had a lot of innovation as my current podcast list is full of episodes from other podcasts concerned about the terrifying possibilities of Artificial Intelligence leaps. Elon Musk is also a more aspirational figure in the original episode but does not get mentioned in the current one. 

In both podcasts, Dourado makes the claim that things staying the same (stagnation) or getting worse leads to social unrest. At different times, he discusses populism and nihilism as possible reactions to a no growth world.  He also takes care to praise the modern climate change and environmental movements for not being complacent and talks about how incorporating them and their concerns can be part of a strategy for growth and talks about how they are not necessarily an antagonistic interest group for pursuing energy abundance. 

I'm sure you have some questions too. Here are a few of mine. 

1 - Dourado, understandably, focuses on the barriers in the U.S. Why don't we see  examples of innovations in other countries that have more liberal regulatory regimes in these areas? Are there entrepreneurs experimenting under other regulatory regimes and having successes there that we don’t hear about? Is the U.S., even with its barriers, still one of the best places for innovation in these areas?

2 - What is the evidence of the last three years that leads Dourado to focus on energy abundance as opposed to the other areas of concern he originally talked about (health, housing, transportation) as a place for increasing productivity? He gives an example of recent successes in housing from YIMBYS (Yes-In-My-Back-Yard activists and researchers). How would these areas rank against each other in potential for economic growth acceleration? 

3 - The Center for Growth and Opportunity, at least according to their website, is more interested in “transformative,” “disruptive,” and “dramatic” improvements than marginal improvements. And yet, ideas like reforming NEPA or expanding the use of nuclear energy could be seen as marginal - not dramatic - recommendations. Is it possible to have transformative, disruptive, dramatic regulatory changes in a modern, regulatory state?

4- If Dourado’s other claim, that slow progress is best for preventing social unrest, should marginal changes be preferred to dramatic ones? 

5 - (Half-jokingly) how much are my concerns listening to this episode based on the fact that I recently finished watching the HBO mini-series Chernobyl? (It’s fantastic but deeply sad and concerning).

6 - Adam Smith’s famous example of the Ambitious Poor Man’s Son is an image of a man whose aspirational hunger makes him personally miserable but his activity benefits those around him. As wealth increases around the world, can we expect Middle Class Men’s Sons to act similarly? 

Reading list from “futuristic” VRGs: Star Trek and Adam Smith and Time Travel and Adam Smith at AdamSmithWorks and a Foundations of Modern Environmentalism VRG at OLL.

Erik W. Matson’s Adam Smith’s Space Odyssey at AdamSmithWorks

Russ Roberts EconTalk on the Least Pleasant Jobs

Garett Jones responds to Eli Dourado on whether we can believe we’re still in the short run at EconLib

Shanon FitzGerald’s Why Human Space Exploration Matters at EconLib

Jonathan H. Adler’s National Environmental Policy Act and Chevron Deference Aren’t the Problem at Law&Liberty

Richard Morrison’s book review of Alex Epstein’s Fossil Future at Law&Liberty

Related Great Antidote episodes

Adam Thierer on Permissionless Innovation
Ed Glaeser on the Unseen Beauty of Cities
Tyler Cowen on His Love Letter to Big Biz