When John Kerry lands at Cop28 in the United Arab Emirates next week, the United States’ climate envoy is scheduled to make an announcement that could turn out to be one of the most consequential made by any politician this century.
The 79-year-old former senator, diplomat and one-time presidential candidate will unveil the US government’s strategy for commercialising fusion: the holy grail of energy policy. This is going to be a big moment in the race to create a limitless, potentially cheap, non-polluting source of power, as the US explains how it will incentivise more private investors to pour resources into making fusion viable.
Fusion replicates what happens inside a star. It creates energy by fusing nuclei rather than splitting atoms as in nuclear fission. Very little waste results and the power plants, if they prove operable, will be able to provide electricity non-stop to the grid, unlike intermittent wind farms or solar power. Obviously, they will also dramatically reduce the need to extract fossil fuels from the ground.
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It all sounds too good to be true, surely? The long-heralded fusion revolution has been billed as the future of energy for so many decades that some healthy scepticism is justified about a process that has yet to be perfected.
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There have been false starts and fraudulent claims down the decades but in recent years a series of breakthroughs have accelerated the process. In December 2022 physicists in California announced that, for the first time, an experiment had produced more energy than was put in. Now, it could produce many times more. There is scientific excitement — and no wonder.
The 29th fusion energy conference held in London by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in October attracted close to 2,000 attendees. There are now at least 120 fusion devices built or being built around the world, according to the IAEA. The US and UK have signed a bilateral deal on co-operation. Europe’s ITER (the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) in Provence is the focal point of an international research programme. ITER has been hit by cost overruns and claims that a project with 35 countries is too bureaucratic.
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Of the many countries experimenting with fusion, the US seems the economy most capable, if any is, of turning this into a commercial proposition that could eventually replace much of the power supply. Although this is in part down to the heft of the US government and its long experience in funding research, it is also about the scale and power of American financial markets. When the government announces a tax break for investment, it encourages huge amounts of private investment that multiply the effect. Europe has no equivalent to those extremely deep pools of private capital. Money washes across the US, with investors looking coast to coast for exciting companies to back.
The chief executive of one such company was in London last week to attend the government’s investment summit. Bob Mumgaard, of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), has a PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in plasma physics and an unshowy demeanour. He speaks calmly about the transformational possibilities if his team, and other companies, can get this right. CFS has raised $1.8 billion and is halfway through building its prototype, with a target for beginning commercialisation in 2030. It is also looking at sites in Britain.
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Silicon Valley has started to invest heavily in fusion, sensing the scale of the extraordinary potential. Investors have figured out that industrial and scientific innovation happens most successfully when energy is cheap and plentiful, when the innovator doesn’t need to even think about energy as an impediment and the mind ranges free. That is how the Industrial Revolution was unleashed, because by geological accident Britain sat atop seemingly endless coal. A repeat, with global access to clean energy this time, could be coming with all manner of inventions. Or, at the very least, the entire world will get the chance of endless access to air conditioning, light and heating without emissions.
There is scope for a backlash, obviously, because fusion is a so-called moonshot technology that is not yet guaranteed to work, even if it is getting close. Some of those who have already invested a great deal in renewables — wind and solar — will be wary. Vested interests are a powerful force when there is a limited amount of government subsidy to go round. Why, it will be said, invest hope in the dream of fusion when we know wind power works, at least when the wind blows?
The answer is that governments and markets will have to keep options open. Small modular reactors of the kind being built by Rolls-Royce are based on the reliable technology that already works on nuclear-powered submarines. And yes, even though cleaner fuel is coming, fossil fuels are going to be needed for a long while yet. This may all take a while.
But we should look forward to Kerry’s announcement, not least because the geopolitical implications are profound. Widespread fusion would mean the democracies being far less dependent on the Chinese Communist Party for solar and wind technology. Last year China’s manufacturers supplied nearly 60 per cent of all installed capacity globally, according to the Global Wind Energy Council. The West wouldn’t need to buy so many Chinese rare earth minerals. The upsides in terms of energy security are obvious.
If, some distant day in the future, fusion is firing away, it is likely that generations to come will give thanks for the work of the British Quaker who first glimpsed the prospect. Sir Arthur Eddington, in his paper The Internal Constitution of the Stars, published in 1926, first identified the fusion process by taking a good educated guess.
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Now the realisation of his vision is tantalisingly close. We hear a lot of gloom about impending ecological doom. Here’s a glimpse of something better.
