Towards a Kardashev Type I civilisation

The recent achievements in Paris, where global agreement has been reached to work to limit climate change, creates a context in which to think about how our energy usage as a civilisation can progress in general. We are establishing a basis on which responsible energy usage can increase while irresponsible energy usage will decline. This has been necessitated by the impact our energy usage has for the planet we all share.

As we think about energy usage on a planetary scale it is reasonable to relate the situation we have reached historically to the Kardashev scale. This was devised by Soviet astronomer Nicolai Kardashev in 1964 and categorises civilisations according to their energy consumption. A Type I civilisation consumes all energy resources available on its planet, Type II societies harvest all the energy from a star, Type III from a galaxy, and so on.

This has been reformulated as a logarithmic scale by Carl Sagan to provide intermediate values. For example, humanity currently sits somewhere above 0.7 on this scale. As we consider our energy consumption in terms of global stewardship it is natural to reflect on what is required for us to progress towards Kardashev Type 1. How will the way we think about ourselves and the resources we use have to change in order to achieve that without destroying ourselves and the planet in the process.

Our civilisation until now has been what might be characterised as a "camp-fire" civilisation: to keep things going, just send someone out to get some more firewood. But as we have advanced from somewhere close to Type 0 towards Type 1 we find we are running out of forest. Today we don't just mean trees currently growing, of course, we mean all the trees that have ever grown, then been subsumed beneath strata of rock and transformed into coal. As it attempts to short-circuit the carbon cycle by digging up energy stored in fossil fuels, the camp-fire economy treats energy as though it were material, as though it was firewood.  

But as we progress towards Kardashev Type I, we find we are moving towards a global "circular" economy. What does this mean? All materials will be re-usable and will be circulated through sustainable cycles of economic activity - production, distribution, consumption - using renewable energy to fulfil the necessary power requirements. Recycling will be powered by renewables. We won't be bringing significantly more material into circulation, and the energy we consume will be used to maintain the circulation of the material we already use sustainably in these cycles of economic activity. This resembles the natural cycles of energy and bio-matter of which we are part, and indeed "bio-mimicry" is an important part of circular economics.

There are some consequences to becoming a circular economy. Under these circumstances models of economic growth cannot be based on conventional ideas relating to the reproduction and accumulation of more "stuff". This would entail unsustainable extraction of raw materials from finite and depleted reserves and/or interruption of sustainable cycles to amass "wealth". Manufacturing (although the term "manufacturing" is no longer entirely apposite) will be refocussed on automated processes of recovery of material already in circulation and its reapplication to its original or alternative purposes.

This will mean costs will be increasingly represented by the energy these processes require, as the costs associated with the extraction of raw materials are eliminated and only the costs of transporting and manipulating materials already in circulation are accrued. The energy for this transportation, aggregation, manipulation and distribution of materials will be provided from renewable resources that have no fuel costs.

Since the materials used to construct renewable energy infrastructure are subject to the same considerations, the contributions to the cost of energy associated with the infrastructure for generating renewable energy itself will decline. Eventually all costs associated with this as with  any other infrastructure, other than fuel costs, will be eliminated, and as there are no fuel costs, conventional notions of added value will no longer apply.

Currently renewable energy has introduced disruptive feedback into energy costs which drive the relative cost of renewable energy down compared to conventional dispatchable methods. The variability and intermittency of renewable resources with no fuel costs must be accommodated by conventional supplies connected to the same transmission network in a way that has adverse economic consequences for conventional supplies and ultimately makes renewables more economically attractive in the short term. We are already seeing this reflected in the cost of energy, with onshore wind outperforming other sources in many parts of the world. Indeed, irrespective of idealogical considerations about the environment, this economic process will drive us towards sustainability and "save the day".

In addition, we will see that existing infrastructure for conventional resources will still be utilised in the interim. Renewable energy will increasingly be used to synthesise hydrocarbons that can be exploited using existing networks, and will be stored in forms that can be more easily dispatched.

Circular economics takes the absence of fuel costs associated with renewable energy and provides a mechanism whereby this ultimately eliminates the cost of energy entirely. Then the economy becomes its own raw material, circulated indefinitely through cycles of production, distribution, and consumption at no cost, because the wind, rain and sun are free.

It is possible that conflict will arise less often as we move from a camp-fire economy to a circular economy. There will no longer be any need to compete over resources which are stranded or neglected as obsolete or too costly. Wars are fought over low value commodities that are available on tap, in order to secure access to the tap. Renewables take away the tap.

Effectively human economic activity becomes just one more natural cycle driven by the sun, with the exception that it is subject to direct immediate conscious human technological innovation and guidance rather than the laborious iteration and refinement of more or less successful natural phenotypes over multiple generations of hyper-aggressive optimisation. It is this distinction that allows us to characterise human activity as a civilisation mediated by culture, rather than an organism mediated by nature. This is why we are talking about economics rather than biology.    

If we still desire economic models that require growth, in order to stimulate (increasingly obsolete) motives of profit and the perception of personal gain during a transitional period, these will have to rely on value added in ways that do not involve open-ended reproduction and distribution of material artefacts that can be accumulated.

As a result of these considerations "stuff" no longer equals "wealth". When the generation of what we consider to be "wealth" degrades the very systems that allowed us accumulate "stuff" in the first place, adjustments are inevitable and we lurch from one crisis to the next. In the only kind of economics that has any realistic longevity on this planet of limited material resources, and unlimited renewable energy to manipulate them with, we need to reconsider entirely what it is that makes us rich and what it is to which we should aspire. Wealth will become more experiential, more related to one's education, creativity, and human interactions, and will not be governed by any sort of accountancy as its abundance can only be limited by our intellectual, artistic and ethical ambitions. No material costs or limitations arise in the creation, reproduction, distribution and consumption of our intellectual, artistic and ethical assets.

The situation described above is similar to the scenario discussed in Marx's "fragment on machines" which has been referred to in descriptions of the disruptive influence of information technology. In this case, the ability to reproduce information - to copy data - at negligible cost, undermines normal capitalist ideas of the addition of value to the point that a new paradigm is required. What I would contend is that, as we move towards the kind of circular economy necessary to be a Kardashev Type 1 civilisation, the same process is being witnessed in relation to energy as is seen in relation to information.

Ultimately, in a post-scarcity society at ease with rather than impoverished by a leisure facilitated through technologies that are as much art as science, where everything is worth nothing according to conventional ideas of value, wealth is time.

Time well spent.