stacksatsio on Nostr: Yes that’s one example; with an abundance of electricity much more R&D would have ...

Yes that’s one example; with an abundance of electricity much more R&D would have gone into both storage and transmission. And these things tend to have a compounding effect, the scientists working on this in the 70s would have taught those in the 80s who would have worked on improvements and taught those in the 90s etc - the improvements would have compounded over time instead we had very little R&D in that space, the same as there’s been very little in nuclear as there has been a dearth of expertise.

So better battery tech would have been expected, but likely also better ways of transmitting that electricity (I’m thinking of things like Tesla built way back when) such that it wouldn’t have had to be limited to wired.

But also, it’s possible they’d have been able to use that abundant electricity for other fuel sources ala hydrogen which is today very inefficient, but possibly with 5 decades of development behind it could have been drastically improved if it could have been easily made all along.

These are the tradeoffs people don’t seem to think much about - the opportunity costs of 50 years of the petrodollar and restricting nuclear power.