To estimate how the emergence of LENR in the market place will predictable impact the US economy, it is best to study the known effects higher oil prices have.
US demand for oil arises from demand for the products that are made from it. When the price of petroleum products increases, consumers use more of their income to pay for oil-derived products, and their spending on other goods and services decline.
Every penny of increase in gas prices takes one billion dollars out of the U.S. economy. So when the price of gas goes up $1, that’s one hundred billion dollars sucked out of the U.S. economy, or about $1000 a year out of the typical American household.
Furthermore, oil is necessary for the production of a wide range of goods and services, because it is used for transportation in businesses of all types. Higher oil prices can cause worker layoffs and idling of plants if the cost increases can’t be passed onto the consumers, or cost increases cause consumer demand to slack.
Finally, higher oil prices cause increases in other energy prices.
Currently, LENR energy technology is little known and the market does not seriously expect it to be commercialized soon. That perception will change, (arguably) starting with the first independent confirmations of Defkalion LENR technology, continuing to grow with the first LENR generators introduced to the market, and finally reaching a fever pitch as the mass media bombards the public with analysis of future LENR applications, fueled by the sky high cost of oil.
According to Defkalion, 18 factories have been sold, and when each one is built it will produce 300,000 LENR generators per year. According to Rossi, construction of his first factory will begin in February, and will eventually produce a million LENR generators a year. Presumably the blue prints for this heavily automated plant will be cloned repeatedly thereafter. Such rapid expansion will very likely result in a public relations storm, and consequential market reaction.
There will be no immediate significant decrease in fossil fuel usage due to the commercialization of LENR, but there will predictably be a dramatic psychological impact. Investors will see the medium and long-term implications of significantly lower energy prices, and consequentially lower the assessed value of soon-to-be obsolete energy infrastructure, conventional energy companies, and long-term contracts for their relatively expensive product.
Furthermore, as the creative destruction of our current conventional energy infrastructure proceeds, more resources will be devoted to new and better ways to exploit the LENR exothermic reaction. As more and more LENR generators come on line, the trend will drive down the price of energy in the future’s market.
When the price of energy decreases, consumers will use less of their income to pay for energy-derived products, and their spending on other goods and services will predictably increase.
Furthermore, since energy is necessary for the production of a wide range of goods and services, lower energy prices will predictably cause the hiring of more workers and the expansion of plants because the cost decreases won’t always be passed onto the consumers, or cost decreases will lead consumer demand to increase.
To summarize, in my opinion the best way to estimate how the emergence of LENR onto the market place will effect our economy is to look at the know effects of higher oil prices. Take for instance the current spike in oil prices: just when companies have finally stepped up hiring, rising oil prices are threatening to halt the U.S. economy’s gains. On the other hand, LENR will predictably lower energy prices, amplifying U.S. economic gains.
Cheaper products, more jobs, more money to spend – WOW! The positive feedback effects could mean geometric economic expansion. The future will be so bright, we’ll have to wear shades!
Brad Arnold! Very good reporting but -What if ?! Andre Rossi’s E-Cat is not ready in the near future! to go to Market!
Defkalion, with their 18 factories each pouring out 300k LENR generators like sausages ought to negate Rossi’s possible (but not probable) no show on the market. The goal is successful commercialization, and the effect will primarily be psychological at first.
Ionly see one obstacle to LENR at home,
because it does not deppend on any ressource (nickel need is ridiculous), not patent(it seems too easy to copy and variate like rossi/defkalion did)
the only obstacle is radiation fear, precaution principle, …
it is the only method forr big incumbent enegry industry and for taliban malthusianists to block LENR bonanza.
I already see the attack of FUD (fear uncertainty and doubts), despites the numerous experiments, to introduce FUD in the debate…
if FUD win, LENR will be reserved to big corporation in occident, and energy will stay under control of the goldmann-sachs mafia…
I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, and by bet the farm, I mean it’s not worth two tugs on a dead dogs cock. Bogus beyond belief.
Enjoy.
So, why be yea here?
Tim’s reply is an example of cognitive dissonance.
This is dealt with at the 32nd min of this video by psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist in this worthy video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXiHStLfjP0
We can expect a lot more like it.
Excellent article!
I’d add, LENR will remove 600 million smog producing cars/ trucks from our planet within a decade. Yes you would drive a $100 month gas car into a lake for a car with almost free fuel. At least switch it over.
Big cars will make a comeback. Sailboats will lose popularity over powerboats. Hydrogen/steam/electric are all viable with ecat as car fuel.
Research in most other green technologies will die out. Who would want to buy a windmill now? Maybe the thousands of unemployed scientists can study LENR and/or build black market ecats.
How would police fight black-market ecats? If you had 10 in your car you could tell the cops they are for different types of cold fusion research. There will be no ecat sniffing dogs either.
Nations with little food/clean water can now desalinate cheaply and irrigate deserts until they can grow food.
Ecats can not only make our planet smog free and stop many air quality ailments, but also save lives by food/water production.
When the last windmill grinds to a halt, bird haters will have to kill them the old fashioned way, with guns.
Neither business entity mentioned has had its technology validated. Both also have refused a million dollar offer to test their technology. Although LENR may be real, possible scams could undercut further research. By the way, wake me in 30 years when the first home LENR device is sold to consumers.
wrong, if rossi refused the test (saying he have something else to do),
defkalion accepted… smith refused, pretending a problem with the NDA (not of the results but of the trade secrets inside the machine)… for me it look like a rtreat, realizing that defkalion will gain the million for sure…
LENR is not a miracle but a proved phenomenon (read the peer reviewed literature on that, starting from us navy spawar, and nasa).
rossi and defkalion just pretend to have a working machine using that pheonomenon…
rossi behave strangely, more like he vace problem to hide, than as if he run a scam.
defkalion behave as a corp, having tested hundreds of time his reactor, knowing it like I know my bike, and willing to clear the doubt definitively.
hard to imagine how the maistream can commit self delusion, ignoring well known facts, peer review litterature, convergent results, possible theories, and providing hatchman critic all the time not to face the reality.
Tim’s obscene (and thus irrelevant) comment aside, LENR production will change the world. Simply by using Rossi’s Ecat or Defkalion’s similar model, common households will be able to reduce their energy costs for the most likely use of electricity, heating water. Think of the E-cat as replacing the hot water tank, and unlike a gas-powered or electrically-powered instant hot water heater, this device is making the reaction to heat the water. Most solar installed on a house is to first to heat water for washing dishes and showers. This is 40-80% of a typical household’s electricity/gas bill each month.
For businesses, hot water is used less in washrooms, but once you turn LENR into electricity-making devices the value is huge. This is the reason the 1 MW E-cats are being sold and made. Each hospital around the world needs one as their emergency backup generator, and with additional Ecats, this can be their primary power system. LENR has the ability to decentralize the electrical power grid of many countries, just when the aging power grid needs to be updated and repaired. Cities and states can save money by decentralizing instead, and relieving their power grid of the ever-increasing peak loads.
Outside of the house, this will not change the average person’s life because the Ecat is still too specialized for automobiles. Yes, it can help charge electrically-driven battery-type cars. But we are going to be using oil-derived products for a long, long time until we get solid-state free energy generators the size of the battery pack in electrical vehicles. The same goes for aircraft.
The military importance of LENR is huge. This is the reason submarines and aircraft carriers have fission reaction piles (or reactors, to use the modern terminology). Build several LENR reactors to heat the water for the turbines, keep a few pounds of powered nickel onboard, and your ship is good for decades. Apply the same principle to yachts and other private craft, and people can stay at sea for years. Most military units run on diesel generators right now for their headquarters and operation centers in the field. LENR can change that.
So the average homeowner has limitless hot water, with extremely low-cost electricity at their house, a large outdoor heated pool, an electrical car whose batteries are recharged each night at the house, with more money in the owner’s pocket as the LENR pays for itself in a few months. He can cool or heat the house without governmental oversight because he’s not on the city grid. He can leave the lights on 24/7 if he wishes. His electrical bill is nonexistent, because of his LENR units and a small battery bank for backup.
LENR will be one of the ways to change the world – if it can be delivered as promised.
On: “This is the reason the 1 MW E-cats are being sold and made”
Are we really sure they’re being made? Remember the picture of Rossi in an overcoat sitting beside the 1-Mw E-Cat destained for the “U.S. customer”, and which never left Italy?
Check your sources on that. One chooses what to believe on the Internet when there is no first-hand Chemical Body knowledge.
The companies racing to produce a commercial product don’t care what Virtual Entities like you and I say, they’re creating a new reality, not talking about it, and they have a timetable that changes daily as technical issues arise and need to be addressed.
I imagine things will take longer than previously stated, it always does with new technology. My sources, engineers involved in the lab, tell me work is ongoing.
I think you have the cart ahead of the hoarse hee, There is No proof of LENR yet
Good article. I’d just like to add one thought. Oil prices will fall immediately once the major media get ahold of this and talk about it. The ONLY reason oil prices are high now is because people believe we are running out. Therefore the current price is based almost completely on perceived future value. As soon as investors (and oil producing countries)realize that the value of their oil holdings will be worth less (or worthless?) in the future, they will try to dump their holdings before the price drops any lower. When you see that start to happen, sell short!
My first post was just a test to see if it would actually show up.
Whoever designs these websites where you can only see a few of the words at a time when you post a reply should be fired.
OK
No one wants to see free energy or LENR more than I, Sterling Allan can attest to that.
But there has not been absolute proof of LENR yet.
There will not be proof until a LENR inventor brings a disassembled E-Cat etc to an examining lab, Assembles it in front of several engineers in several specialties, Operates it with monitoring and equipment to detect hidden power sources like beamed microwaves or out of visual spectrum lasers etc and then the engineers are allowed to disassembled the device completely and then go through the whole process on their own with the inventor absent.
Unless as some inventors claim that they are going to start selling small space heater versions but we all remain waiting to see that ?
The secrecy of Mr. Rossi who claims to have an E-Cat factory here in MIami where I live goes to such extremes that he will not even let me see the automated robot E-Cat building factory, Do you actually believe there are robot assembly lines for anything less than General Motors ?
Of course not, He will not show it because he does not have a Miami E-Cat factory.
I have asked to see it, I have asked to work for him at it, Who does ? Only robots ?
Then it just spreads, Now this South Africa over unity claimant, Does not even give it’s company name, it’s address, it’s CEO’s name the inventor’s name ?
What kind of fools do they think we are ?
Thomas L. Buyea, Miami, Fl.
You are no fool, just a frustrated observer as am I. But, your mixing in of the latest claims of a magical motor was just obfuscation. You and I want to believe in a better, brighter future. But the future sometimes arrives at its own, frustratingly slow pace.
What if’s sure are fun. Here’s a whole “what if” scenario I found:
https://plus.google.com/113163888439328035664/posts/8fYj9X1qW88
It’s all utter speculation. Lot’s of it pretty bogus, but still, it reads like a science fiction novel, or maybe a Crichton.
Interesting article but you really, really need to copy edit what you write or better still have someone else do that for you. For example the first paragraph reads:
“To estimate how the emergence of LENR in the market place will predictable impact the US economy, it is best to study the known effects higher oil prices have.”
Try instead: “…will predictably impact…”
While that may come across as nit picking, being grammatically correct really does count. i found many other gross errors in the writing that come across as amateurism and I suggest that you re-read what you type, then sleep on it, then read it again very carefully the next day, then ask someone else to copy edit the piece and only then after reading it again post the piece. That bit of advice goes for all the contributed pieces. Errors everywhere and not enough fingers to spare.
I do, however, appreciate your effort.
The economic impact will be prolonged and very disruptive. Bailing out the antiques of utilities and their owner the pension funds, banks and insurance co’s will be a real question for a government.
The transition and it’s political problems is, I suspect, what has kept the Government from being up front on this. Note all work at the Naval Research labs was cancelled or at least taken ” Black’.
Chu as a scientist should be on top of this and likely is but too much of a political coward to do something in the national interest other than run and hide.
Bernanke, little timmy and the economic team is likely also running and adjusting their personal portfolios before the market storm. The white House,playing footsie with the energy industry and shaking out the dollars for the campaign.
Curious is it not that Obama just approved a Super Pact which up to now he has condemned for secretive contributions. Might as well make the money while he can but yet truth deferred is truth denied. We all suffer for the delays.
Think for a moment what the Rossi Ecat would mean for mankind. Freedom to pursue our most basic instincts. Look up a science fiction movie called “Foribidden planet”.
All the worlds religions are now free to try and out – procreate thier rivals! We have currently 7 BILLION human beings living on our planet. Imagine if ALL of those 7 billion
people had access to a machine that could produce limitless amounts of power for next to nothing! Marco Rubio is now proposing a provision to the Health Care Law (OBAMACARE)
that would eliminate BIRTH CONTROL as he is a staunch Catholic. Get my drift? If we had limitless access to almost free energy waht would that do to our planet? If every human being on this planet had
access to limitless free energy what would be the consequences? We are not SKEPTICAL enough for this technology. Half of all americans (just americans) believe in SUPERNATURAL dieties, GHOSTS, MIND READERS,PEOPLE WHO TALK TO THE DEAD!
we are not ready for such technology! If you free the entire population of the earth from striving to obtain sustenance and direct them to trying to out procreate thier religious rivals you have an unprecedented recipe for disaster
And that is not all we could very well heat the planet with all our Ecats untill it is unlivable! (Arthur C Clarke)
I remember a quote from Arthur C. Clarke about his thoughts on the subject.
he said, if energy was free then no one would turn anything off. the result would be trillion of heat generating devices and the long term result would be a planet similar to Venus. I agree with his long term view, simply because I believe his conclusion to be true until dis proven.
Heat energy so proliferous that it could wipe out humanity! THE PROBLEM IS WE DO NOT YET HAVE ENOUGH SKEPTICS TO QUESTION RELIGIOUS BELIEFS IN DIETIES!
To counter your argument about SKEPTICS I say we need more NOW!
So JetMech, you’re gonna whine to BigBro to pay for your condoms and birth control pills?
Can’t believe a guy named JetMech would be a Luddite.
“Free” energy will almost certainly result in space travel, so the new frontier will absorb the extra people. In addition, while I agree that using the Carnot cycle (i.e. heat transformed into mechanical energy or electricity) would cause more heat to flow into the environment, our planet is surrounded by the vaccum of space (i.e. a vast heat sink), so it ought not be too hard to pump that extra heat into space.
While there is much to fear about the future, one thing is certain – we are doomed if we don’t change. Personally, I’d rather change by embracing the technology of abundance.
Hello All, I suggest that all of the skeptics regarding the nature of Condensed Matter and its future applications visit https://www.coldfusionnow.org Watch all of the Colloquiums, interviews, media events and some of the physics of it. Hey, I’ve got to tell you, it looks pretty good. When someone with the credentials of Mr. Zawodny talks about the world changing and transformational nature of the physics, you’d better listen.
UP HAPPENS!!!!!!!!!!!