Power Density as the Primary Metric of Energy Transition: A Critique of Capacity-Based Planning and a Modular Alternative

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a critical framework for evaluating energy transition metrics and highlights physical limits of storage.

🏢実務担当者:May inform long-term energy procurement and technology selection, but the proposed technology is unverified.

🏛政策担当者:Suggests reconsidering capacity-based targets and incorporating power density and material constraints into energy planning.

Global energy planning since 2015 has been organised around installed capacity as its primary unit of account. This paper argues that the choice of metric, rather than the choice of technology, is the principal source of the discrepancy between projected and realised outcomes. We show that the 2015-2026 programme was the first energy transition in recorded industrial history to move downward in power density, and that four independent constraints - siting density, capacity factor, the thermodynamics of storage, and the material inventory required for storage at grid scale - are insensitive to capital deployment. On a per-hectare basis, nuclear generation delivers approximately 50 MW/ha, onshore wind 0.13 MW/ha and photovoltaics 0.04 MW/ha, a spread of up to three orders of magnitude. A frequently cited global storage requirement of 326 TWh implies 52.16 Mt of lithium metal, approximately 1.7 times all proven world reserves and 326 years of current battery manufacturing output; the same duty in iron requires 1.1-1.3 Gt against annual world steel production above 1.8 Gt. We further note that all end-use energy degrades to heat, imposing a radiative ceiling on planetary consumption that is independent of source and that renders consumption-based civilisational metrics, including the Kardashev scale, unsuitable as planning objectives. We then describe an alternative organised around ambient-temperature deep-vacuum phase separation - a single physical mechanism operating at 6-40 C and approximately 1 kWh/t with recuperation to 98% - and its application to three domains: containerised dispatchable generation, seawater desalination at 0.72 kWh/m3 with 100% recovery and zero brine, and closed-loop cooling for thermal and nuclear plant, which removes the geographic dependence of the densest generation class on river and coastal water. Limitations, unverified claims and the verification protocol required before commercial deployment are stated explicitly in Section 9.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21675915first seen 2026-08-17 04:56:25