Optimistic Storm: A future powered by Ingenuity. The end of the fossil fuel era is the title of my latest book. Innovation is changing our world faster than imaginable, commercialising innovative technologies faster than most people realise. Disruption is the result of multiple new technologies and new business models. Check out some of the over 250 articles on energy disruption, transportation, food and agriculture.
Change comes from prosperity. We can be optimistic.
Optimistic Storm: Pt 1 & 2 Available Now.
- Part 1: End of the Fossil Fuel Era, Energy and Transportation Edition 1
- Part 1: 2nd Edition available in Sept 2025
- Part 2: AI for food to Feed all, End Drudgery, and Restore our Environment
Buy ebooks or paperbacks directly on Amazon Kindle or purchase below direct from the author.
- E-book – Epub or Kindle
- Paperback
- Audio
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4th Disruption. End of Fossil Fuel Era
Blog Posts – Recent
Scroll through the articles, or the full list is in the footer. Down there at the bottom ↓↓
- Project Innerspace Geothermal
Geothermal energy, although currently contributing less than 1% to global energy production, has the potential to supply 140 times the world’s energy demand. Next-generation geothermal, including engineered, advanced, and hybrid systems, can be used for heating, cooling, and power generation . Scaling geothermal requires leveraging the oil and gas industry’s expertise and infrastructure. - Fuel and Labour Truck Costs in Australia
Fuel costs of large trucks suggest electric class 8 trucks would be economic. Turns out labour costs is the major item. Will humanoid robots or autonomous vehicles reduce operating cost so much that autonomous trucks take over trucking. - EV Truck Uptake is Surging
Global electric truck sales are growing with sales in 2024 over 90,000 units and a year-on-year growth rate of almost 80%. Surge is largely driven by China, where sales more than doubled between 2023 and 2024, accounting for over 80% of global sales. China leads the way, but other markets increase electric truck adoption. With Tesla Semi soon to be produced, trucks will surge.
Why Optimistic Storm? Because change management relies on four core principles and these are :
- Understand Change.
- Plan Change.
- Implement Change.
- Communicate Change.
Change is happening rapidly. Climate change. Renewable energy. Transportation. This period of human existence is one of the great revolutions of the last 20,000 years, and the changes will be as or more profound as previous revolutions. These are somewhat different to the energy transitions.
- First Industrial Revolution 1765
- Second Industrial Revolution 1870.
- Third Industrial Revolution 1969.
- Four – Multiple – End of Fossil Fuel, Food for All, End of Work
This will be more profound than previous. It is the end of the fossil fuel era, with the rise of renewable energy and spell the end of individual ownership of cars to a public transport system on demand. The disruption in food will spell the biggest change to agriculture since we began to farm. The rise of robots will spell the end of dangerous, dirty and drudgery.
Commercialising Innovative Technologies
About 20 years ago, an astute Canadian told me there are 3 reasons people change.
- They make money
- They lose money
- It is the law
The strongest change is when there are 2 factors in play. So change can be sudden. Whenever something is 1/10th of the cost, change will happen. Adoption is often 10 years to get to 1% of the market. Then within a decade, it can hold 80% of the market. Often it is not a 1 to 1 substitution.
Article Perspectives
Check out the various recent blogs. I try to view these subjects from 3 perspectives.
- Technology. Does it work? We know that R&D and scaling of solution will drive up the tech, and decrease costs
- Economics. Are the compelling financial or economic drivers for change? Will these change with R&D or scaling?
- Politics. What are the institutional barriers or the individuals belief systems?
Innovation is never a straight line. And forecasts are often wrong.
Challenges to Transition
The International Energy Agency says the data shows a looming mismatch between the world’s strengthened climate ambitions and the availability of critical minerals that are essential to realising those ambitions. This in the energy market is also true to other aspects of change over the next 10 years.
Part 2: AI – Food to feed all, Restore Our Environment, Better Health, and end Drudgery
- AI is driving change across multiple sectors.
- In the white-collar or knowledge worker labour market.
- In the blue-collar and robotics AI will end drudgery
- AI is enabling change in food
- AI and multi-omics are driving changes for better health.
- We will have abundance of food
- We no longer need to farm most of our animals. We won’t need to kill 1,000 animals for every human on the file.
- These changes enable regreening the earth and come back from the edge of disaster from climate change.
This book is available now, provides optimism in multiple sectors.
Part 3: Hydrogen and Nuclear Fail
In Part 1 and Part 2 we see innovations that disrupt our society. There are also innovations that fail to progress. They either are part of the old era (nuclear) or have been thought to part of the new era, but fail either on technology, economic or social reasons.
This book will be released in before November 2025.
