Comment by hnaccount_rng

Of course it seems like wishful thinking! Because that’s the historic norm. Energy was (in some way) always the limiting factor. And every time energy access got meaningfully cheaper society massively reorganised around it.

And yes “energy” in general won’t be free. We still need to build the generation and distribution systems. But we reached a point where just dumping solar on all _new_ roofs rounds to essentially free (the costs are the labor and the access to qualified personnel). The exact same is currently happening to batteries. Any transformer project will be able to just integrate 4-12 hours of batteries without getting meaningfully more expensive. The same for every domestic or industry service upgrade

We are not there yet. But give it another 5 years and we will. And then we are only talking about financing what little distribution system we will need (basically you only need average-sized cables not peak-sized ones) and a capacity market for backup power systems (also only for average residual demand). And those we simply cannot (efficiently) finance by a per-kWh-used charge