Energy is probably the most complicated industrial sector I can think of. - Ultimate Idea Maze in terms of different power production and storage methods each with unique trade-offs: Large-scale fission, SMR's, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, natural gas, etc. Fusion is it's own zoo entirely. - Regionally variable resource availability, especially wind and sunlight - Hugely complicated regulatory environment that both inflates and depresses costs, shifting true market forces. E.g. cost inflation for nuclear, huge subsidies for solar, tax credits, etc. - Extremely polarized public sentiments around different generating methods. National economies absolutely rely on hydrocarbons but everyone hates them; people either love or hate fission; fusion seems like the silver bullet but extremely technically challenging; solar has huge material costs but 'greenest' public image - You can't even sell to the market in a straightforward way. Massive backlog in new transmission infrastructure and projects waiting to get connected - Highly variable hourly and daily demand without good ways of storing excess capacity. You basically have to sell it right away since it can't be easily stored at the scale an economy needs. Constant operational risks for both producers and consumers Yet it's by far the most important resource for civilizational wealth and material abundance by far. There is no single more important thing to increase production of, and no sector has a more complicated regulatory environment nor as many engineering trade-offs in implementation. Energy is the ultimate civilizational engineering labyrinth. If we can solve energy such that its too cheap to meter, every single thing in society becomes cheaper, every engineering challenge shifts in our favor. Getting it wrong means civilizational collapse; getting it right in the wrong way means ecosystem collapse. Thread the Needle. Walk the Maze. Energy abundance or stagnation.