“What’s the End of Electricity? Looking at the Future Competitive Landscape Through the History of Energy Evolution”

The recent view that “the end of computing power is electricity” has sparked heated debate. Many people assume this refers to AI, but it actually points to a deeper issue—energy is once again becoming a core variable in global industrial competition. If the end of computing power is electricity, then what is the end of electricity? Today, we’ll delve into this question from the perspective of the history of energy evolution.Ren Zhengfei once mentioned in an interview: “Artificial intelligence may be the last technological revolution for human society, and of course, there may also be nuclear fusion of energy.” The profound meaning of this statement lies not in “artificial intelligence,” but in revealing a repeatedly verified historical pattern: behind almost every technological revolution lies a leap in energy utilization methods. Technological revolutions never arrive suddenly, but are the inevitable result of mature energy conditions.Looking back at the development of industrial civilization, there is a neglected main thread: what truly changes the world is not the machines themselves, but the energy source that drives them.In the First Industrial Revolution, people remember the steam engine, but the core breakthrough was coal becoming a stable energy source. Before this, factories relied on waterwheels and wind power, could only be built along rivers, and had to shut down when water levels dropped, making production entirely dependent on the weather. The discovery of coal made energy, for the first time, mineable, transportable, and storeable, and could be continuously released according to production needs. With the help of the steam engine, factories could operate 24 hours a day, ushering in an era of continuous industrial production.Therefore, the First Industrial Revolution was essentially humanity’s first liberation from the constraints of natural energy, shifting the production rhythm from being determined by “nature” to being determined by “man.”By the end of the 19th century, the cornerstone of the Second Industrial Revolution was electricity and oil. The revolutionary significance of electricity went beyond simply lighting light bulbs; it broke down the spatial constraints of industrial production. Previously, even though coal was transportable, factory layout was still limited by energy distribution and transportation costs, requiring proximity to mines, stations, or docks. The advent of electricity allowed for a stable supply of energy over long distances, completely liberating factory site selection. Factory areas can be planned to be spacious and orderly, with machines, workers, and materials efficiently arranged according to processes. Production links are seamlessly connected, and the “assembly line” process from raw materials to finished products multiplies efficiency several times over.This centralized layout and standardized process not only spurred large-scale production but also attracted a large number of workers to gather around the factories. To meet living needs, housing, catering, commerce, and water and electricity systems sprang up, leading to rapid urban expansion. The rhythm of urban life was firmly controlled by the factories—the bustling breakfast shops before the morning rush hour, the lively bars and convenience stores after get off work, the scheduled public transportation—the entire city operated like a giant factory; this is the core logic of the modern industrial system.Meanwhile, oil propelled the widespread adoption of the internal combustion engine. Automobiles significantly shortened travel time, urban radii continued to expand, and commuting, logistics, and market connections became increasingly close; airplanes increased the efficiency of the flow of goods and people between countries by orders of magnitude, officially ushering in the era of globalization.Thus, technological revolutions, superficially a “history of invention,” are in fact an iterative history of energy utilization efficiency; each technological breakthrough represents a more efficient control over time and space. This principle still holds true in the information age, albeit in a different form. Computers, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence may seem “virtual,” but the underlying chips they rely on require energy to operate. Consider large data centers: densely packed servers and 24/7 cooling systems convert massive amounts of electricity into computing power while simultaneously releasing heat. The “lightness” of artificial intelligence is actually built on a heavy energy foundation. From this perspective, electricity is the “food” of the digital economy era.Then the question arises: where will the electricity come from as computing power demands continue to explode? Currently, global power generation paths have limitations: coal and natural gas are stable but not environmentally friendly; wind and solar power are environmentally friendly but unstable; nuclear fission is clean but poses safety risks; hydropower is clean but limited by geographical conditions. It is foreseeable that in the next decade, with the simultaneous growth of artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, and digital infrastructure, the energy system will shift from “basically sufficient” to “tightly constrained.” When energy once again becomes a bottleneck for development, humanity must consider: how should the power system evolve?In the long term, the evolution of the power system roughly points to three paths:Path 1: Restructuring the energy system. The future energy system will be a highly interconnected network. Wind and solar power in the west, and geothermal energy underground, will be interconnected through ultra-high-voltage power transmission and even long-term superconducting power grids. Combined with large-scale energy storage and intelligent dispatch, this will make clean energy, previously reliant on weather conditions, stable and continuous. Once completed, this will be a nearly inexhaustible, zero-carbon emission power system, achieving comprehensive “greening” and “intelligentization” of the energy system. At that time, the core of energy competition will shift from “grabbing resources” to “competing in systems engineering capabilities.”Path Two: Exploring Ultimate Energy. Controlled nuclear fusion is the most imaginative direction. It simulates the sun’s energy release, using deuterium and tritium as fuel. Deuterium extracted from a glass of seawater, participating in a fusion reaction, releases energy equivalent to the calorific value of 300 liters of gasoline. Global deuterium reserves in seawater are sufficient to support long-term human needs, but currently, controlled nuclear fusion still faces engineering challenges such as materials and steady-state operation control. Although my country is at the forefront of engineering practice, commercialization is unlikely in the short term.Path Three: Improving Energy Utilization Efficiency. The challenge for humanity in the future is not only acquiring more energy, but also how to utilize existing energy more efficiently. In the past, technological progress relied on the expansion of energy scale; now, the pursuit is “doing more with less.” For example, computing chips are constantly reducing the power consumption per unit of computing power, while quantum computing attempts to break through the limitations of traditional electric current, directly utilizing the quantum states of microscopic particles to process information. This means that humanity may be controlling energy at a more fundamental level in the future.Physics tells us that mass and energy can be interconverted, and matter itself is a highly compressed energy carrier. The universe has never lacked energy sources; humanity’s real limitation lies in its technological ability to release and utilize energy. Although large-scale mass-energy conversion has not yet entered engineering practice, it suggests that humanity is moving from “finding energy” to “controlling energy.”Looking back at history, new energy sources have never replaced old ones, but rather have continuously accumulated. Coal is still in use, oil remains important, and electricity has become the new foundational layer. Each expansion of the energy system reopens the boundaries of economic growth. In the past decade, global technological competition revolved around artificial intelligence; in the next decade, competition is likely to focus on the energy system—whoever can build a stable, low-cost, low-carbon power system will control the continuously growing computing power and industrial competitiveness. Therefore, the statement that “the end of computing power is electricity” is not only a technological judgment but also an economic one. And the end of electricity may not be a specific energy source (coal and oil are merely “energy carriers” discovered by humanity at a particular stage); the true end is the limit of humanity’s ability to acquire, convert, and utilize energy. As civilization approaches this limit, each breakthrough will trigger an industrial revolution, reshaping the global economic and technological landscape.