Fusion power won’t solve the climate crisis. But we don’t need it to.

In today’s Big Story podcast, in early December, scientists announced a major breakthrough on the way to a fusion-powered world of unlimited clean energy. It received reams of media coverage and lots of hope for a miracle future that would solve the climate crisis.

The problem is that it won’t. It can’t possibly scale up in time to solve our current problems, never mind the ones we’ll develop while waiting for it. But for the people who pay attention to clean energy and the climate emergency, the coverage was frustrating. Why? Because we don’t need a miracle cure, we just need to focus on the technology we can scale up, right now.

David Roberts, editor, reporter and host at Volts joins today’s The Big Story.

“You have to accommodate the fact that end users are now creating or generating energy on their own. They can generate energy on their own, they can store energy on their own, they can trade it with one another without ever dealing with that central source. We just need a much smarter grid,” said Roberts.

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You can also find it at thebigstorypodcast.ca.