As energy demand grows, even alternative energy sources such as wind, solar and nuclear fusion could begin to affect the climate

“A better, richer and happier life for all our citizens.” That’s the American dream. In practice, it means living in a spacious, air-conditioned house, owning a car or three and maybe a boat or a holiday home, not to mention flying off to exotic destinations.

The trouble with this lifestyle is that it consumes a lot of power. If everyone in the world started living like wealthy Americans, we’d need to generate more than 10 times as much energy each year. And if, in a century or three, we all expect to be looked after by an army of robots and zoom up into space on holidays, we are going to need a vast amount more. Where are we going to get so much power from?

It is clear that continuing to rely on fossil fuels will have catastrophic results, because of the dramatic warming effect of carbon dioxide. But alternative power sources will affect the climate too. For now, the climatic effects of “clean energy” sources are trivial compared with those that spew out greenhouse gases, but if we keep on using ever more power over the coming centuries, they will become ever more significant.

While this kind of work is still at an early stage, some startling conclusions are already beginning to emerge. Nuclear power – including fusion – is not the long-term answer to our energy problems. Even renewable energies such as wind power will have to be used with caution, because large-scale extraction could have both local and global effects. These effects are not necessarily a bad thing, though. We might be able to exploit them to geoengineer the climate and combat global warming. » Read more: Clean might not be green forever