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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is director of the Columbia Fusion Research Center and associate professor of applied physics at Columbia University
Imagine an energy source that can produce electricity anywhere and releases no greenhouse gas emissions. It’s also safe and doesn’t rely on unpredictable weather patterns.
The base fuel is easily accessible and untethered from geopolitics, helping us avoid energy shocks like the one we are currently navigating. One pound of fuel can produce as much energy as 10mn pounds of coal or 6mn pounds of natural gas. Fusion energy, which creates power by fusing hydrogen atoms to replicate the reaction that powers the Sun, has that promise.
We are not there yet but fusion energy has the potential to be the most consequential technological breakthrough since we split the atom. Nuclear weapons reshaped the global order and redefined military conflict. The country that achieves fusion energy first will gain a wide range of strategic advantages.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, scientists in the US, China and Europe are closer than ever to making it happen. Progress has been accelerated by significant venture capital funding, but what we now need most is for the US government to match the private sector by funding more research to help clear the path to commercialisation.
Scientists are confident we understand the fundamental science and how to achieve fusion conditions in the laboratory. Next, we need to leap the remaining engineering hurdles.
The unvarnished truth of why the technical challenges have not already been solved relates to boom-bust funding. Fusion resurfaces in public consciousness each time we have an energy shock but fizzles once it subsides. The 1970s energy shock triggered a surge of funding, but this collapsed after oil prices fell in the late 1980s. The field then stagnated for decades.
The US government currently allocates only $800mn to fusion energy research, a mere 3 per cent or so of what it allocates to Nasa. The Department of Energy’s most recent initiative, the new Office of Fusion, had a budget request of only $10mn this year. While it’s true that annual private funding for fusion now eclipses public funding, a disjointed approach is not the best way to advance a breakthrough source of energy.
Insufficient and poorly co-ordinated US federal funding may also give China an opening. According to one estimate, China has mobilised at least $6.5bn for fusion projects since the start of 2023, almost three times the funding appropriated to the US Department of Energy’s Fusion Energy Sciences Program in roughly the same period.
China is also laying the groundwork for massive fusion infrastructure projects, a long-term bet on owning the levers of the industry even if the foundational science is figured out elsewhere. The parallels with China’s dominance of solar power — the underlying tech was invented at Bell Labs in New Jersey — are hard to miss.
The lack of co-ordinated US federal funding also impedes development of another critical element in this global race: a skilled workforce. China reportedly outpaces the US by a factor of 10 in the number of PhD students working on fusion.
At the start of the second world war, the scientific seeds of nuclear power were first demonstrated successfully in an experiment about 500 feet from where I write these words. In Pupin Hall at Columbia University, physicists John R Dunning and Enrico Fermi used a custom-built particle accelerator to help identify the fissionable form of uranium. This, and many other experiments, paved the way for the Manhattan Project in 1942.
The US now needs nothing short of another Manhattan Project, backed by ambitious federal funding, to solve the remaining technical challenges standing in the way of fusion energy. History shows energy crises can spur action. This time, we should act before the sense of urgency fades.
