The Best Deals to make with the Devil

Thanks to Alex my friend and coauthor on the RootTax for pointing out that my last post implies one should never use fossil fuel as it's a deal with the devil.

Of course, saintly adherence to this principal is clearly impossible.

However, Faustian stories have relished a special type of deal, one in which man outwits the the devil.

In this analogy I believe one can count victory over the devil whenever one uses energy from hell to build systems that more than pay back that amount of energy using energy from heaven.  If a society were to keep beating the devil in this way they'd be on their way toward virtually limitless energy production.

Example: For every kWH I consume I must invest into a fund to build utility solar to produce at least 1kWH over the next 15 years.  That would mean that in 15 years of doing this there would be enough solar power to litterally provide for every kWH I wanted, without any fossil fuel.  Any society that keeps doing that becomes independently-energy-rich, in one generation.  Correct me if I'm missing something but I believe that this is what we'd call pro-growth.

The above is to illustrate a point, NOT a suggestion of policy.
In reality such programs are plagued by bureaucracy, fraud and inefficiency; I'm not a fan.
I'm not in favor of any program that would attempt to force such a contrived system, it would doubtlessly go wrong somehow.  However, I'm suggesting that if Pigovian taxes were put in place to price resource use these these investments would make sense.  Thus, we would expect to see these investments happen naturally, and be executed efficiently.

Energy from Heaven and Energy From Hell

I'm not sure who said this first but, I, for one am impressed by how well this this analogy fits.

Energy taken from above the earth is a deal with God; energy taken from below the ground is what we call a Faustian bargain.

First the deal with Heaven:
Sun, wind are heavenly energy sources forever sustainable, essentially limitless energy.  The drawback is that they demand more of our virtues; more upfront work, and we must operate on heaven's terms: no sun, no wind? = no power.
Providence, humility and hard work are virtues.  However, if we play by Heaven's rules the we have boundless energy, for ever and ever, literally until the sun burns out; which is to say, eternity.

Now for the other side:
Coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear are seductively powerful and easy in the short term.  Gasoline has a stupendous energy density, I won't call it supernatural but it's close.  The corporations, countries, and people who use the most of it amass those Faustian goals of, power, wealth, & influence.  The downside to this is that the costs are deferred and we as humans aren't told exactly what the price will be.  Eventually the bargain will have to be paid, we don't know when. Maybe it's just that we use it all up and must explain our improvidence to our kids, maybe it's worse.

That's all, just impressed by how well the analogy seams to work.