I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how deeply human civilization depends on energy, and honestly I think most people severely underestimate it.

Almost everything we consider modern life is basically transformed energy.

Food production, medicine, internet, transportation, AI, construction, refrigeration, fertilizers, clean water, data centers, hospitals, manufacturing, logistics, even the ability for billions of people to live in giant cities. Behind all of that there is energy.

A lot of people, especially in tech, talk as if the world runs mainly on software. But software only exists because gigantic physical systems exist underneath it.

Cloud computing sounds abstract until you realize the “cloud” is actually massive warehouses full of servers consuming huge amounts of electricity and cooling. AI feels digital, but behind every model there are power plants, transformers, mining operations, semiconductor factories, shipping networks and industrial infrastructure.

Civilization is still extremely physical.

I think one of the reasons people forget this is because the modern world hides infrastructure very well. Most people never see the systems carrying modern life on their backs every second.

Pipelines.

Electrical grids.

Industrial plants.

Chemical processes.

Shipping routes.

Wastewater treatment.

Fertilizer production.

Most of the time, society only notices infrastructure when it fails.

But historically, every major leap in civilization came from unlocking more energy or using it better.

Fire allowed humans to extract more calories from food and survive colder climates.

Agriculture allowed larger populations and specialization.

Coal powered the industrial revolution.

Oil transformed transportation and manufacturing.

Electricity completely changed productivity and quality of life.

The countries with more reliable and abundant energy almost always become more technologically advanced and economically powerful.

Energy is upstream of almost everything.

And I think this becomes even more important now.

The next decades are going to require absurd amounts of energy.

AI alone is pushing electricity demand higher at a speed most people still don’t fully understand. Data centers are becoming gigantic industrial facilities. At the same time, the world still has billions of people that want better living standards, more manufacturing capacity, better healthcare, more transportation, more cooling, more computing.

That means humanity does not need less energy.

Humanity needs vastly more energy.

But probably produced and managed in smarter ways.

And this is where I think some of the biggest opportunities of the next decades are hiding.

Not necessarily in futuristic sci‑fi technologies.

Sometimes the opportunity is simply finding gigantic inefficiencies that society normalized.

One thing that constantly surprises me is how much energy humanity wastes every single day.

We waste heat.

We waste methane.

We flare gases.

We lose energy during transmission.

We build systems that are centralized, inefficient, and extremely hard to deploy.

Some industries are still operating with architectures that feel closer to the 20th century than the 21st.

I honestly think many of the next great industrial companies will emerge from solving these inefficiencies.

Not only because it helps the environment, but because the economics are enormous.

Historically, the technologies that truly changed the world were not only morally good ideas.

They made economic sense.

That is important.

The world scales solutions when they become economically irresistible.

And I think we are entering an era where energy systems themselves are going to become more distributed, more intelligent, more modular and more software-like.

For decades, the model was always bigger and more centralized.

Bigger plants.

Bigger infrastructure.

Bigger facilities.

But now computation, sensors, AI, manufacturing and automation are making smaller distributed systems much more viable than before.

That shift could end up being massive.

Especially because the world is full of stranded or underutilized energy streams that traditional infrastructure cannot economically reach.

I also think energy conversations sometimes become too political and lose sight of something more fundamental:

Human progress itself depends on abundant and reliable energy.

Without it, modern civilization simply does not function.

The ability to produce food at scale, manufacture medicine, cool hospitals, power scientific research, transport materials and run communication networks all depend on energy systems working reliably every second.

And most people never think about that.

Personally, the more I learn about energy and infrastructure, the more I realize that many of the most important technologies in the world are almost invisible to the average person.

Not because they are unimportant.

But because they became foundational.

People notice apps.

Civilization depends on transformers.

People notice websites.

Civilization depends on ammonia production.

People notice AI products.

Civilization depends on electrical grids and industrial supply chains.

I think the future is going to reward the people who understand that the physical world still matters.

A lot.

Maybe even more than before.

Because as humanity becomes more computationally advanced, our demand for physical energy infrastructure may increase even faster.

In the end, I think energy is one of the deepest leverage points in civilization.

If you improve how energy is produced, moved, stored or utilized, you indirectly improve almost everything built on top of it.

And that is why I believe some of the most important companies of the next decades will not only be software companies.

They will be the companies rebuilding the physical systems civilization depends on.