Free energy suppression

Free energy suppression is a conspiracy theory that claims that certain special interest groups are suppressing technology that would provide energy at a reduced cost or pollution output, or reduce the energy consumption of various devices. Groups most often implicated in such activities are the mainly oil industry, petroleum national governments and, additionally, automakers. The perceived motive is almost always to preserve the economic status quo and fuel price rising.

The theory is most-often supported by environmentalists due to the low to nil pollution produced by such theoretical technologies. Some libertarians and anarchists support the theory based on the notion that dependence on expensive energy is maintained by governments to control the populace by means of a hydraulic despotism.

The free energy utopia

If free energy devices were released and sold to the public, people would pay less to nothing on their electric bills, house heating bills, and/or gasoline prices. The world would be a much better place to live.

The cost of living would be lower. This would reduce poverty worldwide. All businesses would be cheaper to start and maintain with less (or no) electric, heating, fuel bills, and low shipping and handling costs.

Greenhouses in cold unarable areas of the world (like parts of Russia) could be warmed cheaply, making farming possible. More food grown would reduce starvation and save lives.

Air pollution would also be reduced, if the free energy devices are theorized to be non-polluting.

The conspiracy

The supporters of the free energy suppression theory claim that the technology to build this utopia exists today, but that it is being suppressed.

The theory is that with free energy available, electric companies, gas heating companies, and oil companies would lose half or more of their profits. Therefore these companies donate millions of dollars to governments, bribing them to make sure the free energy devices stay out of the public market. Other tactics include buying the patent of the free energy device from the inventor or his family, suing the inventor or patent holder, and even murdering the inventor in some cases.

Based on the principles of Capitalism, free energy cannot be allowed. The economic system contains three aspects, capital, goods and services. Within the aspect of capital, there are three components, currency, credit, and natural capital. Natural capital comprises of raw material and energy.

Capital is a fully controlled component of economics. Currently, all components are fully monitored and managed. An introduction of free energy into the economic equation would have the same economic effect as giving everyone access to the natural capital, which would be the destruction of the entire basis of the economic system, as currency and credit would be reduced. To theorists, this is why free energy must be suppressed.

The internal logic of this conspiracy theory is similar to that of the General Motors streetcar conspiracy, which, however, is more substantiated.

Criticism of the theory

The main criticism of the theory is that that "free energy" is simply another name for perpetual motion, which would violate several fundamental laws of physics, in particular the laws of thermodynamics. The absence of such devices from the market is more satisfactorily explained by the fact that they do not and cannot work, and the alleged "persecution" of free energy entrepreneurs is merely the legitimate enforcement of securities laws and anti-fraud statutes. It is perhaps noteworthy that such "inventors" seem more inclined to sell investment rights than to seek patents and/or sell energy.

However, mainstream physicists acknowledge that there is a possibility of a machine transforming matter according to the formula E=m·c² into energy. Such a machine would not hurt the laws of thermodynamics, but there is no process known which can perform this (the only known way to transform matter completely in energy is to bring it in contact with antimatter, which is not available and must be produced at a net loss of usable energy). If unknown ways to transform matter in energy exist, there might be a special not ubiquitous available and constructable device necessary. Some claim magnetic monopoles can be used in this fashion, however monopoles have never been found, and efforts to synthesize them in accelerators have to date failed.

If such ways exist, it is not impossible that the "catalyst" required to transform matter into energy is kept as a secret. However, it is hard to see what economic incentive there would be to hide such a device, rather than using it in a secretive environment and selling (e.g.) electricity to the grid at market prices. One might go so far as to say that any corporation in the world would benefit from free production of energy exclusive to said corporation for a few months or years, no matter what adjustments were required once the monopoly was broken.

The claim that a market economy cannot work if free energy is allowed is contradicted by the fact that air, a necessary raw material in many processes, is already available to everyone at no cost. Furthermore, if energy were, in fact, free, then there would still be charges and costs in delivering that energy to the consumer. Moreover, according to established economic theories, the result of significantly lowered energy costs would be increased economic growth, as the costs of producing goods and services would drop. This has already occurred when raw materials and resources (notably coal, aluminum and textiles) dropped in price during the industrial revolution. Generally, when one resource becomes cheap, other economic sectors will absorb the loss, or new demands will be created (this has happened, notably, with aluminum and computing power, whose prices utterly crashed in the 19th century and the second half of the 20th respectively).