Utopia is a social concept, not a practical energy system concept. Linking the physics and chemistry and biology of energy (and food) production to some social ideology makes very little sense. Thinking that one system is morally superior to another is a bit silly, and there are all kinds of counterexamples (such as, did you know that Old South slave plantations produced 100% organic cotton?).
There are a couple things to take into consideration when you go to design energy and food production systems for human communities from scratch - conservation of energy should probably be at the top of that list. Then you should lay out a list of goals:
(1) Minimal side effects: I've never met a person who wants to breathe dirty air, drink filthy water, or eat food contaminated with toxins, heavy metals, or fecal matter. This is where purely electrical systems really have the advantage over anything involving combustion - although of course combustion, fire, is among the earliest human technologies, along with tool-making (although tool-making is found in other species). Indeed, I'd argue for renaming the human species Homo ignis for this reason.
(2) Reliability: You don't want power to go off at random times when you need it the most. If you're in agriculture, you need to be able to plow and seed fields right when environmental conditions are optimal for planting, and the same goes for harvesting food. Industrial operations can't just be halted randomly either, and of course hospitals and emergency services can't be allowed to go down during natural disasters. This means you have to think about storage of energy - as electrical, physical or chemical potential energy - as well as having the means to utilize that stored energy.
(3) Independence: having something as fundamental as your communities' basic food and energy supply be entirely reliant on long-distance transport from some other part of the world is reckless and irresponsible. Interruptions are inevitable and anyone looking at the world today will realize that supply chain fragility is a major problem. Hence you want to have primary sources of power that aren't subject to such interruptions. When it comes to obtaining equipment that can utilize power, well, trade is not such a bad idea, there are things like Ricardo's notion of competitive advantage that make perfect sense.
Now, let's do a thought experiments: take 1000 communities of 1,000,000 human beings (1B people), and plop them all over the world, in randomly chosen locations that have access to farmland and water and raw materials, and ask what their optimal energy supply strategy would be.
Well, sunlight is clearly something they'll all have access to, and wind is something they'll all have access to. Uranium ore? Relatively few will be anywhere near high-grade uranium ore deposits. Coal? Coal is fairly common, but burning coal for power is a dirty business, see (1). Oil and gas are not as widely distributed as coal, see (1) and (3). Wood? Wood is actually a pretty dirty fuel source when burned at scale. No, we really want a fully electrified system if (1) is a primary goal.
So, the conclusion I come to is that you need to manufacture tons of solar panels, wind turbines, and battery electric storage for each of these communities of 1,000,000 people. The scale needs to be GwH of power, but if we look at sun and wind inputs, then there's an adequate supply for 24-7 power using this approach - with exceptions as you move towards polar regions, where long dark seasonal effects make nuclear power plants more attractive as a niche option.
There are a couple things to take into consideration when you go to design energy and food production systems for human communities from scratch - conservation of energy should probably be at the top of that list. Then you should lay out a list of goals:
(1) Minimal side effects: I've never met a person who wants to breathe dirty air, drink filthy water, or eat food contaminated with toxins, heavy metals, or fecal matter. This is where purely electrical systems really have the advantage over anything involving combustion - although of course combustion, fire, is among the earliest human technologies, along with tool-making (although tool-making is found in other species). Indeed, I'd argue for renaming the human species Homo ignis for this reason.
(2) Reliability: You don't want power to go off at random times when you need it the most. If you're in agriculture, you need to be able to plow and seed fields right when environmental conditions are optimal for planting, and the same goes for harvesting food. Industrial operations can't just be halted randomly either, and of course hospitals and emergency services can't be allowed to go down during natural disasters. This means you have to think about storage of energy - as electrical, physical or chemical potential energy - as well as having the means to utilize that stored energy.
(3) Independence: having something as fundamental as your communities' basic food and energy supply be entirely reliant on long-distance transport from some other part of the world is reckless and irresponsible. Interruptions are inevitable and anyone looking at the world today will realize that supply chain fragility is a major problem. Hence you want to have primary sources of power that aren't subject to such interruptions. When it comes to obtaining equipment that can utilize power, well, trade is not such a bad idea, there are things like Ricardo's notion of competitive advantage that make perfect sense.
Now, let's do a thought experiments: take 1000 communities of 1,000,000 human beings (1B people), and plop them all over the world, in randomly chosen locations that have access to farmland and water and raw materials, and ask what their optimal energy supply strategy would be.
Well, sunlight is clearly something they'll all have access to, and wind is something they'll all have access to. Uranium ore? Relatively few will be anywhere near high-grade uranium ore deposits. Coal? Coal is fairly common, but burning coal for power is a dirty business, see (1). Oil and gas are not as widely distributed as coal, see (1) and (3). Wood? Wood is actually a pretty dirty fuel source when burned at scale. No, we really want a fully electrified system if (1) is a primary goal.
So, the conclusion I come to is that you need to manufacture tons of solar panels, wind turbines, and battery electric storage for each of these communities of 1,000,000 people. The scale needs to be GwH of power, but if we look at sun and wind inputs, then there's an adequate supply for 24-7 power using this approach - with exceptions as you move towards polar regions, where long dark seasonal effects make nuclear power plants more attractive as a niche option.