Free energy suppression

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Free energy suppression is a conspiracy theory claiming that certain special interest groups are suppressing, or have suppressed in the past, technologies that would or could provide energy at reduced costs, reduced pollution output, or would or could reduce the energy consumption of various devices. Groups most often implicated in such activity are the oil industry, petroleum national governments and, additionally, automakers. The most common perceived motive is preservation of the economic status quo and sustained increase of fuel prices.

The theory is often supported by certain environmentalists because of the expected low to nil pollution produced under such theoretical technologies. Some libertarians and anarchists support the theory based upon the idea that dependence upon expensive energy is perpetuated by governments in order to control the populace by means of hydraulic despotism.

The Free Energy utopian vision

If inexpensive free energy devices existed, and were available to the general public, people would then pay next to nothing for their electric service, home heating, and/or gasoline. The world thus would be a better place.

The cost of living would decrease significantly. This in turn would reduce poverty worldwide. All businesses would be cheaper to start and to maintain with lower (or no) electric, heating, and/or fuel bills, and shipment and handling costs would also be expected to decrease significantly.

Greenhouses in unarable areas of the world (like parts of Russia, Chile, the Middle East, or the Sahara Desert) could be climate-controlled very cheaply, making sustainable farming possible there. More food would then be grown, which would reduce starvation. Air pollution could also be reduced, by free energy devices theorized to be non-polluting.

The conspiracy

Supporters of the free energy suppression theory claim that the technology for building this utopia exists today but that it is being suppressed.

The principle belief is that electric companies, gas heating companies and oil companies would lose half or more of their profits with free energy available. Therefore, these companies then donate millions of dollars to governments (bribing them) to make sure that free energy devices stay out of the public market. Tactics and means of suppression 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 therefore be allowed. The economic system contains three aspects: capital, goods and services. Within the aspects of capital are three subcomponents: currency, credit, and natural capital. Natural capital comprises raw material and energy. This differs considerably from the orthodox definition of capital in economics.

Capital is theoretically a fully-controlled component of general economics. Currently, all components are fully monitored and managed. Introducing free energy into the economic equation would have the same economic effect as giving everyone access to the natural capital, which would destroy or severely undermine the entire basis of the capitalist economic system because currency and credit would be reduced. According to many free energy collusion theorists, this is why free energy must be (and is) suppressed.

The internal logic of this conspiracy collusion theory resembles that of the General Motors streetcar conspiracy (which, however, is more substantiated).

Criticism of the conspiracy theory

The main criticism of the theory is that "free energy" is another name for perpetual motion, which violates several laws of physics, in particular the laws of conservation of energy. That these devices are absent in the market is more satisfactorily explained by the explanation that they do not and cannot work, and that the alleged persecution of free energy entrepreneurs is merely the legitimate enforcement of securities, anti-fraud, and similar statutes. It is perhaps noteworthy that such inventors seem more inclined to sell investment rights than to seek patents and/or sell energy.

Mainstream physicists, however, acknowledge that there is possibility for a machine that transforms matter into energy in accordance to theory of relativity (the formula E=m·c²). Such a machine would not violate the laws of thermodynamics. Nuclear fission plants operate on this principle, and extract enormous amounts of energy from a small amount of matter. However, the process of purifying easily fissionable metals takes energy, and so does the disposal of radioactive waste.

If unknown ways of transforming matter directly into energy do exist, there might be one or more necessary special devices (perhaps not buildable with ubiquitously available materials). Claims have been made that magnetic monopoles can be used for this purpose, but monopoles are theoretical and have never been reported found (efforts to synthesize monopoles in particle accelerators have to date failed).

It is hard to see, though, what economic incentive there might be in hiding such a device other than to use it in a secretive environment and selling, for example, electricity to the "grid" at market prices. One might go so far as to say that a corporation, for example, would benefit from free energy production for its exclusive use for a few months or years, no matter what adjustments were required once its monopoly was broken.

The claim that a market economy cannot function if free energy producing sources are allowed is contradicted by the fact that air or water, necessary raw materials in many processes, are available to anyone at no cost except transport and storage. Furthermore, if energy were in fact free, then there could (would) still be charges for costs of delivering that energy to the end user (consumer) (likewise, in many parts of the world, water is free in the sense that anyone can pull it out of a river. Purifying and delivering it, however, has profit potential). Moreover, according to established economic theories, significantly lowered energy costs would result in increased economic growth, since the costs of producing goods and services would drop. This has already occurred; raw material and resource commodities (notably coal, aluminum, textiles, and labor) dropped in price as a consequence of the industrial revolution, or when computers dropped in price and increased in power in the last half of the twentieth century. Generally, when a resource becomes cheap, other economic sectors absorb the loss, or new demands will be created.

The American TV show MythBusters examined some methods of gathering free energy. These methods generally failed, were not cost-effective, or were too unwieldy to be feasible. They did generate a spark that zapped one of the show's host during the investigation of a radio based device.

Over-unity devices

Over-unity (OU) is the process by which output energy exceeds input power required to produce it. OU advocates distinguish this from "perpetual motion" (and avoid a violation of the law of conservation of energy) by saying that the extra energy is extracted from some infinite, invisible reservoir, such as the "zero-point energy field". However, to date there is no credible theory or experiment showing that such a reservoir exists.

The theory of cold fusion, though controversial, is still subject to more serious scientific research. However, none of the claimed successful experiments have been possible to reproduce.

External links

• FreeEnergyNow.com - Free Energy News and Link Archives
• Pure Energy Systems Wiki - Community-built 'Free Energy' Wikide: Freie Energie (Pseudowissenschaft)