This looks like something designed to try to prove things are as good as they possibly can be, and yet they are declining, we are on the brink of extinction, even in process of extinction.
Smil has considered things only within the current economic paradigm, of all things necessarily for profit, geared to all energy by extraction. Not surprising as we have functioned on this economic model for the entire period of the industrial revolution, we practice it now without even being conscious of it, completely oblivious that what is transferred and stored by money is energy.
Also he seems stuck in the rut of believing batteries are the only way to store energy, when actually a hydrogen ecology pretty much supersedes batteries.
Batteries are favored because they are profitable. No other reason.
But it is changing, due to domestic and community solar, which is eating up the utilities energy supply industry.
This is forcing us to rethink how money has to connect directly with energy, rather than capital, which is stored energy.
Monetising live, mathematically positive energy, as has to happen soon in order to retain any value in money, whilst the actual energy product in use moves from Earth extracted, to received from sun.
What difference does that make to Concorde, or any idea designed for public benefit?
It provides unlimited funds, unlimited clean fuel, unlimited public support.
The reason concorde failed was because it wasn't profitable.
The reason everything identified in the book failed was because of profit.
The reason commercial flight is faltering now is because of profit.
The reason we stopped going to the moon and other planets was because of profit.
The reason large swathes of humanity are in migration, starving, being flooded, is because of profit.
The reason we had two world wars, nuclear power, and nuclear weapons, with a third, final, probably nuclear war now pending, is because of profit.
The reason the planet, all life on it is dying, is because of profit, and it is all directly related to extracted energy, which is mathematically negative, the opposite of energy from the sun, which powers all of nature, all of life, adding to Earth, mathematically positive.
What would Smil say about that?
Could he even conceive it?