The Ascent

In 1964 the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev proposed a way to rank civilisations that ignored their art, their politics and their population and asked only one thing: how much energy can they command. A Type I civilisation commands the energy of its planet. A Type II commands the energy of its star. A Type III, its galaxy. Established

In 1973 Carl Sagan made the scale continuous, so that a civilisation could be placed between the rungs. His formula is simple enough to carry in your head: take the power a civilisation uses in watts, take its logarithm, subtract six, divide by ten. Type I sits at 10¹⁶ watts. Type II at 10²⁶. Each full step is ten billion times the last. Established

The scale was built to think about other worlds. It turns out to be the clearest mirror we have for our own.

Humanity in 2024 used about 620 exajoules of primary energy, which averages to just under 2×10¹³ watts. On Sagan's formula that places us at K ≈ 0.73. Computed from the IEA and Energy Institute figures at the foot.

Now the figure that should stop every reader. The Sun delivers about 1,361 watts to every square metre facing it at the top of our atmosphere. Multiply by the Earth's cross-section and the planet intercepts 1.7×10¹⁷ watts, continuously, for nothing. Set our 2×10¹³ against it: Computed

This is the quiet discovery hidden in the arithmetic. We are not an energy-poor species on an energy-poor world. We are a species using one ten-thousandth of its world's income and organising its wars, its borders and its fears around the scarcity of that fraction.

Type I is not a science-fiction threshold. It is ten petawatts: roughly six per cent of the sunlight the Earth already receives, or the output of a few thousand square kilometres of the Sahara at today's conversion efficiencies, or a fraction of the heat in the upper crust, or, if one frontier claim should hold, a fraction of the hydrogen in the sea. Computed

At the historic growth rate of global energy use, between one and three per cent a year, the arithmetic puts Type I two to six centuries away. Computed That is the pessimistic reading, and it assumes nothing changes in how energy is made. The optimistic reading is simpler. Type I is a civilisation whose energy ceiling is set by physics and engineering rather than by geology and geography, and that threshold can be crossed long before the full ten petawatts are drawn, because what matters is not the total but the removal of the constraint.

The moment energy and strategic materials are no longer finite, located and contested, the oldest logic of conflict loses its premise. Not its habit. Its premise.

Type II is 10²⁶ watts, about a quarter of the Sun's total output. It is ten billion times Type I. No arithmetic on this page brings it near, and we will not pretend otherwise. Established

What Type II gives us is not a destination to schedule but a direction to hold. It says that the ceiling is the star, not the ground; that the resources are not in the Earth but around it, arriving every second; that scarcity is the condition of a civilisation that has not yet learned to receive. A Type II civilisation does not mine. It does not need to. Everything it builds, it builds from energy and the elements energy can make.

The founders of this project do not claim to know the route. We claim only that the route exists, that it runs through the Earth's own income first, and that the first steps are visible from where we stand.

Kardashev's scale has one blind spot, and it is the one that matters most for the next century. It measures the height of the climb and says nothing about the manner of it. A civilisation could reach Type I by burning everything, poisoning every river, strip-mining every child's future, and the scale would record the ascent as complete.

That is the gap Beyond Scarcity exists to fill. We add a second axis to the ladder: not how much energy a civilisation commands, but how cleanly it climbs. Does the operation give back more than it takes? Does it leave the water, the soil, the air and the people around it better than it found them? That is Dr. Kansara's Net Positive measure, and it is what the standard scores.

A civilisation that climbs the first axis without the second arrives at Type I as a ruin. One that climbs both arrives as a garden. The watts are the same. The world is not.

Nobody climbs from 0.73 to 1.0 in one step, and nobody climbs it alone. The standard names three rungs on the manner axis, and a summit. Every energy and compute operation on Earth is already standing on one of them.

1. I
   ExtractiveEnergy and materials taken from the ground, water drawn and not returned, waste externalised. Most of the world's capacity stands here. The ladder begins here on purpose. Nobody is turned away for where they start.
2. II
   TransitionalA coal site re-powered. A nuclear restart. Curtailed renewables put to use. Water recirculated. Verified remediation purchased against what cannot yet be avoided. Measurably less taken; the direction of travel audited and public.
3. III
   RegenerativeNet Positive. The operation returns more to the biosphere than it draws: in energy, water, materials and verified remediation. This is what the N+ measure certifies. It is reachable with technology that exists today.
4. ○
   Beyond ScarcityThe summit. The constraint itself removed: energy and strategic elements no longer finite, located or contested. The standard does not depend on the frontier research that might deliver this, and the summit does not wait for it. But if it holds, the top rung becomes a floor.

Read against the Kardashev axis, the rungs are not an alternative to the climb toward Type I. They are the only way to make it that leaves a world worth being Type I in.

We will measure the climb honestly, name every rung, and hold the door open at the bottom. We will grade every claim, including our own, by what has been shown and not by what we hope. And we will keep the summit in view: a civilisation that has stopped fighting over one ten-thousandth of what falls free from the sky.

That is the whole of it. Not a prophecy of Type II; we are too far and too honest for that. A commitment about the manner of the ascent, made in public, by two founders who will be held to it.

The first rung is already under your feet. The convening is where the climb is organised.

Every number above can be recomputed from these inputs. We show the working so that it can be checked, and corrected.

1. Kardashev, N. S. (1964). Transmission of information by extraterrestrial civilizations. Soviet Astronomy 8, 217. adsabs.harvard.edu
2. Sagan, C. (1973). The Cosmic Connection. The interpolation K = (log₁₀ P − 6) / 10, with P in watts.
3. Energy Institute (2025). Statistical Review of World Energy: global primary energy consumption about 620 EJ in 2024. energyinst.org. 620×10¹⁸ J ÷ 3.156×10⁷ s = 1.96×10¹³ W → K = 0.73.
4. Solar constant 1,361 W/m² (Kopp & Lean 2011, Geophys. Res. Lett. 38, L01706). Earth mean radius 6.371×10⁶ m. Intercepted power = 1,361 × π × (6.371×10⁶)² = 1.74×10¹⁷ W → K = 1.12. Human share = 1.96×10¹³ / 1.74×10¹⁷ = 0.011%.
5. Type I (10¹⁶ W) ÷ humanity (1.96×10¹³ W) = 509. Years to Type I at constant growth g: ln(509) / ln(1+g) = 626 at 1%, 315 at 2%, 211 at 3%.
6. IEA (2025). Energy and AI: data-centre electricity 415 TWh in 2024, about 945 TWh in 2030. iea.org. 945 TWh ÷ 8,760 h = 1.08×10¹¹ W = 0.55% of 2024 human primary power.
7. Solar luminosity 3.828×10²⁶ W (IAU 2015 nominal). Type II at 10²⁶ W is about 26% of it.
8. Zimmermann, E. W. (1951). World Resources and Industries, revised edition. Harper & Brothers.

Primary energy is the conventional measure and overstates useful energy by the thermal losses of combustion; a useful-energy figure would place humanity slightly lower on the scale, not higher. The direction of every conclusion above is unaffected.