There are several ways we can measure the progress of human civilization. Population growth, the rise and fall of empires, and our technological ability to reach for the stars. But one simple measure is to calculate the amount of energy humans use at any given time. As humanity has spread and advanced, our ability to harness energy is one of our most useful skills. If one assumes civilizations on other planets might possess similar skills, the energy consumption of a species is a good rough measure of its technological prowess. This is the idea behind the Kardashev Scale.
Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev (April 25, 1932 – August 3, 2019) proposed the scale in 1964. He categorized civilizations into three types: planetary, stellar, and galactic. A Type I species is able to harness energy on a scale equal to the amount of stellar energy that reaches its home planet. Type II species can harness energy on the scale of its home star, and Type III can harness the energy of its home galaxy. The idea was further popularized by Carl Sagan, who suggested a continuous scale of measurement rather than simply three types.
So what type of civilization are we? Although humans use a tremendous amount of energy, it turns out we don’t even qualify as Type I. About 1016 Watts of solar energy reaches Earth on average, and humanity currently uses about 1013 Watts. On the Sagan sliding scale, that puts us currently at about 0.73. Not bad for a bunch of evolved primates, but it raises an interesting question. Could we even reach Type I? After all, we can’t capture all the sunlight that reaches Earth and still have a habitable planet.
So when will humanity become a Kardashev Type I civilization?
This question is studied in a paper recently posted to the arxiv. The paper looks at the three primary sources of energy: fossil fuels, nuclear, and renewable, and calculates their potential growth over time. On the one hand, reaching Type I would seem pretty easy. Make the production of energy your top priority, and you’ll get there in the end. But each type of energy source has its limitations. In an extreme case, such as burning every ounce of fossil fuel we can, it could lead to a level of climate change that could end us all in a so-called Great Filter. You can’t become a Type I civilization if you’re extinct.
So the team takes a more nuanced approach, analyzing the physical limitations of each type of energy source, and balancing them against the need to limit climate change and pollution levels as outlined by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency. They found that even with realistic limitations, it is possible for humanity to reach a Type I level. The downside is that we won’t reach that level until at least 2371.
That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The Kardashev Scale is a very blunt tool for measuring the scale of human technology. While advanced civilizations require significant energy, we have seen how advances in low-power computing and increased efficiency allow us to decrease or flatten our energy consumption while continuing to advance technologically. While this study shows how we could become a Type I civilization, it’s possible that we’ll be truly advanced when we realize we don’t need to.
The Kardashev Scale
Type I
A Type I civilization, also called a planetary civilization can use and store all of the energy available on its planet. For the Earth-Sun system, this value is about 1016 watts.
Type II
Also called a stellar civilization: a civilization capable of harnessing the energy radiated by its own star. Our Type I brains can hardly imagine how someone would do this, but we’ve tried our best, imagining things like a Dyson Sphere. The successful construction of a Dyson sphere would make a civilization’s status Type II, with energy consumption at ≈4×1033 erg/sec.
Type III
A civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy, with energy consumption at ≈4×1044 erg/sec for our galaxy, the Milky Way.
Variants of the Kardashev Scale
There are five and six-level variants of the Kardashev scale.
Carl Sagan, for example, suggested a new formula. As a result of his formulation, there should be a “Type 0” civilization, which controls almost no power on their home planet. As of 2012, humanity was at 0.7244 level on Sagan’s Kardashev scale.
At the other end of the scale, there are Type IV and Type V civilizations. A Type IV civilization can harness the energy of an entire Universe. A Type V civilization can control the multiverse, a collection of Universes. These two are highly speculative and we see no evidence of them.
Sources and Further Reading
- This article was originally published on Universe Today with the title of “When Will Humanity Become a Type I Civilization?” by Brian Koberlein.
- Kardashev, Nikolai S. “Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations.” Soviet Astronomy 8 (1964): 217.
- Reference: Jiang, Jonathan H., et al. “Avoiding the Great Filter: Predicting the Timeline for Humanity to Reach Kardashev Type I Civilization.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.07070 (2022).
