Those machines don't provide energy, they simply capture it. We get our energy from solar radiation, either directly or stored in underground carbon bonds. We burned through our oil reserves, which represent the solar energy of millions of years of photosynthetic capacity, in a few centuries. And demand keeps growing. How do you intend to maintain and continue growing the energy supply without access to fossil fuels? Reverting to an annual energy budget determined by the sun is a fundamentally different game to having millions of years of energy at our match tip.
It's the difference between living on a fixed income vs drawing down a savings account. And as we draw down our savings account (burn oil) to invest in our fixed income future (solar) we should not fool ourselves into thinking this means an infinite savings account. Whether we draw our savings to zero or plan wisely for fixed-income, either way we are looking at decreased energy availability, aka degrowth.
The Earth receives enough energy from the Sun in ~30 minutes to power humanity for a year. Electrification is highly efficient vs thermal losses with combustion. Half of marine traffic disappears if you're not shipping fossil fuels around. Etc, etc. Humanity can live within the energy budget available between solar energy received and geothermal energy available (imho).
Certainly, we're going to bump into limits if we're exhausting total solar potential falling on the Earth and geothermal reserves, but that is a problem decades into the future at current electrical generation technology deployment rates.
True, the solar potential could theoretically cover what we lose from fossil fuels. We could building a dyson sphere around the sun. But the mere existence of energy is not the same thing as a proven economical way to capture it.
Have you seen the studies that project the hockey stick graph of resource extraction required to continue that scaling? Have you seen the studies that show the orders of magnitude increase in mining required? Have you accounted for the fact that all of that cannot be done with solar panels? How do you assume to mine that much material from elsewhere for your own benefit, at the detriment of the communities you're extracting from?
Your plan is curiously devoid of answers to the basic questions.
"Chart goes up now, chart must go up forever" is an ideology, not a characteristic of any physical ecosystem. Certainly not an actionable plan that any serious person would follow.
Instead of an ideology, how about a real viable plan pinned to physical reality (CO2 emissions, terrawatts, acres, tons of ore, things we can measure empirically)? I keep being promised this solar future, yet fossil fuel emissions keep rising. Your ideology sounds appealing, but you've got a long way to go to make it reality.
It's the difference between living on a fixed income vs drawing down a savings account. And as we draw down our savings account (burn oil) to invest in our fixed income future (solar) we should not fool ourselves into thinking this means an infinite savings account. Whether we draw our savings to zero or plan wisely for fixed-income, either way we are looking at decreased energy availability, aka degrowth.