Free energy suppression

What I don't get about Free Energy conspiracy theories: Amazon Would Literally Pay You A Billion Dollars To Run Their Datacenters For Free Free energy suppression is a conspiracy theory claiming that there exist functional alternative energy technologies that are vastly more efficient and cost-effective than current methods of power generation; however, these "revolutionary technologies" are being held in secret and suppressed. The suppressors are usually oil companies, but can also be the government or special interest groups. Proponents of this conspiracy may also believe that governments and lobby groups are actively weakening renewable energy technologies like solar, biofuels, and geothermal. A mechanism commonly posited for suppressing free energy is the buying up of patents; however, the article on patents gives reasons why that would not work.

Reasons for suppression
An interesting reason proposed by proponents for the suppression of free energy technologies is that a capitalist system would crumble if the technology were introduced — essentially, because we wouldn't have to pay for oil, coal, and power, nobody would ever have to pay for anything.

Even more interesting is how sunlight and air being free has yet to lead to the collapse of the capitalist system.

Cars
One version holds that the big car companies and/or oil companies conspired to promote internal combustion engines (fuelled by gas or diesel) over other, better technologies. The modest version of this conspiracy theory relates to electric cars. More extreme versions suggest there are ways of making cars run on water or other essentially free fuels. Inventor Stanley Mayer claimed to have invented a water-powered car and suggested his life was at risk from dark forces, but he died of a brain aneurysm. Another water-powered car inventor, Bob Boyce, supposedly "had cancer-causing agents secretly and forcibly inserted into his body in a small chip". Others ran into legal problems. Genesis World Energy/United Fuel Cell Technology announced a scheme in 2002, but its owner Patrick Kelly was convicted of theft in New Jersey in 2006, ending the scheme. Further proponents include Japanese company Genepax (as yet surviving the assassins), Filipino inventor Daniel Dingel (jailed after defrauding his partners Formosa Plastics Group), and many more. Nikola Tesla, favorite scientist of cranks, apparently had a similar idea long before, and we all know he ended up impoverished and disgraced.

These could be easily disproven by pointing out that, given the nature of war in the modern era, the militaries of the world would certainly make use of an engine that had both infinite fuel and could be refueled from materials found in the field. This was the advantage of the horse, which also had the advantage of being a self-replicating machine. One example of tech being used by the US military was of "water displacement, formula #40", which was used to prevent nuclear missiles from rusting. It was so useful that one of the engineers decided to take some stuff home, and after the US moved on to different missile designs that didn't need to be coated in the stuff, well, WD-40 is now in every home. If the US military really was using engines that required no fuel beyond ordinary water, there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of mechanics who know how to make an engine that runs on water. Just how big could a conspiracy become before someone spilled the beans?

In fiction
Science fiction has explored the implications of this, most notably Star Trek and the "Culture" novels of Iain M. Banks. Both deal with societies that simultaneously developed a socialist utopia and did away with money, largely due to the introduction of technology that provided what was essentially limitless, free energy. Such an economic system is called a "post-scarcity economy," and the absence of such technology is the reason why post-scarcity economies remain in the realm of fiction. Edward Bellamy's 1888 novel Looking Backward describes a young man who falls into a deep sleep for over a century. When he awakes, it is the year 2000 and the United States has become a socialist utopia, and numerous leaps forward in technology have been made to allow for this system to flourish.

In Payday 2, one contract involves stealing a fusion device for a Republican senator supported by Big Oil companies.

"Like Water for Octane", an episode of the X-Files spinoff The Lone Gunmen, provided an interesting deconstruction of the concept of free energy by focusing on the fact that it doesn't solve the problem of the depletion of other, non-energy resources. It turns out that the inventor of a water powered car suppressed the existence of the vehicle himself, not an energy industry conspiracy like the protagonists believed, once he realized the hidden costs of a fuel that cost next to nothing: namely, that it would lead to an explosion of suburban sprawl and consumerism that would use up all the other finite resources. The oil companies wanted the blueprints so that they could put the car into production and find a way around the looming crisis of peak oil.