The short answer, not necessarily … it could actually make things worse.
As Austrian forester / naturalist Viktor Schauberger discovered, when you make processes more efficient, capitalism doesn’t use those efficiencies to save the environment, it uses them to destroy and exploit faster … what he discovered in the earlier part of the 20th century, was that the buoyant bearing capacity of water changed with temperature, and he was convinced this would mean the logging industry could take less wood, because in his thinking it would require less wood to generate the same profits in the same time if their costs went down … instead his heart was broken as his discovery was instead used to destroy his beloved Black Forest, it was stripped before his eyes, almost utterly denuded of trees.
This is what capitalism has always done, it is inherent in its nature, and it will lie to your face and tell you otherwise, but the fact is, it is incapable of controlling itself. Why? Simple … because some people are fucking psychos, and the capitalist system loves a psycho. Anything you gain in one area, will be abused in another … and this is the reason why so many past gains are now being lost again, because indefinite growth and a debt based economy, which drives people through fear and other manipulation into reckless consumption, can never sustain those gains … eventually it will destroy everything else, and then it will demand to destroy what you’d previously saved, because it needs to exploit more, more, more.
Imagine truthfully and honestly what will happen if we have free unlimited energy, but a capitalist economy … many whom are struggling will want to get rich, everyone whom is already rich but greedy enough to want to be richer (and more powerful) will want to get richer and more powerful … and the easy availability of energy will mean they can destroy whatever they want with relative ease, using modern technology to harvest resources from nature … and unless you have the capacity to police 8 billion people, the environment will quickly suffer.
Now I am NOT saying we should avoid the generation of free energy, I think it’s a great goal … I just think we should be realistic about the potential consequences while the existing system is in play, and give serious consideration to removing that system so that we do not have the same motivational drivers behind human behaviour when that free energy becomes available … because currently other species are treated as nothing more than resources to be exploited, and 8 billion people desperate to improve their lifestyle, armed with free energy and high technology, is a pretty destructive force … so we’d be well advised to improve their lifestyle NOW, and the most ecologically sound way to do so, is not via property trade and currency based economics.
We’re watching now as our national parks, which we thought to be sacrosanct, and even our world heritage listed areas are under attack … police and government are corrupt as all fuck, and helping these imbeciles to destroy the only planet we’ve all got … meanwhile people whom sometimes have the least economic power in society, are the only ones with the guts and decency to head out there and defend the forest on the front line, risking arrest, injury, and further socioeconomic disadvantage.
None of this is necessary … NOT ONE BIT … we can do better, but we need systems in place that aren’t designed and driven by ideologically insane imbeciles. We can achieve great things technologically, and I’m all in favour of it, but what we develop and how we use it is motivated by our economic framework, and the current framework is completely fucking stupid.