when you hook up a chain of water pumps, to extract water; you must used lots of pipes. There is no way around it. It makes it extremely difficult to harvest concrete. The high energy cost of glass would not be so bad, but it costs 1M steel and 3B stone to expand one coal burner (pipe cost for the win).
Love the game though. Have spent my entire day on it. Half of the time waiting for concrete.
 "Endless Expansion"){kind=icon}
 "Idle Mine"){kind=icon}
 "Fantastic Contraption"){kind=icon}