In 2022 I can’t send you an encrypted email without prior sharing of a public key.

This seems like a problem we can solve. I’m sure there are repositories for public keys out there. There’s also services like LetsEncrypt that offer certificates for free through automation.

Technical people understand how this works, they generate keys and share out the right one and off they go. Non-technical people have no idea what this requires and/or the benefits of doing so.

I’m sure it’s out there - but I need to do some reading on the topic.

Something like you generate a key pair on your device (likely automated) and then the public key is required when you ask a service to create an email address for you. This has to be a thing somewhere…