What energy transition?

(will we soon be running on empty?)

If you are worried about climate change, then you may also have been relieved to hear that the green renewable energy transition is well underway. The price of solar panels has plunged 90% in a decade, wind turbines by over 50%; wind and solar power are undercutting fossil fuels as the world’s cheapest sources of energy. The future is all electric – hydro-power, wind turbine and solar panel arrays, EVs, and electric everything else are displacing fossil fuels and their climate-forcing carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from energy markets. Seems we can look forward to 100% clean renewable energy in all sectors by as early as 2050 a mere quarter century away. Problem solved!

Except it isn’t.

It is true that the growth of wind and solar electricity generation has been spectacular in percentage terms over the past three decades, but it started from a miniscule base and still makes but a modest contribution to global energy supplies. Real world data show that in 2023 fossil fuels (FFs) still contributed >81% to the world’s primary (raw) energy supply; wind and solar electricity combined came in at the FF equivalent of 6.7%. Even in so-called ‘power generation’, where modern renewables shine, burning FFs contributed 60% to global electricity supplies while wind and solar provided ~13%, rising to 15% in 2024. Keep in mind however, that electricity constitutes only about 19% of global final energy consumption so, after three decades of rapid growth, modern renewables – wind and solar – provide less than 3% of consumers’ energy demand. This despite seven times as much being invested in wind and solar development per unit energy generated than in coal, gas, nuclear and hydro power combined.

These data show that to displace FFs from electricity generation alone by – let’s say 2035 – would require that the world install an additional four times the entire existing 30-year cumulative stock of wind and solar generating capacity in just the next decade while simultaneously and continuously replacing said existing infrastructure as it surpasses its operational lifespan. And the new supplies of electricity would not necessarily be cheaper – while the (subsidized) costs of manufacturing wind turbines and solar panels have dropped dramatically, the cost of generating power (and therefore consumer prices) tend to increase the greater the contribution of wind and solar electricity to electrical grid. The inherently low energy density and intermittency of wind and solar generation forces utilities to install expensive battery or other storage infrastructure and otherwise upgrade their electrical grids to smooth out power delivery as necessary to enable renewables integration. Even that is not enough -- utilities also have to maintain ‘readily dispatchable’ FF or nuclear generating plants at the ready in the event renewable inputs and storage are inadequate or fail, and to facilitate AC frequency synchronization of all sources feeding into the grid. Such costly adjustments supposedly ensure the systems stabilization necessary to avoid brown-outs/blackouts of the kind that darkened Spain in April of 2025.

And there is still a nagging leftover issue, a massive one actually: even if the world somehow manages to overcome the above challenges, we would still have to address the majority of hard-to-electrify energy uses that are still dependent on fossil fuels – remember that 81%?

BTW, all the above assumes no growth in the global demand for energy when, in the real world, the increase in primary energy consumption has been outpacing the contribution from modern renewables, mostly wind and solar (by a factor of 2.3 in 2022/23), with the difference made up by growth in FF use. While meeting current emissions reduction targets would theoretically increase all renewables (includes hydro-power) share to ~30% of global primary energy by 2050, fossil fuels would still provide 66% of demand (assuming continuity of both demand growth and economic supplies).

So, despite all the promotional hype about the explosive surge in modern renewables and some 33 years of ‘action’ under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (including 29 COP conferences intended to wean global society off of FF and reduce emissions) FF use, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and mean global temperatures are at all-time highs and rising. The oft-stated goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 is a practical impossibility. The reality is that, in practical terms, “…the so called ‘energy transition’ has not even started yet”. Even the term ‘transition’ is illusory. History shows that, in general, new energy sources do not displace but rather add to existing supplies. The world is actually using more ‘traditional biomass’ (wood, animal dung, etc.) that it did in 1800 before the fossil fuel age got underway. Indeed, according to historical analyst, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz we can forget the energy transition: there never was one and there never will be one.

One final over-riding consideration. Abundant cheap energy is the engine of material economic growth. Fossil fuels enabled modern techno-industrial (MT) society to flourish; fossil energy use ballooned by a factor of 1000, propelling a 100-fold increase in real gross world product from the early 19^th to early 21^st centuries. So-called green renewable energy is desperately needed should we choose to maintain the expansionist trajectory on this finite planet. But humanity is already in potentially fatal overshoot. MTI culture has become the greatest of geological forces scouring the face of Earth and snuffing out life on every continent. Successful development of a low-cost quantitative replacement for fossil fuels without a sea change in contemporary ecological values, social sensibilities and economic behaviour is a story that would not end well

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