Clean Energy Ready to Displace Fossil Fuels

Photo-rich magazine version coming soon. 

This article will appear in the Winter 2023 issue.

By Markham Hislop

The energy transition is a two-sided coin. On one side, is the rise of the new clean energy economy the International Energy Agency (IEA) is talking about. The other side is the decline of fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas). The question is, how long will it take clean energy to push “dirty” energy out of global markets? The answer is still uncertain, but a reasonable argument can be made that fossil fuels have already peaked, or soon will, and that the twin shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russian militarism will inevitably lead to irreversible decline in short order.

Kingsmill Bond and his team at the Rocky Mountain Institute say peak demand actually occurred in 2019. They have published an energy transition theory based on peak, plateau, and decline. “The endgame is here. In one country and region after another, demand for fossil fuels is facing inevitable decline,” writes Bond. “The rapid growth of new energy technologies is the primary driver of system change.” Rapid growth is the result of where the technologies are on the adoption S-curve.