“Why there is no energy transition” By Terry Etam

“There simply is no ‘energy transition’, hence the insufferable quotation marks, and here’s why. Before going apesh*t, well-meaning people, hear me out. It’s probably not what you think.”

“Why there is no energy transition”

Terry Etam

An intelligent and thoughtful reader asked if I could speak to a group about energy, and he had a sequence of questions he posed as the basis for discussion. They centred on the ‘energy transition’.

A few issues arose instantly. First, how to avoid speaking to a group, because I generally hate that (y’all don’t bug me but I feel like a preacher in a pulpit), and secondly because the way he framed his questions vexed me greatly. His questions framed the topic in a way I hadn’t thought of before, which is often a good thing, because it is a good way to test one’s belief system. And thus it was so. I wrestled for a few days, in search of an answer that made sense; eventually a light bulb came on. Maybe if I was an MBA I’d have figured it out sooner but alas I am not that smart.

He posed the ‘energy transition’ questions as: Where are we now energy-wise, where do we want to get to, and how do we get there?

Then it finally struck me as to why the whole topic has never settled right in my brain, even though I’ve talked about the ‘energy transition’ a lot.

There simply is no ‘energy transition’, hence the insufferable quotation marks, and here’s why. Before going apesh*t, well-meaning people, hear me out. It’s probably not what you think. And hey, at least it’s a break from freaking tariff talk for a few minutes.

This might seem an annoying exercise but it’s necessary: To go back to to the definition of the word transition.

So here it is, per a reputable dictionary: “The process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another.” In commonly recognized examples, a bus driver can transition to another occupation. A student transitions from junior high to high school. Someone that moves to another country transitions to a new culture (at least to some extent).

Embedded in the definition of the word is the assumption that the two states are defined, are known entities, each with their own attributes that distinctly define the new state as opposed to the old. The new one needs a definition, an identity.

A transition also is specific to a set of characteristics; to do a single action may be a transition in one sense but not in another, depending on what the definition of the pre-and-post transitions are. If a bus driver transitions to a software engineer, the term transition applies because each is a recognizable entity in its own right. If we are talking about the category of ‘employed people’, the bus driver has not transitioned out of that group. He nevertheless has undergone a transition in the sense of an occupation, but not in every other situation.

That is the problem with the phrase ‘energy transition’. It fails on several counts to even meet the basic definition of the word.

In one argument, the’energy transition’ is in reality simply a wish to stop using something, and move towards something else. But that something else is not defined, and it has to be, because then it is not a transition.

It is not clear at all what we are transitioning to. Clean energy? What does that even mean? I mean of course we know what clean energy is – low or zero emissions energy. Fine. Sunlight is clean energy. So is wind power, or tidal power, or any kinetic energy, or any temperature differential, and there are a great many of those in nature. So what. Just because we can see that they are real, does that mean we know how to harness them? And more explicitly, does it mean we have any way to harness them in a way that replicates what the pre-transition state can achieve? A transition indicates a new state that is different from the old, in the relevant context, but is the same thing, in the relevant context. For energy, there is no ‘next state’.

This isn’t just a game of semantics; it is important. We have to clear up the terminology, because the process could be deadly if we don’t.

First and foremost: a ‘desire to stop using something’ is not an energy transition. It has nothing to do with a transition.

Think of it this way. I may decide I am going to ‘food transition’ – I am going to move away from food to something else. I can do that. I will die in a month though (ok post holidays, make it two months) because it is not a meaningful transition.

The phrase ‘energy transition’ is bandied about to imply that we are simply switching forms of energy sourcing. This is a deadly fallacy.

People now talk about the ‘energy transiiton’ in terms of new energy systems that rely on technological advances that do not yet work, or are not yet proven, or need to be invented, or cannot happen given the world’s existing needs and realities. There is no system whereby, for example, the leading renewable energy sources – wind and power – can compare to the pre-transition state. They are simply unrelated non-sequiturs. That is, they do not follow. A transition from fossil fuels to wind and solar is no transition at all, or wind/solar/batteries, etc. It’s like transitioning from a bus driver to a fence post. Both have utility, but that’s the end of the comparison.

How do you transition to something when it can’t be defined what you are trying to transition into?

Another example: If I say I am going to continue to travel around the world, to visit 50 countries, including across the oceans, but I’m going to stop using planes and boats, can I call that a ‘transportation transition’? Of course not. It makes no sense.

The ‘energy transition’, if you think about it, is a nonsensical concept when one considers that every single hydrocarbon category’s usage is at record highs, in addition to all the renewable power generation being added. Global coal consumption is at a record high, a hundred oil and twenty five years after oil’s energy superiority allegedly knocked coal into the weeds. We have not transitioned from coal to oil; we’ve added oil to coal. Global oil consumption is at a record high and climbing, nearly 20 years after Tesla proved to the world that electric vehicles are feasible alternatives to internal combustion engined vehicles (not a replacement for, as we’ve found out, but in many instances competitive with (and in some ways superior – but not enough to displace entirely ICE)). In other words, the assumptions that underpin the concept of ‘moving away from oil’ have been in place for some time, and are definitely displacing some oil, but as a global system, there is no evidence of a transition to something beyond oil.

There is much trickery in the topic. People point to Norway as having the most successful transition to EVs. They may be furthest down the road to transitioning for any number of reasons (vast national wealth, abundant hydroelectric power, government subsidy/regulation), but because everyone buys a new EV does not mean that the society has transitioned away from hydrocarbons. At best that is like the bus driver transitioning to a new job that doesn’t pay much so he still drives bus now and then on the side to make ends meet.

The ‘energy transition’ narrative is not the equivalent of changing jobs or vehicles, it is the state of not working at all and yet living the same lifestyle as one did in the past while working.

One could theoretically define the object of the transition as: “electrify everything, running on emissions free power.” That seems to be as close as people get to defining the thing to be transitioned to.

But what does that mean, in terms of reality? Sure, you can be apply third grade logic to the problem, as some university profs/researchers (it’s true) actually do, and say, for example, we simply need to build wind turbines in sufficient quantities that would cover an area the size of the entire state of California, and build enough batteries to go with it, and boom there ya go. (They actually do proclaim gibberish like this, Stanford prof Mark Jacobson being the most prominent voice.) It truly is a unique form of quackery. They draw these wild scenarios which ‘work’ if you don’t consider the infinite array of challenges involved in actually constructing such a scheme, and proponents of these ideas simply shrug and say “well we’re just not trying hard enough. We need government will.”

Any problem at all can be solved in such a vacuum of logic. We can solve obesity by not eating as much. We can stop the drug problem by not taking drugs anymore. We can stop murder by not shooting other people, nor strangling them. We can stop traffic accidents by not driving anywhere.

Right there is a complete roadmap to solving life’s biggest challenges. What more could you possibly need? Oh yes, government regulation. That oughta do it.

If there were a known entity that could do everything hydrocarbon combustion does, that could do it with available metals/minerals, that could do it in a closed-end kind of way where we know exactly what is needed and when and that all that is left to do is the installation, that would be one thing. That would be like transitioning an empty lot to a skyscraper.

But there is no roadmap to find the metals to build the mines that need ever-more difficult approval and that we don’t even know if they would be good mines or not because they don’t yet exist. And we don’t even have an idea how we would construct an electrical grid to run only on renewables without killing everyone at the first cold snap.

One could argue that nuclear power is the leading candidate; it is emissions free, it is known technology, it is proven, it is reliable. So then maybe that would be an energy transition, if every government and business in the world was working towards a nuclear framework where sufficient future power is mapped out and under construction and in which all electricity consumers are on their way to connecting to said power plants. That would be a transition to nuclear power. And that ain’t happening either.

The future may well be 100 percent wind, or solar, or nuclear, or whatever. A new battery could be proven at scale, to the extent that we could actually build a true transition path off of it.

But that doesn’t exist either. And don’t send me some random presentation about ‘breakthrough technology’ that will do the trick. I’ve seen ten billion of those. I’ve lost money on at least a few. Does that mean that none of them will work, ever? Of course not. But until proven, you can’t abandon your old standby, and you can’t call it a transition.

Don’t underestimate the challenges either. Imagine a new energy wonder-source appeared at scale, cheap and reliable and infinite clean energy. Yay! Right? Not so fast. What would a government do if such a new technology truly rendered obsolete vast swaths of the existing economy before the roll out and benefits of the hew tech were ubiquitous? Think of trillions of dollars of market cap evaporating – what would that do to pensions? What would the world do with a hundred million unemployed people all of a sudden, or two hundred, or whatever the number is? Even an energy miracle would not be a simple transition.

And finally, this matters, because we’ve been boxing ourselves into a corner because we’ve accepted the ‘fact’ that a transition is underway, and that we no longer need the old system. That is profoundly untrue. As has been said many times, don’t tear off your old shingles before the new ones have arrived.

It’s all happening as expected, more or less – an energy transition isn’t quite so simple. Find out what readers knew years ago in The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity – the energy story for those that don’t live it, and want to find out. And laugh. Available at Amazon.ca, Indigo.ca, or Amazon.com.