I went out a couple of weeks ago, curious to see the extent of a moorland fire up on the hill above my Derbyshire town. But some roads were closed and I couldn’t get close – though I did see burning heather across a valley and a helicopter picking up water from the reservoir to dump on to the fires at a woodland edge, in what looked like a futile exercise. This fire was going to burn a while longer, and did. The reservoir was as low as I have ever seen it.

So close to home. Many people have experienced far more serious extreme weather events of various types, some repeatedly, than this fire, but seeing the smoke on the horizon the evening before, with tales of 10 fire engines present, pressed home to me how personal climate change is becoming.

We’ll probably never know what actually sparked this fire. But what turned the initial conflagration into something bigger was surely the tinder-like state of the ground cover caused by very little rain for many weeks. Indeed, this spring has been the driest on record for many parts of Britain, and this moorland fire started on the last day of April – a month without significant rain showers. Climate change or not?

A wider perspective
I had been looking at a few ‘big picture’ analyses of the state of the global energy transition in the previous week. Most suggest that global net zero by 2050 is simply unachievable, particularly since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reminded the world that energy affordability and security were in danger alongside the climate. The third leg of the old ‘energy trilemma’ – sustainability – will have to take a back seat for a while.

In lengthy and comprehensive article published in Foreign Affairs, S&P Global’s Daniel Yergin and colleagues argue that current worries about energy prices and security are only some of the reasons why.

Others are: the sheer capital costs of getting to net zero, particularly for the global south where other policy priorities take precedence; that this goal exists as just one of many competing priorities for all governments around the world; the scale of the task to develop new mines for critical minerals, including copper; and the expected surge in electricity use to power growing numbers of electric vehicles and heating systems, plus datacentres and AI. Daunting stuff.

Most analyses suggest that global net zero by 2050 is simply unachievable, particularly since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reminded the world that energy affordability and security were in danger alongside the climate.

But Yergin also suggests that the two previous global energy transitions – from wood to coal in the 19th century and from coal to oil during the 20th century – were not transitions at all, but ‘energy additions’. We are still burning plenty of both coal and oil today. So far, the modern transition is also an energy addition, says Yergin.

The latest Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy could not be more clear. 2023 saw record high overall global energy consumption, ‘with coal and oil pushing fossil fuels and their emissions to record levels’. At the same time: ‘solar and wind pushed global renewable electricity generation to another record level’. Wall-to-wall growth, in other words, of everything – and the growth of renewables has not even met the growth of overall energy demand. Another energy addition, then.

(This is a huge simplification of a complicated and variable global picture, of course. The reality in the Global South is very different to that in the Developed North; different again in large parts of Asia. But the global summary holds.)

A big picture effort
But surely damaging climate change with all its extreme weather events, now tracked for 30 years or more, is what should make today’s transition different to the past. There’s a pressing reason, this time, to make it a true transition, to prevent frying the planet, to restate the obvious.  

Perhaps what we need is a bit of subtraction of old fossil energy, or at least a ‘no more’ mentality? A big picture effort to stop seeking and drilling new oil and gas fields, allowing existing fields to supply what will be, in the Global North at least, a dwindling need for the next few decades as electrification begins to take over?

Many governments have pledged to cut emissions to net zero in time, and the Global North has already gone a long way towards an end of burning coal. The UK government is probably about to put an end to any further exploration for oil and gas in UK waters as part of its net zero strategy. But this is an exception. I don’t see many more national or international mechanisms actively working to refuse new drilling for oil and gas. Quite the opposite in the US.

As an example, BP last month announced a new deepwater oil discovery in the ‘Gulf of America’ (sic). The find ‘underscores how BP is in action to step up investment in exploration and strengthen its upstream portfolio… building our capacity to over 400,000 boe/d by the end of the decade’.

No mention of the transition, or the need to dial oil, gas and coal down. Business as usual. Might some subtraction, or a no-more-new-drilling approach be possible one day? Or today’s energy transition may end up as yet another energy addition, with the Earth well and truly smoked.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are strictly those of the author only and are not necessarily given or endorsed by or on behalf of the Energy Institute.

• Further reading: ‘Feeding our energy-hungry world’. Our appetite for energy continues to grow, and with it consumption of fossil fuels, according to the 73rd Statistical Review of World Energy, published by the Energy Institute, which records the production, consumption and trade flows of fossil fuels and renewables, around the world, by region or by country. The 2023 data, published in June 2024, reveals an increase in global energy consumption, in fossil fuels and in carbon emissions, but also an increase in renewable sources of energy, writes New Energy World Senior Editor Will Dalrymple.
• Decision makers around the world – around cabinet tables, boardroom tables and even kitchen tables – are turning to the new Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy to understand the energy world around them, and it’s an illuminating read, writes Nick Wayth CEng FEI FIMechE, Chief Executive of the Energy Institute.