The writer isa professor in the Institute for Housing and Urban Research at Uppsala University andauthor of ‘The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet’
The view that the world is finally winning in the energy transition away from fossil fuels is increasingly prominent. It tends to be buttressed by charts showing “exponential growth” globally in renewable-power capacity and generation in recent years.
Comforting as this take may be, we need to throw cold water over it. We are emphatically not yet winning, and it is time to stop pretending that we are.
Looking at global renewables growth rates is hugely misleading. There is not one single energy transition but a series of regional transitions of widely varying form, pace and scope. The outsized materiality of one — China’s — means global figures veil more than they reveal. They currently look impressive because, and only because, China’s do.
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