The ‘Green Energy Transition’ That Wasn’t

Governments push heavily subsidized renewables, but fossil-fuel use continues to increase even faster

By Bjorn Lomborg. Excerpts:

"Globally, we spent almost $2 trillion in 2023 to try to force an energy transition."

"when countries add more renewable energy, it does little to replace coal, gas or oil. It simply adds to energy consumption. Recent research shows that for every six units of green energy, less than one unit displaces fossil-fuel energy."

"In the past 50 years, oil and coal energy use has doubled, hydro power has tripled and gas has quadrupled."

"as a 2019 academic study concluded. During past additions of a new energy source, the researchers found, it has been “entirely unprecedented for these additions to cause a sustained decline in the use of established energy sources.”"

"What causes us to change our relative use of energy? One study investigated 14 shifts that happened over the past five centuries"

"Invariably, the new energy source would be better or cheaper."

"Solar and wind fail on both counts. They aren’t better, because unlike fossil fuels, which can produce electricity whenever we need it, they can produce energy only according to the vagaries of daylight and weather. At best they are cheaper only when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing at just the right speed. The rest of time they are expensive and mostly useless."

"When we factor in the cost of four hours of storage, wind and solar energy solutions become uncompetitive with fossil fuels."

"Solar and wind address only a smaller part of a vast challenge. They are almost entirely deployed in the electricity sector, which makes up a mere one-fifth of all global energy use."

"McKinsey & Co. estimates that achieving a real transition would cost more than $5 trillion annually."