“Fossil fuels have lost,” argues Eddie O’Connor, chief executive of Irelands’s Mainstream Renewable Power company, before adding: “The rest of the world just doesn’t know it yet.”
O’Connor was speaking to the influential business newspaper, the Financial Times, in a must-read 4000 word article about the rapid energy transition that is taking place right now from cars to power plants, from solar roofs to wind turbines, affecting how we drive and power our homes and industry. Change is coming much faster than people think says the article: “The Big Green Bang: how renewable energy became unstoppable”. As the paper states: “After years of hype and false starts, the shift to clean power has begun to accelerate at a pace that has taken the most experienced experts by surprise. Even leaders in the oil and gas sector have been forced to confront an existential question: will the 21st century be the last one for fossil fuels?” Earlier this week, I blogged on a new Stanford University report which warned “We are on the cusp of the fastest, deepest, most consequential disruption of transportation in history. Within ten years, we may witness a radical technological shake up in the way we drive as people switch from petrol and diesel engines to self-drive electric vehicles . And as people switch in droves to electric, the internal combustion engine could soon be consigned to the history books.”
Price of Oil 19th May 2017 read more »
Traditional energy companies and mainstream financial publications are finally waking up to the new reality: The shift to renewable energy, electric cars, and a low-carbon economy is now unstoppable. The details of this transition are spelled out in a new, must-read, 4000-word article in the Financial Times, “The Big Green Bang: how renewable energy became unstoppable.” What is most remarkable about the article is that it appears in the Financial Times. The free-market oriented paper is the “most important business read” for the world’s top financial decision makers and “the most credible publication in reporting financial and economic issues” for global professional investors, according to surveys. The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, Europe’s largest company, declared in a recent speech that the transition to a low-carbon economy is not just “unstoppable.” It is a necessity that “must be embraced” if an oil company like Shell is to survive and thrive. The low-carbon future, he explained, will be built around renewable electricity and electric cars. One key reason the clean energy revolution is unstoppable is the dramatic and ongoing improvements in battery cost and performance. Advanced batteries are game-changing not only for the electrification of transportation, but also for the continued rapid penetration of renewables.
Think Progress 19th May 2017 read more »