We must take on Big Oil to avert climate catastrophe

It sounds like common sense: scale up renewable energy fast enough and fossil fuels will simply fade away.

- MIKE BERNERS-LEE

Technology, innovation and market forces will quietly do the job, sparing us the messy politics of taking on Big Oil.

Unfortunately, that is neither how the energy system works nor is it in line with the basic dynamics of supply and demand. Through years of climate conferences, national pledges and plunging costs for wind, solar and batteries, global fossil fuel use has not fallen at all. In fact, it has continued to rise, causing us to accelerate into the climate problem.

Since the first UN climate summit in 1995, global renewable and other non-fossil energy supply has more than doubled, rising by 161 per cent. That sounds like good news - until you see that over that same period, the global supply of fossil energy has increased by 57 per cent. Energy from fossil fuels has carried on climbing at 1.8 per cent per year, roughly the same as it has since 1850.

Some argue that the recent slowdown in fossil emissions growth shows renewables are finally winning. In the past decade fossil fuel emissions have indeed risen more slowly than the long-term 1.8 per cent trend, and solar and wind may have helped. But history shows such dips are often temporary. Every slowdown in emissions growth since 1850 has been followed by a period that rockets off in the other direction. From AI to space tourism, today we have an unlimited appetite for all the energy we can get our hands on, and now with “drill baby drill”, it is all too easy to imagine rising growth rates of both fossil fuel and renewables.