Topic / Clean Disruption / In-depth
Predictions: Clean Disruption 2025
Exponential Cost Decline
Tony recognized the falling costs of key technologies solar power, batteries, electric vehicles and autonomous driving technology would quickly make them so overwhelming competitive that they would simply make older technologies obsolete.
This was an extraordinary insight at the time, when solar, for example, was ten times more costly than it is today. Tony’s early recognition that technology-based disruption follows exponential improvement curves, not linear ones, was still not widely appreciated outside of narrow circles like Silicon Valley in 2014. This framework helps explain why so many experts consistently underestimated the pace of clean energy adoption. Just as Tony predicted, solar and battery capital costs have fallen over 66% and 78% respectively since publication, EVs are as affordable as ICE cars and autonomous driving technology is cheap enough to be deployed in multiple cities around the world.
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Worldwide Adoption
Tony saw the swift expansion of disruptive technologies solar power, batteries, electric vehicles and autonomous driving technology from small silicon valley startups to the global mainstream
A decade later, in 2024, we have seen exponential adoption of these technologies around the world - solar made up more than 65% of global new energy generation additions, a TWh of battery capacity was added for both EVs and energy storage systems, EVs made up over 30% of new car sales in at least 11 countries and driverless cars are giving more than 200,000 rides per week. Tony saw then what policymakers, investors, academic scientists, and the general public are still struggling to come to grips with now, that the core disruptive technologies amplify and accelerate one another, and have profound positive implications on the regions that adopt them.
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China's Leading Role
Tony pointed out the major role China was going to play in the clean disruption despite China’s pro-coal reputation and position at the bottom of the global automotive market in 2014.
Singling out BYD in 2014 was incredibly insightful as BYD is now the 3rd best selling auto brand in the world, producing cars in the country that manufactures 60% of the world’s electric cars - and the world’s largest exporter of cars in general. All major EV battery manufacturers are located in Asia, and the two largest companies - CATL and BYD - that make up 50% of production, are both located in China. China also has the most solar capacity by far, maintaining nearly exactly the growth rate from 2013 to 2023 that Tony predicted for the global market in Clean Disruption.
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Near-Zero Marginal Cost Technologies
The market dynamics Tony described have played out almost exactly as predicted, with near-zero marginal cost renewables fundamentally reshaping electricity markets and one of the most powerful drivers of the energy disruption worldwide.
Tony stresses the significance of the near-zero marginal cost as a key marker of a disruptive technology, which continues to be a key feature in not only the clean disruption of energy and transportation, but also the disruption of AI and robotics which together have begun to drive the marginal cost of intelligence and labor toward zero.
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Disruption Theory
Tony laid out important insights about the dynamics of disruption that are today demonstrated across key sectors.
Tony’s fundamental insight about the convergence of multiple technologies creating system-level transformation has been strongly validated. Scientific work subsequent to Clean Disruption has come out strongly in favor of Tony’s methodology: data collected for dozens of technologies shows that improvement rates tend to be remarkable persistent over time. Market forces drive disruptions, they cannot be stopped by smear campaigns, regulations or incumbent lobbyists, they can only be postponed a bit. Both the transportation sector and the energy sector are following the classic pattern of exponential disruption.
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Incumbent Vulnerability
Tony warned of the profound vulnerability of nearly all incumbent energy industries from coal, natural gas, oil, biofuels, and even nuclear in the face of disruption. As Tony predicted in 2014, the nuclear industry has continued struggling with disastrous cost overruns, project delays and a growing reluctance from funders to support new projects.
The oil industry has started to admit demand oil will peak and decline is imminent, as soon as 2025. Both the oil and biofuels industry have been limited by water availability. The natural gas industry has faced an increasing maintenance burden due to aging infrastructure, and methane leakage which also undermined its climate friendly reputation. And most dramatically, the total economic unravelling of coal has accelerated, with a mass exodus of financial institutions worldwide and total collapse of the industry in multiple countries.
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