The disruption of energy, like all disruptions, will happen for purely economic reasons. The fossil fuel industry may seem too large to dismantle, but it is not immune to technological disruption. The rise of solar, wind and batteries (SWB), together with their rapidly falling costs and rising capabilities, is already undermining its foundations.
Solar power, combined with batteries, sensors, and artificial intelligence, is enabling a new energy system that provides cheaper, cleaner, decentralized, and superabundant electricity. Solar is already the cheapest form of energy on the planet, and converting to SWB now costs less than maintaining the existing system.
As distributed generation and storage become more widespread, the utilization rates of fossil fuel power plants will fall. These plants cannot compete with the near-zero marginal cost of solar and wind, which pushes them toward economic obsolescence. The existing centralized system is already entering a death spiral of rising costs and falling demand as consumers and businesses adopt clean energy.
This disruption is already underway, and it follows a pattern seen in countless industries throughout history. The horse was replaced by the automobile, film cameras by digital cameras, and landline phones by smartphones. Disruptive technologies grow exponentially rather than linearly, driven by feedback loops and market forces, and the fossil fuel industry is no exception.
Investing in outdated fossil fuel infrastructure is a costly mistake, because these assets will likely be stranded within the next decade. Policymakers should focus on supporting workers in the fossil fuel industry as they move into new opportunities in the clean energy sector, rather than propping up an industry with a diminishing future.
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The three disruptions of energy, transportation, and food can eliminate more than 90% of net greenhouse gas emissions within 15 years, using technologies that already exist and win on cost alone. This is the fastest, cheapest, and most complete path to solving climate change, and it is already underway.
The deeper shift goes beyond stopping the damage. The same technologies that mitigate emissions will make it affordable, for the first time in history, to draw down the carbon already in the atmosphere and oceans and to restore ecosystems at scale. We are moving from an extractive system that depletes the planet toward a creation-based system that can heal it.
This is the largest reduction in humanity's ecological footprint in history, and it is a choice. The regions, industries, and communities that recognize it early and act decisively will capture the greatest economic, social, and environmental rewards, and help lead the world toward a restored and abundant planet.