Yesterday, Daniel Yergin posted a short article about the reality of energy transition that is powerful (pun intended) and tremendously insightful. Yergin is something of a legend in Texas oil/energy circles – Vice Chairman of S&P Global and the author of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power and The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations. The article is a summary his essay “The Troubled Energy Transition” from the March–April issue of Foreign Affairs.
His most hard-hitting comment:
“Today’s energy transition is meant to fundamentally differ from all preceding energy transitions — to be transformative rather than additive. However, for the most part, worldwide so far, it is proving to be, as in the past, ‘addition,’ not replacement. The wide range of challenges facing the transition means that it will not unfold in a linear way. Instead, it will continue as it already is — multidimensional, developing at varying rates in different regions with different mixes of technologies and, definitely, with different priorities.”
I had a similar personal epiphany just two weeks ago as my wife and I drove through rural West Texas to visit her mother. We passed fields of pump jacks (old and new, working and dormant), wind turbines, new power transmission lines/towers and even a couple bitcoin and AI server farms. I realized that the energy transition is here (even just south of the Permian Basin), but it looks different in person than it does on paper – especially when family members are dealing with it first hand, on their own land. It is definitely additive rather than replacement for now.
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