#energytransition | "There is no way to avoid major upheavals while remaking the entire energy system."
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"Talk of a smooth transition to clean energy is fanciful: there is no way that the world can avoid major upheavals as it remakes the entire energy system, which is the lifeblood of the global economy and underpins the geopolitical order..."
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"These are not arguments to slow or abandon the energy transition.
On the contrary, countries around the world must accelerate efforts to combat climate change.
But these are arguments to encourage policymakers to look beyond the challenges of climate change itself and to appreciate the risks and dangers that will result from the jagged transition to clean energy.
More consequential right now than the long-term geopolitical implications of a distant net-zero world are the sometimes counterintuitive short-term perils that will arrive in the next few decades, as the new geopolitics of clean energy combines with the old geopolitics of oil and gas.
A failure to appreciate the unintended consequences of various efforts to reach net zero will not only have security and economic implications; it will also undermine the energy transition itself.
If people come to believe that ambitious plans to tackle climate change endanger energy reliability or affordability or the security of energy supplies, the transition will slow.
Fossil fuels might eventually fade. The politics—and geopolitics—of energy will not."
A facsinating white paper from
foreignaffairs.com