The Daily Planet #74: Metabolic Sovereignty Revisited, Part 5

One of the great hopes of climate action is that of an "energy transition," where we replace fossil fuel sources with renewable sources and we don't emit carbon into the atmosphere anymore. But as we saw in yesterday's Daily Planet, the country that has made the most progress in creating a renewable energy system, i.e., China, has 400 GW of coal powered energy on the way, despite also having well over a Terawatt (1000GW) of renewable energy on the way too.

What kind of energy transition is that?

Fressoz challenges the widely accepted narrative of a smooth, sequential "energy transition" from organic sources to coal, then hydrocarbons, and now to renewables. Historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz argues that this story is misleading and oversimplified. Instead of neat replacements, energy history reveals a pattern of accumulation, where new energy sources add to rather than displace existing ones. For example, coal did not eliminate wood use; rather, both were used together, and oil complemented coal rather than replaced it. This complex entanglement of energy sources has driven economic growth, making the current goal of fully exiting fossil fuels unprecedented and extraordinarily difficult.

The popular idea of energy transitions, often promoted by the nuclear industry and economists like William Nordhaus, has served to delay radical climate action by suggesting gradual technological progress will suffice. Fressoz critiques this as a comforting but false narrative that ignores the scale and speed of change needed to achieve net zero emissions. He emphasizes that a true energy transition requires a fundamental break from the logic of continuous accumulation and demands a powerful coalition to enforce it, a scenario that seems politically and socially daunting.

Adam Tooze · Trouble Transitioning: What energy transition?

An honest account of energy history would conclude not that energy transitions were a regular feature of the past, but...