Renewable energy is steadily displacing fossil fuels despite their current dominance, with solar, wind, and EV adoption accelerating globally.
Emerging economies are leapfrogging coal by integrating renewables and cleaner natural gas, while EVs and storage drive electricity demand growth.
The energy transition is a “tortoise” strategy: gradual, economically driven, and durable, slowly squeezing fossil fuels to the margins mid-century.
Solar panels
At first glance, the energy transition seems stuck in reverse: fossil fuels still dominate, political winds have shifted, and crises abound. Global energy headlines fixate on wars, inflation, and shifting priorities. Yet beneath the noise, something far more powerful is happening: renewables are growing, almost entirely on their own, while fossil fuels creep toward irrelevance.
Fossils still dominate… but only in headline share
Critics point out that fossil fuels still supply roughly 80?percent of global primary energy, only a bit down from 85?percent in 1990. On the face of it, that’s a depressing statistic, and a central argument in Dan Yergin’s The Troubled Transition for example. A recent excellent piece by Liebreich in Bloomberg NEF shows why that logic is misleading.
Because it is all about growth rates. Renewable energy is expanding faster than overall energy demand, especially in power, transport, and electrification. If that pattern continues, fossil fuels will eventually be squeezed out, even if their absolute output stalls rather than plunges. Think tortoise, not hare, like Leibreich proposes.
Renewables now dominate new growth, global trend, no regional footnotes
The UN and Ember report that in 2024, wind, solar, and other renewables made up 74?percent of new electricity growth, and 92.5?percent of all new installed capacity. Globally in 2023, renewables reached a record 30?percent of electricity generation, up from 19?percent in 2000, and clean sources made up nearly 40?percent of generation overall.
That’s no rumor, new fossil additions are lagging badly. In China alone, wind and solar comprised 89?percent of added capacity in the first four months of 2025, with solar growing 75?percent year?on?year and thermal sources barely expanding at all. That’s not substitution, it’s replacement.
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Emerging economies aren’t stuck in a fossil detour. Many are leapfrogging coal and oil altogether and going straight to renewables, often pairing them with natural gas when gas is there. India, Brazil, Southeast Asia, and parts of Africa are fast-tracking solar, wind, battery storage, and cleaner gas rather than building new coal. In India, renewables already make up 46?percent of installed capacity as of late 2024, a target of 500?GW by 2030 is on track.
Transport: EV growth is electricity-powered
Electric car sales cracked 17 million globally in 2024, over 20?percent of all new car sales, propelled by China where electric vehicles accounted for almost half of new car sales, and rising elsewhere too. China now sells more EVs annually than the rest of the world did in total just two years earlier. By 2030, EVs are projected to reach over 40?percent of global car sales.
Crucially, that didn’t happen because of deep climate conviction, it happened because EVs made sense economically and to cut urban pollution. That’s why renewables don’t need moralizing; they grow organically from demand and cost.
Why the critics are seeing choppy waters, not the deep tide of change
It’s true that fossil fuel demand hasn’t plummeted. Oil, coal, gas still generate record levels of power, fossil generation rose in absolute terms in 2023, even if its share dipped. That’s inevitable. Infrastructure built over decades doesn’t vanish overnight, and many economies still rely heavily on fossil heat or fuel.
But to expect fossil fuels to collapse overnight was always fantasy. Breaking down vast refineries, networks, pipelines, and fleets would be costly, disruptive, and politically explosive. The real strategy lies in building out the alternatives that gradually displace fossils, without wrecking energy systems or economies.
That’s exactly what target-setting in the 2010s and early 2020s accomplished. It shifted narrative and capital toward renewables, grid upgrades, battery storage, EV manufacturing, hydrogen research etc. The result? Renewables costs have plummeted, and adoption accelerated, and now even reducing subsidies doesn’t stop the momentum.
Meet the tortoise: slow, steady, inevitable
Liebreich’s Pragmatic Climate Reset asks us to stop expecting miracles and heroics. Instead, we should support robust, affordable climate action rooted in real-world economic drivers and lived energy needs. I fully agree with that.
The tortoise isn’t sexy, but it wins in the end. Renewables deliver real energy in real places. Demand-led growth in solar, wind, storage, EV charging, and electrification is slowly squeezing out fossil share. The widespread adoption of clean energy isn’t rhetorical; it’s measurable and accelerating.
China leads in almost all clean sectors: renewable electricity, EVs, battery exports, and component manufacturing. In 2024, clean-energy technologies accounted for over 10?percent of China’s GDP—around $1.9 trillion—making clean energy equivalent in scale to conventional power systems and larger than real estate or agriculture in economic contribution.
Meanwhile, India continues to expand renewable capacity aggressively, rising from just a fraction to nearly half of total installed power capacity by late 2024, and is well positioned to reach its 2030 goals.
Yes, it’s slower than hoped, but far more durable
No, we’re unlikely to hit net?zero by 2040. Emissions are not plunging off a cliff. A 1.5?°C path is still extremely challenging. But the pragmatists weren’t wrong: decarbonization without social or economic upheaval requires pace, but also stability. If clean energy growth continues faster than demand, fossil fuels are shoved toward the margins sometime mid-century, just not overnight.
A pragmatic reset rejects radicalism that fuels backlash. Instead, it strengthens the systems that make renewables cheaper, reliable, scalable: grid investment, flexible markets, industrial electrification, EV support, energy storage, and policies aligned with inclusive economic growth.
The bottom line
Political shifts and crises may dominate the headlines, and fossil fuel share may shrink only gradually. But behind the scenes, the energy transition is alive and winning. Renewables are eating fossil share through economic logic, technological progress, urban demand, global investment. Criticism is loud precisely because fossil decline threatens entrenched actors, but the global energy system is shifting anyway.
So yes, it looks slow. But it’s steady. And what Liebreich calls a Pragmatic Climate Reset isn’t defeat, it’s the real strategy for long-term success. Renewables aren’t just competing, they are winning, everywhere, one kilowatt-hour, one EV, one solar panel at a time.
Credit: Oilprice.com
