Responding to Peter Newman and Ray Willis in The Conversation, I argued that framing the energy transition as stalled risks climate fatalism. The headline data can look discouraging: global energy consumption keeps rising, and fossil fuels still supply most of it. Read as a single line on a chart, it is easy to conclude that nothing is changing.
Read more carefully, the picture is different. Renewables, electrification and storage are scaling at rates that would have seemed implausible a decade ago. Unit costs for solar, wind and batteries have fallen steeply, and new technologies tend to follow S curves of adoption: slow at first, then very fast, then saturating. The early flat part of the curve is where pessimism takes hold, and it is precisely where most analysts misjudge what comes next.
The convergence of digital technologies with clean energy compounds the effect. Smart meters, demand response, vehicle to grid systems and building automation turn passive consumers into flexible participants in the grid. Each technology makes the others more valuable, which is why progress across sectors arrives together rather than one at a time.
For cities, this changes the question. The critical issue is no longer whether the transition is happening, but how our cities, industries and institutions adapt to its pace. Building codes, grid connections, planning rules and procurement were designed for a slower, centralised energy system. They now need to keep up with distributed generation on roofs, batteries in garages and electric fleets in depots.
Universities have a particular role. They train the engineers, architects and planners who will make those decisions, and they can provide the evidence that keeps public debate anchored in the real trajectory rather than the discouraging headline. Optimism is not the point; accuracy is.
Context
The note responded to an article by Peter Newman and Ray Willis in The Conversation on the pace of the global energy transition, and drew on long run data on global primary energy consumption by source published by Our World in Data. It connects with the School’s research on rooftop solar uptake and with his earlier keynotes for the German New Zealand Chamber of Commerce on energy efficiency.