Incumbents
“We’ve entered the age of clean energy,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said this February. Those who lead this transition will lead the global economy of the future.”
China is mass-producing solar panels and pouring money into new battery technology. In the United States, emissions have fallen by some 5 percent since 1990—and by 17 percent since their 2007 peak—while European Union emissions are down about 40 percent since 1990.
Yet there’s political resistance. As Adam Simon says here in The Signal, the transition needs enormous amounts of copper—but many mining companies won’t open new copper mines, because local opposition makes them too risky.
And as Donald Trump took office for a second time, he promised supporters he’d end the “Green New Scam.” His proposed 2027 budget would cut US$15 billion from clean-energy programs and slash the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget in half. “President Trump is committed to eliminating funding for the globalist climate agenda while unleashing American energy production,” the White House said.
How’s this playing out?
Thea Riofrancos is an associate professor of political science at Providence College and the author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism. Phasing out fossil fuels isn’t a precondition of the energy transition, she says—it’s half of what the transition is. And the harder half: The fossil-fuel industry is entrenched in the financial system and in politics alike.
The war with Iran has shown how exposed oil-and-gas reliance leaves countries that can’t afford to buy at wartime prices. Shocks like it also make the fossil-fuel industry richer—and a richer industry lobbies harder, as it did after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
That’s the entrenchment. The other side is the new technology—and it’s arriving unexpectedly fast. For the first time, clean-power growth in China appears to have outpaced demand growth enough to flatten the country’s emissions even as its energy supply keeps climbing.
These green technologies—solar panels and batteries above all—can cut emissions sharply. But they land hard on local communities, who may not want a new solar park or lithium mine next door. So the transition turns on politics as much as on engineering …
Gustav Jönsson: What is the green transition, exactly?
Thea Riofrancos: It’s the world developing and deploying new technology and infrastructure—renewable and zero-emission energy, plus the materials and systems to change how we build, how we use energy, how we get around, where we live, and what we eat. That’s, you could say, the positive side.
