The (Im)possible Energy Transition

Inside the framework of the Critical Ecologies Seminar from Connective Tissue, the Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Programme, science and environmental historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz reflects, alongside Adrián Almazán, the Seminar’s co-mobiliser, on global energy transformations in recent years and the need to adopt a critical perspective regarding models of ecological transition.

There is almost a total consensus on the need to phase out fossil fuels to halt climate change at the root, which requires energy transition investment that is capable of replacing these fuels with other sources of renewable, clean and decarbonised energy. Yet although ending CO₂ and other greenhouse gas emissions is clearly imperative, what happens if the idea of transition is in itself misleading? Is there any sense in thinking in terms of replacement when it comes to designing an energy strategy to tackle the current global eco-social crisis?  

For Fressoz, the problem is that after two centuries of “energy transition” the world burns more petrol, gas and biomass than ever, and in his view a better idea would be to think in terms of energy symbiosis and addition rather than about transitions and replacements which, he asserts, have never materialised.

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