Energy transitions or additions?

By Richard York, S. Bell. Energy Research & Social Science, 2019

474 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Is an energy transition currently in progress, where renewable energy sources are replacing fossil fuels? Previous changes in the proportion of energy produced by various sources – such as in the nineteenth century when coal surpassed biomass in providing the largest share of the global energy supply and in the twentieth century when petroleum overtook coal – could more accurately be characterized as energy additions rather than transitions. In both cases, the use of the older energy source continued to grow, despite rapid growth in the new source. Evidence from contemporary trends in energy production likewise suggest that as renewable energy sources compose a larger share of overall energy production, they are not replacing fossil fuels but are rather expanding the overall amount of energy that is produced. We argue that although it is reasonable to expect that renewables will come to provide a growing share of the global energy supply, it is misleading to characterize this growth in renewable energy as a “transition” and that doing so could inhibit the implementation of meaningful policies aimed at reducing fossil fuel use.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7f085c2e5e71cf2e827c3a55624563110733a90f

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In Economics and Econometrics

1. Jason Hickel
2. D. Kemp
3. J. Owen
4. G. Kallis
5. M. Edwards

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. Jason Hickel
2. G. Kallis
3. Daniel W. O’Neill
4. S. Ussher
5. Samuel Alexander

Citations in the corpus

• A Green New Deal without growth? (2021, background): “Historical patterns suggest that past ‘energy transitions’ should be more accurately described as ‘energy additions’ (York and Bell, 2019).”
• Mission, challenges, and prospects of renewable energy development in Vietnam (2021, unknown): “Declining costs and rising capacity factors coupled with a high level of investment and rapid technological advancements are driving the replacement of renewable energy over fossil energy sources in current and future global energy production (Chang, Fang, and Li 2016)(York and Bell 2019).”
• The energy‐extractives nexus and the just transition (2021, background): “This raises questions about the gross composition of anticipated environmental gains (York & Bell, 2019).”