A rifle firing a single bullet at a flock of moving birds will yield much less meat than a shotgun shell releasing a cloud of pellets indifferent as to which bird they might take down. The same logic applies to the energy transition: choosing “winners” by fiat will very likely yield a sub-optimal, fragile outcome that puts the wellbeing of many energy consumers and the environment at risk. As former acting EPA Administrator and longtime energy policy practitioner Robert Fri put it in a 2010 article “There’s no silver bullet, only silver buckshot…successfully dealing with our energy problems requires a diverse portfolio of technologies.”
The stakes for our decision making are high because the energy challenge transcends national borders and is existential. Civilization stands on a three-legged stool (water, food, and energy) and energy binds the legs together to allow humanity to obtain water and food at the scale necessary to sustain modern life. Significant parts of the world still lack access to reliable, affordable, and scalable energy sources, with commensurate negative impacts on their water, food, and environmental security. Accordingly, energy transition dynamics may end being substantially different within the “haves” (OECD countries) and “have-nots” (or “don’t yet have enoughs”) in the non-OECD countries.
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