Q&A wiht Jean-Baptiste Fressoz on "The myth of energy transition"

Key take-aways

"Regardless of technological innovations, the raw materials in question [wood, coal, oil] have never yet been obsolete. Exceptions to this rule are exceedingly rare. Whale oil offers a unique example of the disappearance of an energy source. Or I could mention sheep’s wool, whose use has declined by one-third since the 1950s, replaced by synthetic fibres. Or that of asbestos, now that it’s banned."

Q: Why has the history of energy been misrepresented like this?

J.-B. F.: The reason is simple: historians tend to look at energy from an economic viewpoint, seeking to understand the roots of industrialisation and growth. To that end, they convert those tonnes of wood, coal and petroleum into energy units, and examine the evolution of the mix in relative terms. So in the industrialised countries in 1900, the energy contribution of wood, for example, did indeed become negligible compared with that of coal.

Yet in terms of trees, biodiversity and climate, it’s absolute values that count, and the number of trees felled has never stopped increasing. Moreover, historians have not studied the interrelationships between energy sources – for example, all the wood needed to mine coal or all the coal necessary to extract and use petroleum.

Q: What solutions do you propose?

J.-B. F.: This is the key question that my book does not answer at all. What climate policy should we pursue once we realise that carbon neutrality is largely an illusion, and that we can slow down but probably not stop climate change?