Energy in the Twenty-First Century: Projections from 2000 Are Totally Wrong!

The story of energy is changing in front of our very eyes. In a short span of 10 years, utility-scale electricity generation based on wind and solar energy has become cheaper than coal and natural gas. The majority of automotive manufacturers are converting their manufacturing to electric vehicles, which are now visible everywhere and are ramping up 60% annually. None of these things were anticipated, even as recently as 2010. The world’s leading industrial players and energy organizations, such as the IEA and US-EIA, have consistently underestimated the growth of the new industry verticals of PV, wind, EVs, and battery storage, sectors that are now undergoing massive disruption. It is well known that the incumbents have a hard time with disruption. But it is amazing that the disruption is accelerating and is occurring rapidly across a broad range of technologies – energy, communications, computing, medicine, finance, manufacturing – and all at the same time! Is it just coincidence or are there underlying common factors? In the case of energy, has most of the change already occurred, or is this a new paradigm that we have to adapt to? Unless we understand the underlying factors that are driving the disruptions, we cannot evolve a strategy to manage the change that is occurring. History has shown us that major changes and transformations do not occur so fast – so what is driving this change? This is a complex set of seemingly unrelated issues that we need to unpack to really understand what is happening.