How Clean Energy Escaped the Boom-and-Bust Cycle
The shift toward renewables is accelerating in some places, while Big Oil is investing less.
Spending on renewable power has been steady.
Photographer: picture alliance/Getty Images
If you had been scanning the headlines about the fight between clean energy and fossil power, you’d think that the energy transition went through a sharp boom-and-bust cycle during the past five years. If you looked instead at the data, you’d have a very different impression.
The headline version more or less tracks the number of times BlackRock Inc. Chairman Larry Fink mentioned the word “climate” in his annual letter to investors. An issue that once barely troubled capitalists took center stage briefly in 2020 and 2021 against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, before vanishing as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a corporate backlash against any initiative deemed “woke,” and the restoration of the fossil fuel-loving Donald Trump to the White House banished it from the conversation.