The well-known energy and environment author, Greenpeace campaigner and Solarcentury boss, Jeremy Leggett has written a new book in which he argues that conventional energy systems all over the world are heading for a global crash and need root-and-branch reform.
Mr Leggett says that much big energy is guilty of an “enculturated risk blindness” that, unless action is taken, will lead to an inevitable global crash. Mr Leggett is known as "Britain's most respected green energy boss" and his experience has led him to conclude that there is widespread risk-taking in the global energy industry, as well as the financial markets associated with it. Since the price of oil began to rise inexorably in 2004, too many people in top levels of government and business have closed their eyes and ears to the problem. In his book he identifies four systemic risks, specifically climate change, carbon-fuel asset stranding in capital markets (“the carbon bubble”), the development of shale gas and oil depletion.
“Brain scientists tell us we have a very worrying collective tendency for blindness to the kind of risks that can crash economies, and imperil civilisations” Leggett concludes. “The financial crisis suggests they are right. Now we need to worry that the energy industries are about to repeat the behaviour traits of the financial sector, and on multiple fronts.”
The honeymoon for renewable energy is far from over according to Leggett, primarily because cost-down is now systemic and also because the utility of renewables is too widely perceived and understood across society. This has in turn generated a dysfunctional enculturated pushback by conventional energy interests who also face carbon-fuel asset stranding as their biggest problem in keeping their out-of-date business models on course. The result has been a “civil war” in energy markets which is likely to be shaped by shocks to the system rather than by evolutionary policymaking. With the next global energy crisis, governments will essentially have only a narrow window of opportunity in which to reset the world energy infrastructure on a course to renaissance.
“The global energy industry is in an institutionalised state of collective risk blindness, and is pushing the global community towards serial disaster on current course” said Leggett. “Like the banking industry, we will need a whole new generation of leaders, and companies with very different business models. This new generation will have to recognise that – as Einstein said – you don't solve huge problems with the same thinking that created them in the first place. Renewables could power modern economies within a few decades, and the potential in Asia and the Middle East is arguably even higher than the west. But the incumbency will try hard to stop us even coming close.”
Leggett added that renewable energy industries can lead by example while speaking with truth and integrity.
“In doing this, we must never underestimate how deeply misguided the energy incumbency is capable of being, collectively” Mr Leggett continued. “Or the malign power that they are exercising below the radar in the current civil war in global energy markets. Most of them will not change willingly, we know now. They must be forced to change.”
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