"The history of energy shows that there has never been a real transition in the past"

Historian of science, technology and the environment, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz has been exploring for several years how societies have transformed and exploited their environment, while deconstructing the too-smooth narratives of progress and modernity. This is notably the case with his latest book: "Sans transition. Une nouvelle histoire de l’énergie".

Published last year, this book shows that over the past two centuries, energies have not replaced one another but accumulated, leading to an unprecedented surge in consumption and its impacts. For this CNRS researcher and teacher at the EHESS, history reveals that humanity has never experienced a true energy transition and that it is unlikely to live through one in the coming decades. Interview.

Let’s start with a simple question: in light of the title of your latest book, did we choose the wrong name by opting for SwissPowerShift?

It is not my role to play censor. Let’s say that the idea of "energy transition" belongs more to the realm of slogans than to a rigorous scientific notion. Installing renewable energies or electric cars simply reduces the carbon intensity of the economy. That does not, properly speaking, constitute an "energy transition."

How did you come to want to contest, in a way, the established order — this desire to question a term now used by everyone?

It is less a protest against the established order than a reaction to the constant debasement of the term "transition." One only needs to look a little into the history of energy to realize that in reality there have never been true transitions in the past, and that the word has been instrumentalized for political or economic ends. By digging into the subject, I discovered that the responsibility did not rest only with politicians, but also with some historians, whose work has sometimes maintained this confusion.

Observing then that these theories were echoed by climate experts, I felt the situation had become fairly serious: one cannot have history say anything one likes. Take the concrete example of oil and electricity in the 20th century: these two resources are often presented as two "energy transitions," even though electricity first increased coal consumption and oil did not necessarily reduce it.

If the concept of transition so poorly accounts for past transformations, it is because it was never designed for that. Its objective was not to offer an empirical vision of the past, but to anticipate the future. Since the early 2000s, people have started to look in the history of energy for clues, scraps of answers to the most burning contemporary questions: how long can a transition take? How to accelerate it? By what means? But history is incapable of helping us on these questions.

In your book, you denounce the way historians have divided history into ages, a vision you call "phasist"…

This way of conceiving history as a succession of distinct material ages dates back to the second half of the 19th century. The problem does not come from periodization itself — some periodizations are perfectly legitimate — but from isolating and using particular energy sources to define an era. Material history is quite different: it is not a history of phases and ages, but a history of accumulations, stratifications and symbioses.

This "phasism" of our historical narrative is not without consequences. It explains how easily, in the face of climate change, the notion of energy transition imposed itself as self-evident: an apparently solid and reassuring notion. It anchors a certain futurology in history, even though this future, in reality, has no past.

By suggesting a gradual fifty-year global phase-out of fossil fuels, some experts led people to believe that the urgency was not immediate.

From when did the term "energy transition" become such a popular given?

The idea of "energy transition" was born first in a context marked by the Cold War and atomic sciences. In a 1953 report to the Atomic Energy Commission, Palmer Cosslett Putnam already warned that, in the long term, a transition to atomic energy would be necessary both because we would run out of fossil resources and because fossils could dangerously alter the climate. It is important to stress this point: the climate warning was raised very early by promoters of the atom.

In the United States, the first tools to study the climate — satellites, weather balloons, supercomputers, but above all mass spectrometers inherited from the Manhattan Project — were mobilized by atomic scientists. These instruments, refined by General Electric, made it possible to analyze carbon and oxygen isotopes, opening the way to the first climate warnings. Putnam explains, for example in his report, that within a century "humanity will have burned at least ten times more carbon than in the previous century, and the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere could reach alarming levels." The notion of energy transition thus lies as much in a scientific history as in an imaginary inherited from the "Atomic Age," that of a future where nuclear power would inevitably take over, coal becoming too costly.

However, it was not until the 1970s and the energy crisis that the term changed meaning, became an instrument of political discourse and burst into public debate, notably in the United States after a televised address by Jimmy Carter on April 18, 1977. From then on, reports on the energy transition multiplied, and the UN even adopted a resolution encouraging the gradual abandonment of fossil fuels.

But under Carter, the "energy transition" actually meant a massive return to coal, presented as a sovereignty solution vis‑à‑vis OPEC, before encompassing, in a confused way, solar, nuclear and coal liquefaction. This conceptual vagueness was very convenient but hid questionable technological choices. A striking example: the Carter administration’s plan, endowed with $88 billion, to transform coal into synthetic liquid fuel. An absurd scenario, showing how a notion supposed to prepare the future sometimes helped blur the climate warning and legitimize untenable energy trajectories.

Did the concept of transition, which appeared in the 1980s, push states not to act, or at least to procrastinate?

What is striking in the 1970s is that many climatologists — and not just a few isolated voices — relayed the idea of a "soft transition" that would allow several decades to phase out fossil fuels. The 1979 international conference in Geneva even made it an official conclusion: climate change would be serious by the middle of the 21st century, but humanity would have time to organize a gradual shift.

Yet other experts knew perfectly well that there had never been a true transition and that these narratives were mythical. By invoking a fifty-year phased global exit from fossil fuels, they led people to believe the urgency was not immediate. This discourse fed the illusion that action could be deferred, betting on future technological progress to solve the problem — a perspective supported by economists such as William Nordhaus.

In practice, the idea of transition thus helped legitimize collective procrastination in the face of the climate crisis.

During the 1980s, some experts began to estimate that warming was inevitable, and above all that it would be more economically interesting to prepare for it than to try to prevent it…

The publication of several reports and studies around the turn of the the 1970s–1980s indeed confirmed forthcoming climate change, its inevitability and the sacrifices necessary to limit its magnitude. It was from that point, mainly in the United States, that the notion of "adaptation" took hold. "It is unlikely that we will take measures to prevent climate change, and it is in fact rather the opposite. It is therefore prudent to prepare for it," explained climatologist William Kellogg.

Rather than reducing human impact, some researchers then preferred to think about how to adapt. This is evident in the 1983 report "Changing Climate," where one can read that some places on the planet could become uninhabitable. But to avoid hindering economic growth, sacrificing these "catastrophically affected zones" appeared to be an acceptable compromise.

Whatever name we give it, isn't the big change today linked to the fact that we waste resources less or recycle them more?

The idea that we have suddenly become aware today that we must save energy and reduce waste is totally false. I would even add that it has always depended on a single factor: the cost of oil or energy.

Gas flaring is a good illustration. This practice has declined where it has become more economically interesting to recover the resource rather than burn it. But in many regions, flaring continues due to insufficient profitability.

In my book, I also cite the example of black liquor, residues from the paper industry rich in lignins. Long dumped into rivers — with serious environmental consequences — they were reused as a source of heat and electricity when rising oil prices pushed the sector to find ways to valorize them. With a spectacular effect: in 2020, in the United States, black liquor represented as much energy as the national solar electricity production!

In reality, efforts in efficiency, residue recovery and recycling are very old and were theorized by chemists as early as the beginning of the 19th century. Inspired by Lavoisier’s work — "nothing is lost" — industrialists have always sought to recover material because it is costly, especially at a time when raw materials were difficult to transport. The idea was also to show they had an interest in not polluting, since pollution represented a financial loss for them. Obviously, in many contexts, and for multiple economic and technical reasons, polluting is often cheaper than recycling everything.

There even existed a whole discourse on industrial recycling: the larger the factory, the more residues it produces, and the more interesting it becomes to valorize them. This logic fed a defense of manufacturing concentration, against small artisans accused of wasting.

But what must be understood is that we are heirs of a long past of technical progress, efficiency gains and resource savings. We are not on the eve of a new era of recycling: it is old, deeply rooted in industrial history.

Technical progress has never reduced our overall resource consumption. On the contrary, each innovation opens up new uses and increases needs, so that material consumption continues to rise.

In your book you write that we must end this dialectic of winners and losers… Yet in terms of mobility — widely discussed today — wasn't the electric vehicle the great loser against the internal combustion engine a century ago?

That’s true. But the electric motor triumphed elsewhere in industry… My book is about the material and energy history and not about the history of techniques. The two are too often confused: the history of materials with that of inventions. This is also a remark I address to some colleagues who tell the story of 19th-century renewable energies as that of weak techniques, quickly defeated by coal, industrialization and capitalism.

In reality, renewables were doing very well at that time. Hydraulic turbines progressed enormously in the second half of the 19th century: made of cast iron, installed horizontally, they were much more efficient than the old wooden mills. Small 19th-century American windmills, meanwhile, already benefited from galvanized steel, ball bearings and lubrication systems inspired by the automobile.

To put it simply: whether fossil or renewable, all energy sources are interconnected. Yet we continue to oppose them as if they confronted each other in an ideological duel, with on one side the "winners" — the fossiles — and on the other the "losers" — the renewables. This Manichaean view corresponds neither to the reality of energy systems nor to contemporary challenges. It is time to move beyond this logic of confrontation.

You explain that each resource relied on the previous one — coal after wood, electricity after coal, solar after charcoal. But without these new, more efficient resources, wouldn’t we have exhausted all the forests on the planet?

Yes, it is hard to imagine an economy continuing to grow at the end of the 19th century without coal and relying only on wood. Moreover, the successive techniques gain in efficiency — think of the transition from the steam engine to the electric motor. Nevertheless: technical progress has never reduced our overall resource consumption. On the contrary, each innovation opens up new uses and increases needs, so that material consumption continues to rise. Techniques become more efficient, but our dependence on resources remains massive and unavoidable.

The boom in demand for bricks in the 19th century — fueled by coal — for example did not prevent a parallel explosion in wood consumption. Paper, railways, mines and packaging then drove wood needs to unprecedented heights. There has never been a transition "away from wood": neither in the 19th nor the 20th century, neither in rich nor in poor countries.

Researchers like Cesare Marchetti often studied energy transitions in relative terms, observing the share of each resource in the world mix. This is a relevant approach to understand economic dynamics. But for climate change, proportions do not matter: absolute volumes of emissions and consumption do. A strong growth in renewables does not prevent fossil energies from remaining a major problem as long as their absolute consumption stays high.

Reading you, one gets the impression that the concept of transition is linked to a desperate quest for solutions and innovations?

I want to make clear that my argument is in no way technophobic: technical progress has been real and spectacular over the last two or three centuries. From the steam engine to the electric motor, from coal to solar, history is full of innovations that radically improved energy efficiency. But these advances, impressive as they are, have always been caught up by a rebound effect: more efficiency also leads to more consumption, and therefore increased use of resources, old and new. To the rebound effect is added the symbiotic effect: energies are deeply and inextricably linked to one another.

The current climate challenge is of a completely different nature. It is no longer just a question of substituting one technique for another, but of massively and rapidly exiting fossil fuels, within 25 to 50 years — which has no historical precedent. Invoking the narrative of technological progress as a guarantee of success is misleading: the scale and radicalness of the climate challenge far exceed anything humanity has faced so far.

The idea of transition has become the ideology of capital in the 21st century: it offers capital a way to place itself, at least symbolically, on the right side of the climate struggle.

In your book and public interventions, you are very critical of the IPCC. What do you reproach it for?

My criticism targets Working Group III, whose expertise, from its origins, aligned with American positions. It rests on an absolute confidence in technological solutions and, above all, on seeking answers that do not call into question the size of the economy, even in the richest countries. A White House memo dated August 1989 perfectly illustrates this orientation: "The objective is not to protect the climate, but to protect the economic well‑being from the adverse effects of global warming."

That explains, from the 2000s onward, the defense of rather risky solutions, such as carbon capture and storage, a technique that poses two major problems. First, it relies on the use of amines — derivatives of ammonia — whose production and degradation are highly polluting, which becomes unmanageable at the scale of hundreds of millions of tonnes. Second, its energy consumption is colossal: in the case of thermal power plants, for every two plants in operation, a third would be needed solely to run the capture system.

Many scientists consider that relying on large-scale carbon capture and storage is an illusion. Official reports, such as that of the Union of European Academies of Science in 2022, denounce the idea that we can count on technologies that do not yet exist at the required scale, judging these scenarios unrealistic, even absurd. Yet despite these criticisms, these solutions remain largely integrated into "net zero" pathways. For many experts, it is a headlong flight: modelers manipulating assumptions on computers without a solid concrete basis. Moreover, several major institutions — the IMF, the World Bank, the IEA, governments — share this skepticism, seeing in these approaches a way to postpone the problem rather than confront it.

You sound very pessimistic about the future…

Hard not to be. Even if all countries acted in good faith, carbon neutrality would remain extraordinarily difficult to achieve. So when some of the most powerful fiercely oppose it… On the expertise side, the path is also long. For example, in the 2022 report, among the 3,000 scenarios examined by Working Group III of the IPCC, not a single one mentions, even as a hypothesis, the possibility of degrowth.

My book in no way calls into question the development of renewable energies. Decarbonizing electricity is a necessary step, but insufficient: it covers only 40% of global emissions. What I emphasize is that the material history of energy shows how the idea of transition is too simplistic, even misleading. The idea of transition has become the ideology of capital in the 21st century: it offers it the means to position itself, at least symbolically, on the right side of the climate struggle.

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