Welcome an electric world. Worry about the transition
As fuels, oil and electricity have meaningfully different characteristics
Oil shaped the 20th century. In war, the French leader Georges Clemenceau said, petroleum was “as vital as blood”. In peace the oil business dominated stockmarkets, bankrolled despots and propped up the economies of entire countries. But the 21st century will see oil’s influence wane. Cheap natural gas, renewable energy, electric vehicles and co-ordinated efforts to tackle global warming together mean that the power source of choice will be electricity.
Oil and electricity are a study in contrasts (see our special report). Oil is a wonder fuel, packed with more energy by weight than coal and by volume than natural gas (both still the main sources of electricity). It is easy to ship, store and turn into myriad refined products, from petrol to plastics to pharmaceuticals. But it is found only in specific places favoured by geology. Its production is concentrated in a few hands, and its oligopolistic suppliers — from the Seven Sisters to OPEC and Russia — have consistently attempted to drip-feed it on to the market to keep prices high. Concentration and cartelisation make oil prone to crises and the governments of oil-rich states prone to corruption and abuse.
Different kettles of fuel
Electricity is less user-friendly than oil. It is hard to store, it loses its oomph when shipped over long distances, and its transmission and distribution require hands-on regulation. But in every other way, it promises a more peaceful world.
Electricity is hard to monopolise because it can be produced from numerous sources of fuel, from natural gas and nuclear to wind, solar, hydro and biomass. The more these replace coal and oil as fuel for generation, the cleaner it promises to be. Given the right weather conditions, it is abundant geographically, too. Anyone can produce electricity — from greener-than-thou Germans to energy-poor Kenyans.
True, the technologies used to produce electricity from renewable resources, and the rare earths and minerals that some, including solar panels and wind turbines, rely on, could be subject to protectionism and trade wars. China, which produces 85% of the world’s rare earths, sharply tightened export quotas in 2010 with OPEC-like zeal. America and the European Union have slapped tariffs on Chinese solar-panel imports. Yet the vital substances involved in generating and storing electricity are not burned up like oil. Once a stock of them exists it can for the most part be recycled. And, even if today’s output is concentrated, for most materials the planet has undeveloped deposits or substitutes that can thwart a would-be monopolist. Rare earths, for example, are not rare — one of them, cerium, is almost as common as zinc.
Electricity also rewards co-operation. Because renewables are intermittent, regional grids are needed to ship electricity from where it is plentiful to where it is not. This could replicate the pipeline politics that Russia engages in with its natural-gas shipments to Europe. More likely, as grids are interconnected so as to diversify supply, more interdependent countries will conclude that manipulating the market is self-defeating. After all, unlike gas, you cannot keep electricity in the ground.
An electric world is therefore desirable. But getting there will be hard, for two reasons. First, as rents dry up, authoritarian oil-dependent governments could collapse. Few will miss them, but their passing could cause social unrest and strife. Oil producers had a taste of what is to come when the price plunged in 2014–16, which led to deep, and unpopular, austerity measures. Saudi Arabia and Russia have temporarily stopped the rot by curtailing production and pushing oil prices higher, as part of an “OPEC+” agreement. They need high prices to buy time to wean their economies off oil. But the higher the oil price, the greater the incentive for energy-thirsty behemoths like China and India to invest in renewable-powered electrification to give themselves cheaper and more secure supplies. Should the producers’ alliance crumble in the face of a long-term decline in demand for oil, prices could once again tumble, this time for good.
That will lead to the second danger: the fallout for investors in oil assets. America’s frackers need only look at the country’s woebegone coalminers to catch a glimpse of their fate in a distant post-oil future. The International Energy Agency, a forecaster, reckons that, if action to limit global warming to below 2°C accelerates in coming years, $1trn of oil assets could be stranded, ie, rendered obsolete. If the transition is unexpectedly sudden, stockmarkets will be dangerously exposed.
The tension is inescapable. On the one hand government policy should press forward with the transition as fast as it can. On the other, a rapid transition will cause upheaval. Expect the big consumers, especially India and China, to force the pace.
This article first appeared in the Leaders section of The Economist on March 15th 2018.
