Emily Cunningham

"Entrenched players within the fossil fuel industry, like all incumbents before them, always deny the reality of what’s going on. There are four very good examples of recent industries where this has already happened:" 3/

1) "You have the European electricity sector where demand for thermal electricity peaked in 2007 – not foreseen by the incumbents." 4/

2) "You have the global coal sector where demand peaked in 2013, again not foreseen by any of the forecasters – even long after the event." 5/

3) "Then you have the global [gas] turbine market where actually demand peaks around 2011 and then GE buys Alstom, fails to understand what's going on and takes a $20 billion write down couple years later." 6/

4a) "The global car industry long denied the threat of the electric vehicle and, of course, we've seen a complete transformation of their attitude in the last two years." 7/

4b) "And that's at a time when there's a thousand million cars on the road and only 5 million EVs. The entire global car sector has realized that they need to transition to the new technology." 8/

Is the fossil fuel industry staying on top of all this? Investing appropriately? No. "Investment in the renewable sector last year was over $300B and the oil sector maybe invested sub-$10B so it's actually not a player– they're merely the victims not the drivers of change." 9/

Who is leading the energy transition? "It is a fabulous opportunity whenever you get 20% annual growth rates for a decade or more you get a lot of new companies jumping in. One interesting aspect about this revolution is that many of those companies are in China." 10/

"8 out of 10 people live in countries that import fossil fuels so for most people in the world it's it's a huge benefit to have their own energy source." 11/

Those that denied global warming are the same who now deny there's an energy transition. "By doing this they're damaging their own interest. So for companies which fail to realize like what's going on like GE, Peabody, Volkswagen, RWE... if you deny reality, you go bust." 12/

"Don't forget, if you're an incumbent you've got your entire balance sheet committed to the current system and you're trying to compete with people who've got their entire balance sheet committed to the new system so it is very, very hard to make the transition." 13/

"We need new leaders. Many of the leaders of the current fossil fuel industry are clearly not fit for purpose. If you go back and read the annual reports of the European electricity companies in 2007 you see all of the leaders of these companies..." 14/

"...paying lip service to a transition, talking about how important it is. It's all green washing. Privately, we know they were dismissing it. They didn't see it as a real threat and they felt that they could ignore it but in their public statements they were very positive." 15/

"Of course what happened was that over the course of a succeeding decade these companies ended up losing hundreds of billions of dollars of stranded assets losing up to 80% of market capitalization and their management teams were replaced." 16/

"I think what we saw happen to the European electricity a decade ago is what will now happen increasingly across the fossil fuel complex." 17/

"Don't forget: horses were the largest source of global transport supply in 1910 but they spent the next 50 years declining and that's the point. You're going to reach the peak just before you decline." 18/

Take a moment to really let this sink in. "Energy determines geopolitics. Therefore, a new energy environment will mean a new geopolitical environment." 19/

"When you think about the geopolitical shake-up, US hegemony is coming to an end. We can see that insofar as currency and the petro dollar. What else do you see insofar as a new world order?" 20/

"The most interesting aspect of this shift to a new energy source is that it's led by China. So, it's clearly another pillar in the rise of China to greater global power." 21/

"It's very notable then whilst the US has been going backwards under its current President, China has been moving forwards and has been implementing both leading these technologies but also they have a number of very clever policies." 22/

"For example, the Belt and Road is a way of expanding Chinese path through land-based system." 23/

"The Belt and Road is a series of infrastructure, transport, and energy initiatives whereby Chinese capital and Chinese expertise is going to a series of countries in order to expand their infrastructure links." 24/

More context on the Belt and Road Initiative from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative … 25/

"Sea power has been intrinsic to the dominance of the US in order to protect fossil fuel transport. Now, if it's electricity which will be the dominant source of links and transmission of energy between countries, it will be land power." 26/

"It's been quite impressive how China is using the Belt and Road to increase its land power to its neighbors." 27/

"One error that's very, very often made is people will say, 'Well, we're a very long way from renewables being 100% of all energy, therefore when it's 100%, wake me up.' Well, of course, that's not how the world works. The world works on marginal change, basically." 28/

"It's very notable that when we switched from wood to coal after 1800, coal doesn't become largest global energy source until 1905. But the whole of the 19th C was the working out of the consequences of the rise of those countries which exploited this new energy technology." 29/