By Ivo Wakounig

I stepped my foot into the energy sector a few years ago because I wanted to contribute to energy transitions. Back then, to me the concept of a transition was as elusive as it was clear. On the one hand, I associated with transitions a change of energy technologies from fossil to renewable (or ‘green’). On the other hand, I always found it quite surprising that fossil fuel companies were the ones which propagated renewable energy on their websites the most. In my studies (masters and at the beginning of my PhD) I learned quite a bit on transitions, the framework intended to uncover some of the dynamics, and what the characteristics of transitions could be. But this did not resolve my confusion about what transitions meant and why fossil fuel companies are the ones which seem to propagate it the most. When I was finally introduced into critiques of transitions research, I started to understand where some of my confusion came from. I will spare you from an outline of all of the reasons, but essentially I became dissatisfied with the research field (as important as it may be). I came to the conclusion that political economy considerations ought to lie at the core of our thinking.

Lately I noticed that almost everyone I knew from all kinds of sectors got their hands onto Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’ 2024 book ‘More and More and More – An All-Consuming History of Energy’. I am not sure how many have read his piece, but to me the book was such an important read that I am dedicating this blog to it. While many of Fressoz’ points are not novel at all, the author manages to put them together in such a way that they lead to the conclusion that the energy transitions dialogue does more harm than good to our collective well-being. Transitions, according to Fressoz and also based on my own observations, serve as a frame to continue the status quo painted in green rather than as a vehicle for transformative change.

Based on my experiences and readings I strongly believe that the academic field of transitions research needs to introspect and critically reflect on how it contributed to the current stalemate. We have reached a point where we need to challenge the core assumptions of our models and thinking by engaging with alternative political and economic perspectives. Below I will outline the main messages of Fressoz’ book, followed by some of my own perspectives.

The Wrong History of Technology

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’ core thesis is that the history of energy (and technology more broadly) is narrated in a wrong way. The omnipresent stagist view sees technology development in terms of stages of progressive improvement, so from stone to iron to computers – in the stagist framing this would be the stone age, iron age, computer age. Such a stagist understanding makes it seem that new technologies replace the old. However, this ignores that different technologies build on each other and feed off of each other. This stagist view sprawled in the history of technology in the 19th century and it was used for commercial purposes to raise excitement about new technologies. It also propagated a futurology of exhaustion wherein the world is running out of resources due to population growth. A stagist reading of the history of technology conflates the history of technology with the history of materials, turning energy transitions into a logical outcome of a process of continuous progression.

The Stagist Narration Builds on the Wrong Interpretation of Data

The stagist view on the history of technology makes use of relative, rather than absolute numbers pertaining to technology use and material demand. Such an approach leads to substantial issues when accounting for the usage of primary materials, for example in the case of wood. The diffusion of coal energy in Britain is often narrated as a story of replacement, where coal reduces the amount of wood which is consumed for energy purposes. While this story can be supported by taking a relative lens, it falls apart when you take absolute numbers. For example, while the coal use for energy increased substantially due to the industrialisation, the demand for wood for energy remained stable. In relative terms this would mean that coal would take up a larger share at the expense of wood, pointing towards replacement. However, the absolute amount of wood for energy purposes remained stable throughout the industrialisation, meaning that rather than coal replacing wood, it was stacked on top. In fact, while the energy related demand for wood remained stable, coal increased the material demand for wood for not direct energetic purposes. This is because the diffusion of coal relied on wood, for example to support the roofs of the mine shafts. As such, the usage of wood increased in Britain by a factor of six to seven between the beginning of the 20th century and pre coal times.

Figures: Historical estimates of England’s and Wales’ use of coal and firewood for energy purposes from 1561 to 1809. A relative perspective (left side) would lead to the interpretation that coal replaced firewood, whereas absolute numbers (right side) reveal that the use of firewood remained constant whereas the use of coal increased profoundly. Note that this figure does not include the amount of wood needed for construction or other material purposes. I was not able to find comparable data for later periods.

Another issue stemming from the stagist perspective is the neglect of what primary energy sources are used for. By putting primary energy sources such as coal, oil, and wood into one bin, it is easy to assume that the rise of one energy carrier replaces the others. Many historians fall prey to this wrong perspective, for example when they want to politicise transitions. A commonly used argument is that the diffusion of oil related technologies weakened coal workers in the UK, as their political leverage was weakened by oil. However, such a perspective misses that oil and coal are used for very different purposes and they even reinforce each others uses, meaning that a higher usage of oil cannot be the reason for the reduction in coal use.

This leads to the third issue which is also the core of Fressoz’ critique. Different primary energy sources and their technologies are highly entangled, as many are used to produce materials for (the processes of) other energy technologies. For example, ships transporting coal require oil, oil infrastructure requires large amounts of steel, and this steel is often produced by coal in the first place. So what may seem from the stagist view a story of replacement is, in reality, a story of symbiosis.

What a lot of energy statistics miss is useful or useable energy, as the macro perspective inherently conceals those views. It can then so happen that an increase in the use of primary energy leads to the same useful energy or even less, for example when energy inefficient technologies are implemented to achieve the same purpose. This, however, can also go the opposite way, wherein a stable supply of primary energy may lead to more useful energy for demand purposes, for example due to technological changes. Relying on energy statistics to tell stories about transitions is, hence, often more problematic than useful.

Biomass as the Integrator of Energy

The history of wood, either as an energy carrier or as a material, exemplifies the misinterpretation of history the most. It starts with the earlier example of coal, which substantially increased the consumption of wood in Britain rather than replacing it. The railway system, which is often understood to largely consist of steel, for a long time mainly consisted of wood, such as the tracks and the trains. For example, at the turn of the 20th century, the wood mass of railways exceeded its iron mass by a large extent. Hence, the railway system not only increased demand for wood through using coal to power trains (coal mines require wood to function) but also because of its infrastructure. The chemical revolution in the early 20th century had even larger effects on the political ecology of wood. For one, chemical processes such as Lambiotte process would carbonise wood to be used to produce charcoal and chemical products. One of those chemical products was phenol-formaldehyde resins which would become Bakelite, used to harden wood for utensils. Another example is creosoting, which was a method to preserve wood. As the creosoting was reliant on coal, preserving wood through that method reduced the demand for new wood, helping reduce the burden on forests coal extraction was causing to begin with.

The fertiliser industry, which gave rise to petrofarming, increased the yields of forests, causing an even larger throughput of wood. This deeply entangled the fossil fuels and wood industries. This entanglement enabled the cashcrop farming of wood types such as pine, which substantially increased the availability of wood in the global market. The mass production of wood was further catalysed by the introduction of more sophisticated machinery to cut forests and trees, most of which are powered by fossil fuels. It is because of these entanglements that the substantial deforestation worldwide is directly tied to the larger fossil fuel footprint. While relative energy statistics attribute a flat or stagnating demand for wood for energetic purposes, the entangled view as underlined above shows that wood usage extends in multiple domains which co-develops with the rise of fossils.

Stagist History and its Influence on Transitions

The stagist reading of the history of technology provides a very skewed understanding how technologies develop and what their material footprints are, with immense implications for so-called energy transitions. Building on stagist thinking, the technocratic movement in the USA introduced the logistics S-curve model into energy futurology to model technology diffusion. With the rise of systems thinking and environmentalism, for example with the limits to growth report in 1972, this stagist S-curve technology development thinking propagated through computer model approaches from IIASA. Leading modellers at IIASA built their calculations on the relative approach and, coupled with the intellectual context of that time, saw the innovation of new technologies not only as a solution to environmental issues but also as an opportunity for growth. In this context of Schumpeterian thinking (creative destruction – new technologies replace the old) and innovation sciences based on neoclassical thinking (rational choice, market sorts everything), transitions research emerged as a new field in the Netherlands, which from the outset confused the diffusion of green technologies with decarbonisation.

These models based on stagist logistics S-curves had yet another impact. As the result of those models exerted a strong sensitivity to initial parameters, IIASA and other stakeholders were very hesitant to favour any technological pathway over others. Economist William Nordhaus was one of the advocates who supported this wait and see approach by spreading the confidence that some technological solutions will emerge at some point in the future, reducing the need to act now. Because of such individuals and the broader ideological framing of that time, the academic literature started to focus on Pareto optimal emission pathways, which conveniently sidestep technological problems. Group III of IPCC followed this wait and see approach and imagined some technological fixes at some point in the future. Many governments followed their advice when conceptualised their transition policies, meaning that these policies were designed to work as delaying tactic. It is, hence, because of the stagist thinking which emerged during the economic thinking of the 80s that energy policies were not able to lead to the change they were promised to deliver.

Transitions to Keep Capitalism Alive

This failure to deliver on transition promises is rooted in a faulty understanding of technological change and the assumptions under which these are modelled. None of the IPCC scenarios assumes a reduction of GDP as they take for granted endless continuous economic growth due to innovation. Adding to that, by ignoring the material entanglements of energy systems and the rebound effect, transitions paint a too simplistic picture of changes in the energy system. At the core of the ecological disaster which is unfolding in front of our eyes lies fossil industrial capitalism. Just eliminating fossil fuels would not be sufficient, because even without CO2 emissions the industrial system leads to plenty of other problems.

Responding to the challenge is almost impossible to imagine and needs to go beyond Schumpeterian thinking and S-curve models. Responses need to target political economic structures which shape the world, such as industrial capitalism or the financialised world economy. And even if we manage to address those will we still remain on a pathway riddled with various negative ecological consequences. It is, hence, paramount to significantly transform our economic systems away from capitalism if we want to live in a world in which humans can flourish.

What does that mean for Transitions Research

The field of transitions research is currently at a critical stage. 30 years after it developed its first frameworks and theories, an increasing number of people start questioning core approaches. At the same time, there is a growing notion of acceleration and speeding up change which only reinforces the position of industrial capitalism. A major reason behind this tension is that transitions research remains dominated by the thought of its leading ideologues from the Netherlands, who amass great resources to influence the development of the field. Important figures keep alive the belief that innovation and technological change are sources of progress and lead the world to a clean and prosperous future. In this process, capitalism and continuous growth are naturalised and a neoliberal market-friendly approach essentialised. By reducing transition to market-based policies which deliver technological change, change itself and the economic system are depoliticised. By cleansing technologies and transformations from political ramifications and contexts, the field contributes to the extension of capitalism and the procrastination regarding real world change. Or as Jean-Baptiste Fressoz put it:

Transition is the ideology of capital in the twenty-first century. It turns evil into cure, polluting industries into the green industries of the future, and innovation in our lifeline. Transition puts capital on the right side of the climate battle. Thanks to transition, we are talking about trajectories to 2100, electric cars, and hydrogen-powered aircraft rather than material consumption levels and distribution. Very complex solutions in the future make it impossible to do things in the here and now. The seductive power of transition is immense: we all need future changes to justify present procrastination. The history of transition, though, and the unsettling sense of déjà vu it engenders should warn us. We must not let the technological promises of carbon-free material abundance repeat themselves again and again: after crossing the 2°C threshold in the second half of this century, they will just as surely lead us towards greater perils.

If the field wants to move on from its intellectual baggage to be able to contribute to real transformational change, political economy structures and industrial capitalism would have to be put at the centre of the debate. This means that technology has to be re-politicised, capitalism de-naturalised, and innovation de-Schumpeterised. We need to find answers to societies’ material throughput, the various inequalities which are attached to those, and an overall critique of the concept of modernity. The beacon of hope in this endeavour are the scholars who keep sounding the alarm for the past decades as well as the emerging scholarship critiquing the colonial patterns of technology deployment. It will be a matter of organisation and engagement from different actors to ensure that we can live in a world which allows flourishing for all humans.