Summary
Jean-Baptiste Fressoz traces the history of energy systems with a radical insight: energy sources do not replace each other—they accumulate. The myth of “energy transition” masks a reality of ever-greater dependence on accumulated energy sources, each feeding off the others.
Core Argument
The disastrous fallacy at the heart of energy transition discourse is the assumption that new energy sources replace older ones. In reality:
- Coal didn’t replace wood; we added coal on top of wood
- Oil didn’t replace coal; we added oil to coal and wood
- Renewables won’t replace oil/coal/gas; we’ll simply add them to the existing stack
This accumulation creates systemic dependence and exponential growth in total energy consumption—the opposite of what “transition” implies.
Two-Part Structure
Part 1: Material and Quantitative History of Energy Demonstrates how each major energy source added to rather than replaced earlier ones, with concrete historical data showing cumulative growth patterns.
Part 2: Intellectual and Political Genealogy of “Energy Transition” Traces how the concept of transition itself was promoted by energy companies not as genuine change, but as a rhetorical tool to postpone meaningful action.
Key Insight
“Transition” was originally promoted by energy companies themselves—not as a plan for change, but as a mechanism to defer real alternatives.
Author
Jean-Baptiste Fressoz — Historian of science and technology at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris. Specializes in environmental history and the history of energy systems.
Publication
Harper, 2025