Don't Believe The Geniuses Claiming To Know Our Energy Future
February 26, 2023/ Francis Menton
“Stranded assets.” You know what those are. Probably you’ve read a hundred or more articles over the past few years confidently proclaiming that oil and gas fields and coal mines owned by large energy companies will soon become worthless, as production of energy shifts to “cleaner” and “cheaper” things like wind and solar. The owners of the fossil fuel properties won’t be able to sell them for even a dollar. The assets will thus be “stranded.”
The “stranded assets” predictions unsurprisingly come from the same crowd who are also ordering up the electric car future. For just a tiny sample of recent pieces making the stranded assets point, check out this from Nature Climate Change, May 26, 2022 (“The transition to a global low-carbon economy entails . . . the fast phase-out of fossil-fuel production, which will necessitate the write-down of major, functioning capital assets and reserves reflected as assets on fossil energy companies’ balance sheets.”); or this from MIT News, August 19, 2022 (“As the world transitions away from greenhouse-gas-emitting activities, . . . fossil fuel companies and their investors face growing financial risks (known as transition risks), including the prospect of ending up with massive stranded assets.”); or from the Guardian, November 4, 2021 (“Half world’s fossil fuel assets could become worthless by 2036 in net zero transition.”).
If you are thinking of buying in to any of that, you might enjoy the frankly hilarious piece by Michael Lynch, titled “A Cautionary Tale For Oil Companies’ Navigating The Transition.” The piece has a date of November 2022, but is linked at RealClearEnergy today.
Lynch’s piece is somewhat long (14 pages), and filled with decades’-old super-confident predictions of our energy future, all of which failed. I’ll give you just a sample:
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-2-26-dont-believe-the-geniuses-claiming-to-know-our-energy-future
