Coal collapsed.
Renewables exploded.
The official story presents this as the inevitable triumph of technological progress and market forces, as though consumers simply woke up one morning and collectively decided that history had reached its natural conclusion.
Reality appears rather less spontaneous.
Perhaps pouring mountains of public money into wind and solar helped.
Perhaps regulating, taxing and steadily constraining coal generation had something to do with it as well.
Markets certainly played a role.
Governments played an even larger one.
This was not merely an economic evolution. It was a political construction. An entire energy landscape was redesigned through subsidies, mandates, tax incentives and regulatory pressure. The outcome should therefore surprise nobody.
If you reward one technology while steadily punishing another, capital eventually notices.
That is not the invisible hand.
That is a very visible hand holding an exceptionally large chequebook.
The uncomfortable question comes afterwards.
Can such a system survive without continuous political support?
That is where confidence begins to fade.
Entire sectors have grown accustomed to conditions that exist largely because governments created them. Public subsidies, preferential treatment, guaranteed pricing schemes and regulatory protection became part of the business model rather than temporary assistance.
Take enough of that away and the economic landscape suddenly looks rather different.
None of this happens in isolation.
Modern welfare states were built upon highly productive industrial economies generating extraordinary amounts of wealth. Factories produced. Businesses invested. Energy remained abundant enough to make large-scale manufacturing internationally competitive.
Undermine that foundation and uncomfortable arithmetic begins asserting itself.
Governments discover that generous promises become increasingly difficult to finance.
Industries discover that higher energy costs have consequences.
Households discover that their money buys less than it once did.
The era of easy abundance quietly begins drawing to a close.
That creates a political problem.
People tolerate expensive experiments remarkably well while they themselves remain prosperous.
They become considerably less patient once living standards begin stagnating and household budgets tighten.
At that point they start asking awkward questions.
Why has energy become so expensive?
Who benefited?
Who paid?
Who made these decisions?
Politicians understand this instinctively.
It is hardly surprising that parties across much of the political spectrum have begun discovering that criticism of expensive energy policies attracts voters. Whether one agrees with those criticisms or not, the electoral incentives are becoming increasingly obvious.
That should make the beneficiaries of the current system uneasy.
Not because tomorrow brings immediate collapse.
But because political coalitions are remarkably loyal only while prosperity continues.
Once voters begin connecting rising costs with policies they had previously accepted, the conversation changes.
Rapidly.
Every political project eventually reaches the moment when it must justify itself without relying upon fashionable slogans or moral enthusiasm.
Instead, it must survive ordinary economic scrutiny.
That examination is considerably less forgiving.
Subsidies can build remarkably impressive monuments.
They are far less successful at making them self-sustaining.
And a monument that cannot breathe without a constant supply of public money has not escaped the market.
It has merely postponed meeting it.
https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/nobody-knows-the-future-of-energy