Skip to main content

The Hurdles of the Energy Transition

From the series The world energy battle

The war against Iran has highlighted the dependence on fossil fuels and the need for world economies to reduce dependence on the Middle East and on these energy sources. The European Union's “Green Deal” aims to achieve these goals, but the structure of the economy and the economic and social costs pose significant obstacles for the energy transition.

Problems of renewables versus fossil fuels

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), during the period 2015-2024 global cumulative investments in renewable energy production amounted to $12.5 trillion, surpassing the $11.8 trillion invested in fossil fuels; despite this, the share of total energy supply accounted for by fossil fuels fell only from 85% in 1990 to 81% in 2023 [United Nations, Energy Statistics Pocketbook 2026]. Intermittent renewable sources such as solar and wind saw their share rise from 0.1% to 2.4% between 1990 and 2023.

This apparent mystery — the mismatch between investment and results — can be explained using several factors: the energy density per square kilometre, the costs of integrating renewables into the electricity grid, the capacity factor, and the form of energy use. “The concrete is concrete because it is a synthesis of many determinations, thus a unity of the diverse” [Karl Marx, “Introduction”, Grundrisse, 1857]. It is therefore necessary to analyse the “many determinations” of energy production and consumption.

Comparisons of production costs, which now indicate renewables as more cost-effective than fossil fuels and nuclear power, are misleading, because all the factors involved in the production and consumption of energy must be considered. Predominantly, renewables must be converted into electricity, whereas a large share of fossil fuels is consumed directly through combustion to generate the thermal energy essential for transforming raw materials into manufactured goods. This form of energy accounts for more than two thirds of global industrial energy consumption [International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), 2015]. It is essential to study the concrete determinations in order to understand the technological problems that arise: a refrigerator or television cannot run on coal, whereas a blast furnace or glass furnace burns natural gas directly to reach the 1,700°C needed to transform raw materials into glass.

Energy density measured in MW/km² (megawatts per square kilometre) varies greatly depending on the source, giving a significant advantage to nuclear power and fossil fuels. Nuclear power has the highest density because it is capable of producing thousands of MW/km². However, it poses a problem that is difficult to solve for the major powers, as the war against Iran demonstrates: those who have the ability to produce nuclear energy also possess the potential to build a nuclear bomb.

Fossil fuels have a density of the order of hundreds of MW/km², but they have the problem of pollutants and CO₂ emissions and a very strong imbalance between the geographical distribution of their reserves and the centres of consumption. Hydropower varies enormously depending on topography, river flow, and height of fall.

In addition to the major disadvantage of low energy density and intermittency, photovoltaic solar (20-60 MW/km²) and wind (2-10 MW/km²) have the problem of localisation. A nuclear or thermal power plant can be built close to consumption centres, but hydropower depends on the location of rivers, and intermittent renewables from solar and wind farms come from remote regions far from consumption centres: in Mongolia for China, in the North Sea for Europe, and in the Southwestern States of the US. This results in higher grid-integration costs compared to thermal and nuclear energy. In China, the Three Gorges Dam is located about 1,100 km away from Shanghai, while Mongolia's wind and solar farms are located as far as hundreds or thousands of kilometres from the main consumption centres.

The capacity factor — the ratio between actual and theoretical energy output at full capacity on a continuous basis — is 76% for nuclear power, 44% for thermal (coal and gas), 35% for hydroelectric, 27% for wind, and 13% for photovoltaic. Thus, the efficiency of intermittent renewables is low compared to thermal and nuclear energy.

PLANT CAPACITY FACTOR

Data in % 1990 2023
Thermal 49 44
Nuclear 70 76
Hydroelectric 39 35
Wind 19 27
Solar 24 13
Total 50 37

This is an indicator of the efficiency of a plant. The capacity factor is the ratio between the energy actually produced by a plant over a period of time and the energy it would have produced if the plant had operated continuously.

Forms of energy use

The final combination of the energy mix depends on the intertwining of geography with technology. This is not just about environmental profit or the interests of financial capital: in Marx's analysis, in the third book of Capital, there is a section, i.e., the form of income: ground rent, in the distribution of surplus value, linked to landowners. Geography and the specific forms of land use come into play here: renewable-energy installations occupy agricultural land and can conflict with the interests of farmers. While rent is zero in the deserts of Mongolia or the Sahara, it is high in quality agriculture: the vineyards of Barolo are among the most expensive agricultural lands in the world, with prices reaching €2.3-€2.5 million per hectare in 2025. The revenue generated by the production of Barolo DOCG wine far exceeds the potential revenues of a traditional photovoltaic park.

There is another significant factor: currently, the high temperatures required in certain production processes are achieved mainly with fossil fuels. Steel production requires blast furnaces that can reach temperatures above 1,500°C, while cement production requires temperatures around 1,450°C. Much of the chemical and petrochemical industry uses fossil fuels both as a heat source for high-temperature processes above 1,000°C and as the raw material for the production of chemicals such as ethylene, propylene, and ammonia. Glass and ceramics production processes also require consistently high temperatures in furnaces that can reach 1,700°C. A large amount of heat is also required for the production of non-ferrous metals.

Technically, replacing fossil fuels in high-temperature industry is possible in some metallurgical production processes, using electric arc furnaces or direct reduction with hydrogen, but this entails high costs, significant technical challenges, and will take decades. Furthermore, high-temperature industrial processes are continuous-flow: they operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, making it difficult for them to rely on intermittent renewable electricity.

Aspirations of emerging countries

Everyone prefers clean, unpolluted air, swimming and walking in parks surrounded by greenery, but what are the actual costs of today's lifestyle with its televisions, cars, heating systems in winter, air conditioning in summer, clothes produced by the textile industry, and the wide range of durable consumer goods from dishwashers to smartphones? We need to view society in its concrete complexity and not through the illusions of advertising and ideologies. Maintaining a modern, civilised way of life entails substantial real costs, often hidden by marketing illusions and immediate convenience. Can we imagine living in an apartment without windows? Or without electric appliances? Since the end of World War II, a lifestyle associated with mass consumer goods has been spreading throughout the world, and billions of people aspire to live like Europeans and Americans. Africa and India each have 1.5 billion inhabitants and China 1.4 billion.

Behind the abstract figures of GDP are real human beings who produce and consume according to the lifestyles of the historical period in which they live. There are factories, blast furnaces, roads and motorways, concrete buildings, refrigerators and televisions, trains, planes, ships, cars, and clothes.

Cement, steel, and copper form the backbone of industrialisation, enabling the development of infrastructure, urbanisation, the construction of factories, energy systems, and transport networks. Basic industries are essential for the capitalist development of the world. For this reason, despite huge investments in renewable energies, the global economy still relies heavily on coal, oil, and natural gas.

Between 1990 and 2023, the increase in global coal supplies was 86%, in oil supplies increased by 43%, and natural gas by 115%. A concrete analysis of the industrialisation of Asia, Africa, and Latin America shows that these regions require the establishment of energy-intensive heavy industry reliant on fossil fuels which are difficult to supersede.

ENERGY SUPPLIES: PRIMARY SOURCES
Source 1990 % 2023 % % change
2023/1990
Coal 93.5 26.3 174.0 27.7 86.1
Petroleum 134.5 37.8 191.7 30.5 42.5
Natural gas 67.7 19.0 145.4 23.1 114.8
Biological, waste 29.0 8.2 53.7 8.5 85.2
Nuclear 21.8 6.1 29.6 4.7 35.8
Other 9.3 2.6 34.3 5.5 268.8
Of which solar and wind 0.2 0.1 14.8 2.4 …
Total 355.8 100 628.6 100 76.7
WORLD ELECTRICITY GENERATION
Source 1990 % 2023 % % change
2023/1990
Thermal 27.7 64.3 67.3 62.4 142.9
  Coal 16.0 37.1 38.3 35.5 139.4
  Petroleum 4.8 11.1 2.5 2.3 -47.9
  Gas 6.4 14.9 24.3 22.6 279.7
  Biological, waste 0.5 1.2 2.1 2.0 354.7
Nuclear 7.3 16.9 9.9 9.2 35.6
Hydroelectric 7.9 18.3 15.8 14.7 100.5
Solar, wind, other 0.2 0.5 14.8 13.7 …
Total 43.1 100 107.8 100 150.1

Data in exajoules (1 exajoule = one billion billion joules).

Source: United Nations, Energy Statistics Pocketbook 2026.

Translated from the original work by , published in Lotta Comunista, , p. 17.

Labels:

Popular posts in the last week

Collaboration and Nationalism in Ukraine and Belarus

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 8 In her essay Economia di guerra e inquadramento della società in URSS ( The War Economy and Social Control in the USSR ), Rebecca Manley writes that initially the German advance in Russia was welcomed by the local population and threatened the legitimacy of the reigning power , while party leaders, officials, and factory managers often jumped ship , with the abandoned populace openly cursing them [A. Aglan and R. Frank, La guerra-mondo 1937-1947 ( The World War 1937-1947 ), Einaudi, 2015-16]. Her account goes on to describe the government's gradual reassertion of control: The cost in human lives was increasing and shortages were continuing to worsen [...] it was only with the victory of Stalingrad that Stalin and the Soviet system recovered a central role in war propaganda . Overall, according to this author, the war years saw a surge of popular patr...
Read more

Reckless Bets on Migrants in California

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Page 11 From the series Chronicles of the new American nationalism The tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on allies, partners and opponents of the United States have opened a phase of negotiations with the affected countries and caused reactions from some key States. The legal opposition from almost all areas of the US poses a test: whether States, courts, and Congress can influence trade policy and constrain the expansion of executive powers. Amid conflicting rulings, the tariffs have been reinstated – an outcome that, The New York Times remarks, has “left Washington, Wall Street, and much of the world trying to discern the future of US trade policy”. California’s dispute with the federal government has expanded to immigration policy and the domestic use of military force. The political, economic, and power struggle...
Read more

Opportunities for the Euro and Yuan

Internationalism No. 77, July 2025 Page 13 Estimates by international institutions for April to June confirm the slowdown in global output and trade. The World Bank forecasts a decline in GDP growth from 2.8% in 2024, to 2.3% in 2025, and a sharp fall in trade from 3.4% to 1.8%. The main cause of the new slowdown is the tariff war declared by Donald Trump, who has so far imposed a universal minimum tariff of 10%. The uncertainty arising from his peculiar art of the deal , consisting of lunges, postponements, relaunches, U-turns, and pauses, makes the policy of the world's leading power unpredictable. It is also paying the highest price, with US growth halving, from 2.8% to 1.4%. The Eurozone has been floating at a rate of less than 1% since 2023 and, according to the World Bank, will remain below this level in 2025 and 2026, while the OECD and the ECB predict a return to 1% in 2025. Chin...
Read more

Electoral Upheaval and Turmoil Inside Labour

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 3 From the series European news As Henry Kissinger wrote in his book Leadership (Penguin, 2022), in the British political system, parties are "rigorously institutionalized": "An electoral victory functions first to empower a party in parliament and, as a consequence of that, to install a new premier". Unlike presidential systems such as the American one, "the British system elevates members of the cabinet to the highest echelons of their party". The prime minister's authority "rests primarily on the maintenance of party discipline" because "the dissent of an influential clique, or the machinations of a single magnetic personality, can limit the premier's ability to pursue desired political objectives". "In extraordinary circumstances", warns Kissinger, ...
Read more

An Italianised Europe

Internationalism No. 88 - June 2026 Page 2 In almost four years in government, Italy’s renewed stability has been a key asset for Giorgia Meloni, also encouraging the European adaptation of the italian-style immigrants . However, the backlash from the referendum defeat, a real own goal, has opened a glaring rift that runs through both the end of the current legislature and the prospects for the next. There is debate over the political exhaustion of her government, forced to navigate the narrow path of budgetary statistics and under the threat of what the Financial Times has termed a “coming energy crisis” triggered by the blockade of the strait of Hormuz. At the referendum polls, the left-wing broad coalition “discovered” that it could compete with the centre-right, but no poll shows any substantial changes in the balance of power. The scenario of a “deadlock”, or a narrow majority for one...
Read more

The EU Commission Plans for Rearmament and a Clean Industrial Deal

Internationalism No. 71, January 2025 Page 2 From the series European news Following the European elections which took place on June 6th - 9th, the leaders of the Member States met on June 27th at the European Council. Ursula von der Leyen was nominated as president of the next European Commission, after she was chosen as the European People’s Party’s (EPP) Spitzenkandidat (“leading candidate”). The agreement also included the election of former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa as president of the European Council, and the appointment of former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Subsequently, on July 18th, Parliament elected von der Leyen as president of the Commission by an absolute majority, with 401 votes out of 719 MEPs. On September 17th, von der Leyen presented her team of commissioners to the European Parliament and, two days later, the Council adopted this list of...
Read more

Lotta Comunista: The Origins 1943-1952

Guido La Barbera Contents 9. Preface to the English Edition 13. Preface 19. Useful dates 21. Chapter One «ONE OUGHT TO KNOW WITH WHOM ONE IS DEALING» 25. The balance-of-power theory 27. Theory and the ‘strategy-party’ 29. Chapter Two THE FOUNDRY AND THE PARTISAN STRUGGLE 31. The Savona group 39. Passion disciplined by reason 40. Never again a tool in the hands of others 41. The Genoa group 46. The Sestri Ponente group 48. The groups in Rome and Tuscany 52. The strength of GAAP: ‘only a handful’ 55. Chapter Three LIBERTARIAN COMMUNISM: A DIFFERENT KIND OF COMMUNISM 58. Reckoning with Bordiga...
Read more

Multiple Games in the Third Gulf War

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Page 6 The conflict in the Gulf has entered its third month, marked by a precarious truce that reflects a strategic stalemate, with Tehran’s “selective blockade” of Hormuz and the US Navy’s “counter-blockade” of Iranian ports. According to the Pakistani daily Dawn , bilateral negotiations — mediated by Islamabad with the explicit support of Riyadh and the “discreet and indirect” backing of Beijing — appear to centre on the price of reopening the energy artery. For Washington, writes the Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat , the negotiations should yield some kind of “tangible result” on the nuclear issue, allowing both sides to “claim victory”, given that the priority is resuming commercial traffic. To this end, granting Tehran the opportunity to collect some form of revenue has not been ruled out. Iranian “pragmatic” factions are raising the idea of maritime tr...
Read more

Beijing, Ambivalent About the G2, Opts for Temporary Stability

Internationalism No. 88, June 2026 Pages 4 and 5 Kolkata's The Telegraph announces "a rupture with the principle of post-War pacifism: that Japan and Germany had adhered to for decades". The West Bengal-based newspaper was founded in 1982 by Aveek Sarkar, a former protégé of Harold Evans at The Sunday Times in London. The editorial highlights certain aspects worth noting. First and foremost, there is a psychological dimension to the crises in the world order . The ideologies of the post-war order, imposed on the defeated bourgeoisies of Germany and Japan for decades, have permeated the whole of society to the point of becoming second nature that shape the German and Japanese ruling classes themselves. But today, a re-evaluation of these ideologies is in turn being imposed by an uneven development that, over the long term, has been economic, political, and military. This is a Z...
Read more

Political Battles of European Leninism

Internationalism No. 73, March 2025 Page 1 Thirty years after the death of Arrigo Cervetto , we are publishing here the concluding passages of the introduction to his Opere Scelte (“Selected Works”) for the series Biblioteca Giovani (“Publications for young people”), soon to be published in Italian. The 1944-45 partisan war in Italy. The political battle within libertarian communism. The Korean War, and the watchword of “neither Washington nor Moscow”. The layoffs at the Ilva and Ansaldo factories, the political battle and trade union defence in the struggles of post-war restructuring. From 1953 onwards, the crisis of Stalinism, the 1956 Suez crisis, the Hungarian uprising, the 1957 Theses and the challenge of theory and strategy vis-à-vis the tendencies of unitary imperialism. The political struggle within Azione Comunista (“Communist Action”) and the Movimento della Sinistra Comunista (“Movement of the Communist Left”). From the 1950s to the early 1970s, t...
Read more