“We will not be in support of any climate change implementation that would lead to our sudden economic contraction and heighten social instability.”
Thus spoke a Nigerian delegate at the recently concluded U.N.-sponsored climate conference in Brazil on his country’s willingness to make sacrifices that will ease the transition to a world liberated from the curse of fossil fuels. Oil-rich Nigeria is not alone in declining to burden its citizens with an energy transition designed to limit the country’s access to affordable and reliable energy.
Delegates from nearly 200 countries at this year’s climate conclave refused to approve proposals to set specific limits on their emissions of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels. Not even a half-hearted effort by the European Union to include a vague “road map” for moving away from coal, oil, and natural gas in the conference’s final document won the approval of the delegates.
The grandiose enterprise known as “decarbonization” – avidly pursued by global elites for decades – is a spectacular failure. In its “2025 Statistical Review of Global Energy,” the Energy Institute (EI) found that, in 2024, “Fossil Fuels continue to underpin the [global] energy system accounting for 87 percent of the energy mix.” EI, it should be noted, advocates for the adoption of net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions policies and cannot be included in the climate-skeptic camp.
“After a quarter century of the most expensive industrial policy in human history, the share of fossil fuels in global energy has declined by a whopping 2 percentage points,” notes geochemist and self-described “earth scientist-in-exile” Matthew Wielicki.
The futility of setting emissions-reduction goals that have no chance of being achieved, and whose single-minded pursuit by out-of-touch elites threatens the livelihood of ordinary people the world over, can be seen in the actions of the planet’s two most populous countries.
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China now burns more coal than the rest of the world combined and, together with India, accounts for 62 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions, EI’s report points out. Indeed, “China began building 94.5 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-power capacity and resumed 3.3 GW of suspended projects in 2024, the highest level of construction in the past ten years,” according to a joint report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM).
Here in the U.S., Oregon provides further proof of the pointlessness of the exercise. Not unlike California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Vermont, and other blue states, Oregon is vigorously pursuing doing away with fossil fuels. But according to the Oregon Department of Energy’s website, the Beaver State is moving at a snail’s pace. In 2012, electricity used in Oregon came from hydroelectric (46 percent), coal (33 percent), natural gas (12 percent), wind (5 percent), and nuclear (3 percent). Three other sources of renewable energy – solar, biomass, and geothermal – came to 0.6 percent.
By 2023, the totals were hydroelectric (34 percent), natural gas (32 percent), coal (11 percent), wind (7 percent), solar (4 percent), nuclear (3 percent), and biogas/geothermal (1 percent). A new category known as “unspecified” accounted for just under 20 percent of electricity generation, meaning that coal and natural gas were still the dominant sources of power, supplying at least 37 percent of Oregon’s electricity in 2023. And unlike intermittent wind and solar, whose subsidies are being phased out nationwide, coal and natural gas are available 24/7.
Oregon shows no sign of giving up the ghost on transitioning to green energy, but it and like-minded states risk being left out in the cold, as the AI revolution demands levels of uninterrupted electricity that wind and solar power can never deliver. Virginia’s Dominion Energy is still moving ahead with its gigantic offshore wind farm. But, in a bow to reality, the power company has sought and received approval to build a new natural gas “peaker” plant near Richmond to provide much-needed backup electricity when intermittent wind and solar facilities fail to deliver the goods during times of peak demand. Virginia is the nation’s leader in energy-hungry data centers, whose insatiable appetite for power will never be satisfied by either wind turbines or solar panels.
The growing demand for electricity has prompted the Trump administration to propose allowing as many as 11 coal-fired power plants slated for closure to continue operating for an additional three years. Whether countries are rich or poor, they dare not risk economic irrelevance, much less social unrest, by tying their fortunes to an agenda bereft of any connection to the real world.
Bonner Russell Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT).
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