For almost two decades, the environmental movement has repeatedly announced the demise of fossil fuels. The headlines have been dramatic, but the results have been less convincing.
As COP31 is about to begin, the world remains remarkably indifferent — despite the climate crisis growing ever more urgent, as if saving the planet were merely an optional item on the agenda, Gerard and Laurent invite Mark Campanale, founder of Carbon Tracker. Carbon Tracker is the financial think tank that brought the concepts of
unburnable carbon and the
carbon bubble into mainstream debate. Its research has helped investors understand the risks of fossil-fuel investments but has also been politically weaponised by the Greens.
A decade ago, the debate centred on stranded assets, carbon budgets and the prospect that fossil-fuel reserves would become economically unviable. Today, our thinking is increasingly aligned with perspectives associated with Ember and Michael Liebreich, emphasising technology, economics and the practical realities of the energy transition.
We probably are witnessing a schism between former allies: the “Climate Movement” and “The Clean Energy community”. We believe technology, innovation and economics will do more to accelerate the transition than verbose toothless international accords or poorly designed top-down government policies. Carbon Tracker deserves credit for making climate risk a serious financial issue. However, forecasts about the timing of peak fossil-fuel demand have proved less reliable. Oil demand rebounded after COVID-19, while geopolitical instability and energy-security concerns have demonstrated the resilience of hydrocarbons.
The question is whether the carbon-focused approach remains relevant or whether it is approaching obsolescence.
Environmental campaigners have advocated carbon taxes for decades, arguing that polluters should pay for emissions and that revenues should fund the transition to cleaner energy.
But what if the world already has a de facto carbon tax, imposed not by environmental policy but by geopolitical conflicts? Wars, supply disruptions and decisions by powerful governments can drive up the price of oil and gas, imposing enormous costs on households and businesses. Russia under Putin, Iran under the Ayatollahs and the United States under Trump illustrate how geopolitical decisions can reshape global energy markets.
Carbon Tracker helped establish stranded-asset risk as a serious capital-markets concern. Its central warning—that some fossil-fuel investments could lose value as the energy system evolves—remains relevant. But the timing of the transition has proved difficult to predict. Fossil-fuel demand has shown greater resilience than some forecasts anticipated, while geopolitics, affordability and energy security have complicated the path towards decarbonisation.
The distinction is important: identifying investments at risk is not the same as predicting the imminent collapse of fossil-fuel demand. Our conversation was robust, with both sides standing their ground. We left with a sense that the debate needs to move beyond political targets and increasingly outdated assumptions towards the realities of technology, economics and capital allocation.
We may agree on the destination, but the real argument is about the pathway. Further reading Carbon Tracker's
Unburnable Carbon: Ten Years On,
2020 Vision: Why You Should See the Fossil Fuel Peak Coming and
Managing Peak Oil provide useful context for assessing its original thesis, its influence on financial markets and the challenges of forecasting the energy transition.
https://carbontracker.org/reports/