A no-nonsense report from J. P. Morgan on the energy sector, with emphasis on the transition away from fossil fuels. Since it’s all about the money, these bank folks don’t pull any punches or (at least as far as I can tell) succumb to wishful thinking in one direction or the other. Over 40 pages but worth a skim.

My takeaways: it’s going, but slower than everyone hopes. US cars really are a big deal. Electric transmission is going to need some work.

I do think distributed solar and storage is under sold here, though. Frankly, just making grid prices high (like in Hawaii) would seem to cause a rapid shift, but good luck with that one. Some other dynamics are also ignored. Maybe businesses (and people) will just move to places where renewable energy is cheap and plentiful, like people did with older forms of energy. Instead of stringing new power lines, maybe West Texas could see and industrial and population boom? Oh, the report is very harsh on the Texas power grid, but that is expected.

Future shock. Absent decarbonization shock treatment, humans will be wedded to petroleum and other fossil fuels for longer than they would like. Wind and solar power reach new heights every year but still represent just 5% of global primary energy consumption. In this year’s energy paper, we review why decarbonization is taking so long: transmission obstacles, industrial energy use, the gargantuan mineral and pipeline demands of sequestration and the slow motion EV revolution. Other topics include our oil & gas views, President Biden’s energy agenda, China, the Texas power outage and client questions on electrified shipping, sustainable aviation fuels, low energy nuclear power, hydrogen and carbon accounting.

EYE ON THE MARKET: 2021 Annual Energy Paper