PE Live: Energy transition is fuelling ‘economic paradigm shift’

A virtuous cycle of falling renewable energy costs means we are progressing into an era of increasing abundance

The energy transition is fundamentally changing the global economic paradigm, as the world moves from depletable hydrocarbon resources to cheap and practically inexhaustible renewable energy sources, Berkeley Research Group (BRG) experts told a PE Live webcast audience last week. The US shale revolution effectively ended the era defined by limited low-cost energy supplies, and the ongoing renewables boom will extend and reinforce this in perpetuity in an era defined increasingly by abundance and, later, infinite supply, said Christopher Goncalves, managing director, energy & climate, BRG. “Over the long term, an infinite supply of clean and free renewable energy—in the form of solar radi