When the odds seem stacked against human aspirations—when economic growth looks set to remain feeble as far as the eye can see, when too many countries seem destined to grow old before they become rich, when climate change seems to have crossed the tipping point—it is worth remembering the distinctive virtue of our species. Predictions of global doom have proliferated throughout history. Yet the sky hasn’t fallen, for one reason: human ingenuity. 

It was ingenuity that disarmed the so-called “population bomb”—the idea that “hundreds of millions of people” would starve to death in the 1970s as rapid population growth exhausted finite food supplies. In fact, agricultural innovations—such as the development of high-yield, pest-resistant crops—enabled global food production to grow faster than the population in nearly every part of the world. It was human ingenuity that defeated deadly diseases including once-dreaded HIV/AIDS and, most recently, COVID-19. 

We are in the midst of profoundly significant, changing, and challenging times. While new technologies—such as geothermal, renewables, or other non-carbon emitting technologies—are proving to be increasingly competitive, they have had a marginal impact in the energy mix over the last decade. As traditional hydrocarbon sources (oil and coal) each declined by just one percentage point, solar and wind grew by two percentage points, reaching 3% of total energy supply. Natural gas rose by one percentage point to nearly one-quarter of the total, though it contributes a lower emission footprint than traditional hydrocarbons. 

While over half of the difference has taken place in China, it must be recognized that the combination of policy incentives and declining technology costs encouraged faster deployment globally. All said, though, the modest change in the world’s energy mix illustrates the massive scale of the global energy system.   

Looking more broadly at low carbon sources, including nuclear and renewables, we see low carbon sources gained 1% share over the past decade, aligning with most projections of a decade ago. The faster solar and wind growth was offset by a significant decline in nuclear energy, led by reactor shutdowns in Europe.  

These trends underscore a stark truth: while renewable energy is scaling faster than ever, global demand is rising even faster. All-time records were reached across all forms of energy (coal, oil, gas, renewables, hydro and nuclear). Rather than replacing fossil fuels, renewables are adding (though still marginally) to the overall energy mix. This pattern, marked by simultaneous growth in clean and conventional energy illustrates the structural, economic, and geopolitical barriers to achieving a truly coordinated global energy transition. 

In a year when average air temperatures consistently breached the 1.5°C warming threshold, global CO₂-equivalent emissions from energy rose by 1%, marking yet another record, the fourth in as many years. 

This raises the knotty question on how to unpack and reconcile what appear to be conflicting goals that fall short of the agreed decarbonization and global warming goals. A paper outlining the record and possible way forward has been published in Global Journal of Science Frontier Research in October 2025 titled “The Energy-Environment Puzzle – Reconciling Conflicting Goals.” 

At a global level, we have been encouraging countries to follow the lead of emerging economies to take steps to increase growth. However, the growth outlook remains weak and unbalanced. Many countries continue to face ongoing regional conflicts, governance challenges, fiscal and balance of payment imbalances, or other barriers to prosperity such as overregulation. Strengthening resilience and pursuing policies and projects that boost productivity will help countries withstand shocks and grow while improving economic prospects worldwide.  

Clearly, developments so far, while helpful and promising, are just too limited to achieve tangible progress to meet the global demand at the pace the world is growing. To this end, in the energy and environmental front, we must increasingly appraise and address the competing (if not conflicting) objectives between economic development, environmental improvement, and affordability. Environmental skeptics and believers alike need a more “strategic” way of thinking and planning to assess every step of the way the trade-offs we are making between the competing goals to achieve maximum impact with manageable input. 

To this end, we must emphasize actions and results to track progress over process and formalities. All too often international gatherings tend to become vanity shows to celebrate the issuance of more rules and regulations that make the investments more complex and expensive. This focus on symptoms rather than causes deflects us from issues to be resolved and substantive actions needed for results on the ground. A reorientation from words to deeds and closer attention to investment implications could be instrumental in helping increase access to affordable and reliable energy, reduce poverty, and boost growth while reducing emissions to properly frame investments to contribute more effectively to economic growth and poverty reduction.   

In the end, energy abundance sparks economic abundance and needs an explicit assessment with stakeholders around the table of different energy sources—their costs, benefits, pricing/taxation arrangements to build a pipeline of projects ultimately aimed at increasing growth and productivity.  Inevitably, this will trigger a number of issues but two merit special attention: 

• With primary energy demand projected to increase by more than half over the next 25 years, we are bound to face the formidable twin challenges of finding secure and affordable supplies of energy while addressing the environmental impacts of that increased consumption. The geographic dislocation between the sources of energy supply and demand and the heightened geopolitical risk in some of the traditional energy-supplying regions will require consuming nations to cast their nets wider for alternative supplies of energy. The U.S., the world’s largest consumer of energy, and China and India, the fastest-growing consumers, are all characterized by relatively low or declining oil and gas reserves. They all possess substantial reserves of coal, which is the most carbon-intensive of fossil fuels. Pricing (and taxation) of carbon emissions, to reflect the cost of environmental externalities in energy sources, could help reduce the gap by improving resource allocation. There are some 50 countries that have such initiatives, mostly in early development stages. 

• Similarly, in the 21st century, the world will have to face more explicitly the twin energy-related threats: that of not having adequate and secure supplies of energy at affordable prices and that of environmental harm caused by consuming too much energy in inappropriate ways. A solution to either of them is relatively straight forward; however, a solution to both simultaneously is one of the great challenges of our times. With global energy demand expected to rise by 53% over the next 30 years, and fossil fuels accounting for 83% of the overall increase, calling for a cut in consumption is not a sufficient solution to such challenges. Further technological development, to overcome the location- and weather-specific constraints of renewables and/or their low load factors, will be increasingly unavoidable. 

Featured Author:
Miguel Schloss is the President of Surinvest Ltda., Member of Bretton Woods Committee, and former Executive Director of Transparency International and Director of Corporate & Budget Planning of World Bank.

All views expressed by members are their own and not reflective of the views of the Bretton Woods Committee or the views of their employers.