‘Carbon constraint’ in response to global warming is his second predictable surprise. Helm is an economic rationalist. He supports the primacy of markets in his view, governments cannot pick winners while accepting that regulations shape how markets work (or fail). But in relying on markets, we face the spectre of the rise of renewables being slowed by low and falling fossil fuel prices. With oil and now coal (and soon gas), excess supply and producers’ desperation for an edge have seen these resources dumped on the market in increasing volumes, undercutting the cost of large-scale renewables and delaying decarbonisation even if only for a decade or so. Against this trend stands the wavering political willingness of governments to cap and rapidly reduce emissions and impose a robust carbon price.

Helm uncritically accepts the slow phase out of fossil fuels as a fait accompli without recognising the tragic ecological implications of such gradualism. This is the book’s gravest flaw. Global warming is accelerating. Sixteen of the last seventeen years were the warmest ever recorded, and the hottest of those are the three most recent. Having already warmed the planet by only one degree Celsius above the pre-industrial average, we are increasingly experiencing catastrophic weather. Above two degrees, the consequences become much nastier for most humans and devastating for many other species.

As Helm acknowledges, to limit warming to below two C the total mass of atmospheric emissions must be held below 1,000 billion tonnes. Given the present rate of emissions, we are within two decades of breaching this limit. The task of decarbonisation rapidly cutting to global ‘net zero emissions’ is therefore unlike anything our species has attempted to date. It requires collective regulation of our behaviour planet-wide over an astonishingly short period; otherwise we will pay a high price.

A significant portion of emissions come from deforestation and agriculture. Managing these sources will be increasingly difficult as global population grows to nine or ten billion. To free up the ‘emissions space’ to feed a growing world, governments will have to accelerate the transition to renewables and absorb considerable costs in doing so. Dealing with emissions from fossil fuels is, therefore, the easier but also the most urgent part of the ‘carbon constraint’ problem a point Helm misses.

A Tesla Model S at a charging station in Denmark (photograph by News Oresund, Wikimedia Commons)

Helm’s third surprise is the emergence of a world dependent on electricity. ‘The future is electric,’ he writes. Electricity from renewable sources will become superabundant and, in effect, almost free. His vision here is a paean to human innovation and ingenuity. It is a techno-utopia of electric cars, smart products, and artificial intelligence, still based around nodes of mass energy production and distribution grids, linking a range of different smart power generation, storage, and consumption technologies. Whatever we might think of the social implications of this vision, his brilliant review of its technological trajectory buries fossil fuels forever.

Each of these trends and ‘surprises’ has powerful geopolitical consequences the absorbing second part of his book. The rise of shale gas and oil has already reset power relations globally. It is freeing the United States from the political shackles of the Middle East. It promises to undermine Russia’s energy stranglehold over Europe. More than this, the rise of renewables will probably lead to a new era of energy security and independence for some states, an era that will reconfigure the economic capacities, political stability and military needs of failing and emergent superpowers, including Russia and China.

Helm’s work is at its strongest when dealing with energy economics and technologies. It becomes progressively weaker the further he strays into the world of politics, and especially geopolitics, where the institutions and paradoxes of power seem to confound him and his views are too often inaccurate and confused. For instance, his conventional championing of market forces makes it impossible for him to recognise the critical importance of Germany’s normative leadership in promoting renewables as a viable technological option despite the immediate economic burden of doing so in the 1990s.

Writing about almost three decades of international climate negotiations, Helm misunderstands the UN Climate Convention, with its normative emphasis on the prior historical responsibility of industrial states. Splenetically labelling the Kyoto Protocol a failure, he conveniently forgets the role of the United States in blocking and wrecking its implementation. He wrongly calls the Paris Agreement a ‘top-down’ agreement. It is anything but. The nasty possible consequences of not only stranded corporate assets but also stranded states are not sufficiently heeded. In a very rapid transition, not only companies but also carbon superpowers such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Australia will slide towards crisis. Some may not go quietly into that good night.

In the final part of his book, Helm analyses the rise of the new landscape of energy production. His treatment of the inexorable emergence of the new world of renewable power is terrific; this is his area of specialisation. He puzzles over the future of energy corporations and energy markets. If the value of carbon assets mines, pipelines, power plants continues to decline, major energy companies will need to reinvent themselves or face bankruptcy. If their assets are not to become stranded, global energy corporations will have to fight to slow a rapid transition.

An aerial view of the Solnova Solar Power Station, Spain (Abengoa Solar, Wikimedia Commons)

As with the internet, renewable energy will require only an initial capital investment, with virtually zero subsequent production and resource costs thereafter. The margins on that investment need not be great and may not be attractive to most forms of capital. We are left with an investment and also a coordination problem. Helm illuminates the challenges for investors, companies, and governments of managing an almost free resource. New administrative and economic measures will be required to ensure security of supply and, ironically given his position on states and markets, Helm suggests that the state may need to return to centre stage in the role of energy regulator and guarantor.

All in all, the elements of Helm’s vision do not integrate into a coherent picture. A book about energy futures that does not fully recognise the science or politics of climate change is deeply flawed. In this blindness, Helm at times comes close to the complacent thinking of mainstream energy policy makers and as a result the growing tensions between the need for the rapid reduction of energy-based emissions and the tough politics of the global carbon transition are diminished or left hanging. But the book’s grand scope and its provocative line should provoke considerable and fruitful debate.