This week, energy analyst, ​​advisor and co-founder of the energy information platform Halcyon, Nat Bullard, released his 200-slide deck all about the global energy transition. While there are some pretty interesting and seemingly random stats scattered throughout, there are a few things that stand out and indicate that perhaps there's some hope in the fight against climate change and the shift to renewables around the world. Here are a few of the biggest (and most surprising) takeaways that Bullard highlighted in his robust presentation.

Hotter World, Cooler Economies, and a Big Bump in Solar and Wind

Yes, the world is getting hotter and staying hotter for longer. If you’ve been a long-time Climatebase subscriber, you already know that we’ve covered a lot about the recent record-breaking heat in 2024, which was likely one of the major causes for the conflagrations that burnt more than 35,000 acres in Los Angeles. Those fires were only just finally fully contained this past weekend after burning for three weeks straight. The heat isn’t only affecting places like Southern California, either.

According to Bullard, the average length of the US heat wave season has tripled since the 1960s, and temperate areas are seeing more days with higher nighttime heat than they have in the past. The heat is having a significant impact on economies around the world, causing work stoppages, increases in the prices of goods like coffee and olive oil, and creating bottlenecks at vital trading routes like the Panama Canal. As Bullard notes, geopolitical shifts and trade policies, such as tariffs, like those that Trump threatened Mexico and Canada with this week (and imposed on China), have a significant cooling effect on the global economy. These factors can disrupt supply chains, affect the cost and availability of essential technologies (like batteries and solar panels, for example), and create significant uncertainties that could slow renewable energy deployment.

As of 2024, the globe is on track to hit high all-time emissions, and at the same time, wind and solar energy are growing faster than they ever have, at least in absolute terms. Over the past decade, the cost of solar, wind, and battery storage technologies has fallen significantly, and in some ways, these advancements have reached a tipping point where renewables are more competitive with—and often cheaper than—traditional fossil fuels even without government subsidies. Bullard argues that this cost parity is more than just an economic shift; it’s a reordering of the energy landscape. Global solar and battery energy storage deployments hit new records in 2024, as did wind investments.

China’s Oil Demand Has Peaked, and Energy Transition Investment is Up…But…

Interestingly, this is all taking place against the backdrop of what looks like peak oil in China. Bullard argues that China's demand for oil peaked in 2023, while natural gas and coal demand has not yet reached that level. China has made a huge push over the last ten years to electrify its vehicles, and they are rapidly proving that they are ready to eat America's lunch when it comes to electrifying transportation. In fact, the big two American automakers are rightfully scared of what the Chinese automakers have been able to achieve in short order. GM almost made it to profitability in its EV segment for the first time ever last year, according to Fortune.

Meanwhile, in China, EVs or plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) now make up more than 50% of new light-duty sales, according to Bullard's research. In fact, PHEVs will make up half of those auto sales, according to Bullard. As Nick van Osdol notes in his Keep Cool newsletter this week, the Chinese press is predicting that up to 20,000 gas stations could close this year because of falling demand.

On the heels of this data, it's also clear that investment is shifting. In 2024, annual energy transition investment surpassed $2 trillion globally. A majority of that money went to electrified transportation, renewable energy, and power grids. That being said, Bullard notes that ESG investing may have peaked in 2021/2022 based on a number of factors, like how many times SG and climate change were mentioned in corporate earnings. That's only likely to decrease with the new US administration, which has made it clear it doesn't believe in climate change and its weather impacts. That’s also playing out against a backdrop where more big banks are dropping their climate commitments and rolling back anything with the slightest whiff of ESG.

AI and Ozempic are Complicating the Energy Outlook

Yep, you read that right. Bullard has a slide in his deck dedicated to how people's food consumption changed after Ozempic. Why does that matter? Because food (in all forms) requires some form of energy to grow, maintain, refrigerate, transport, and dispose of, it has an impact on oil demand. It turns out that consumers eat fewer savory snacks, cheeses, dairy products, and meat in the first six months after taking a weight loss drug like Wegovy or Ozempic. As Bullard told The Economic Times, “The drugs are creating “profound and durable changes not just in how much people eat but the way they eat.” With fewer cravings for foods that are highly processed (and require a lot of resources and plastic packaging), Bullard argues that those “excess calories” could go to biofuels and bioplastics, leading to a decrease in oil demand.

The other he addresses is the elephant in the room: Data and AI. You can't deny that AI and its data demands are going to play a significant role in the energy transition, for good or bad. While global electricity consumption and demand are expected to accelerate as a result of the boom, the proportion of that which will go to AI is actually quite small, Bullard argues. While companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and others have increased their investments in data centers all over the US, there are massive backups in connecting those data centers to the grid, thanks to the US interconnection cue, which Bullard notes grew by 30% between 2023 and 2024.

At the same time, all this is taking place against a backdrop of last weekend's announcement about DeepSeekAI, a Chinese LLM that reportedly uses less energy because it used a bunch of algorithmic efficiencies to reduce GPU demand to train its models, making it much more efficient than anything the West has built. If the LLMS and AIs get more efficient, then we end up with an oversupply. As Bullard told The Economic Times, "We build infrastructure in boom and bust cycles. Which, given the DeepSeek news, is one possibility with today's data center construction boom."

If you want to check out Bullard's 200-page presentation yourself and draw your own conclusions, you can find it here.

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