Why Fossil Fuels Might Roar Again: Because Green Dreams Don’t Drill Wells
May 19, 2025
At first glance, this seems out of sync with the prevailing global push toward cleaner energy. But as we’ve seen in the past, narratives often shift quickly, especially when the profit potential enters the picture.
Take the recent discussion around delisting Chinese companies. Will it happen? It’s unclear. But if it does, the underlying motive won’t be about transparency or accountability—it’ll be about positioning and capital. We saw a version of this play out with Russian equities: panic, forced selling, accumulation at depressed prices, then eventual relisting. It’s a strategy, not a coincidence.
Back to energy. All it would take is a shift in framing. For instance, the argument might become: “AI and modern infrastructure require more power than clean sources can reliably deliver in the short term. Fossil fuels are a necessary bridge.” Add geopolitical tensions and energy security concerns, and suddenly the old “dirty” fuels are recast as essential.
It’s not about whether fossil fuels are good or bad, but whether they’re profitable and timely. If the incentives line up, expect the narrative to adjust accordingly. As always, markets follow money, not morals.
The Changing Fossil Fuel Narrative
The narrative says we’re phasing out fossil fuels. But narratives are often just illusions polished by PR machines and ideology. Strip that away, leaving you with an ugly truth: there isn’t enough power to feed the AI beast.
Let’s get to the point: AI, crypto, data centres, electric cars—all of these depend on one thing: raw electricity. Forget the PR spin or ESG talking points. Here’s the blunt truth: there’s no quick fix from coal, oil and gas to renewables. Solar and wind are crucial, but they’re intermittent. The sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow, and grid-scale storage is still catching up. Nuclear could be part of the solution, but a new plant takes 10–15 years to come online, and by then, AI and electric vehicles will double in demand.
Here’s the inconvenient truth and our hypothesis no one wants to touch: dirty fuels may get a second wind, not because the climate narrative changed, but because they quietly become necessary. You don’t care about optics if you’re running a data centre bleeding kilowatts like a wounded animal. You care about uptime.
Oil prices are dropping, but that might not be bearish; it might be catalytic. Cheap oil makes it viable to spin up diesel and gas plants under the radar. Coal? That pariah of the green movement? If it stabilises the grid and keeps the machines humming, it’s back in the toolkit. The big players will spin up the perfect press release to sell this next phase, probably apocalyptic because nothing mobilises the herd like a good dose of fear. And once the panic sets in, the crowd will do what it always does: bend over, reach for the nearest jar of Vaseline, and tell themselves it’s for the greater good.
Electricity prices across the US and much of the West are climbing. In contrast, China’s energy cost remains heavily state-managed, keeping its AI ambitions on full throttle. That’s a strategic advantage. Do you think Washington or Brussels is going to let that imbalance persist?
National security becomes the loophole. When the AI arms race becomes critical, all options come back on the table. Fossil fuels won’t be embraced as heroes; they’ll be tolerated as necessary evils. But that’s all they need. Just a small policy pivot, buried in some emergency clause, and boom, before you know it, coal and oil are suddenly “transitional assets” in safeguarding democracy.
Watch what they do, not what they say. The same institutions that threw shade at hydrocarbons for a decade will greenlight a dozen peaker plants overnight if it keeps them competitive. Carbon credits will be rewritten, and ESG metrics will be fudged. It’ll all be justified under the mantra: survival first, sustainability later.
Historical Parallels: Energy Demand Surges and Fossil Fuel Resurgence
To understand the potential resurgence of fossil fuels in the face of AI-driven energy demands, consider the following historical parallels:
- Post-World War II Industrial Boom: The rapid industrialisation after WWII significantly increased energy consumption. Despite the availability of alternative energy sources, coal and oil remained dominant due to their reliability and established infrastructure.
- 1970s Energy Crisis: The oil embargoes highlighted the vulnerabilities of over-reliance on specific energy sources. Countries diversified their energy portfolios in response, but fossil fuels remained central due to their energy density and existing supply chains.
- Early 2000s Data Centre Expansion: The dot-com boom saw a surge in data centre construction, leading to increased electricity demand. Utilities often turned to natural gas and coal to meet this demand quickly, as renewable infrastructure couldn’t scale at the required pace.
- Recent AI and Data Centre Growth: As per Goldman Sachs Research, global power demand from data centres is projected to increase by up to 165% by 2030, driven largely by AI workloads. This surge mirrors past patterns where rapid technological advancements outpaced clean energy infrastructure development, leading to a fallback on fossil fuels.
These historical instances demonstrate a recurring theme: when energy demand surges rapidly, especially due to technological advancements, fossil fuels often experience a resurgence due to their scalability and existing infrastructure.
The IEA said coal was meant to be fading. But now, after missing its forecast, it quietly revises the story: coal will peak in 2024 and plateau through 2027. The reality? Demand already hit a record 8.77 billion tonnes, up 2.6% in 2023 alone. Even the IEA’s mid-year update admits that 2024 trade grew 2–3%, not declining as previously projected.
That miss isn’t trivial. If the IEA, with its data advantage, can’t get coal consumption/demand right, why trust its projections for renewables? The gap between their models and the real world reveals the hard truth: fossil fuels might not be fading as projected and could end up filling the gap.
Conclusion
When power becomes a national weapon, sentiment takes a backseat—supply is all that matters. The surge in electricity demand isn’t just about data centres. Even if their expansion stalls, the grid will still face growing pressure from electric vehicles, factory automation, 5G infrastructure, blockchain, and smart cities. And if data centres keep scaling toward 900 TWh annually by 2030, the strain will only worsen significantly.
This isn’t just a digital transformation; it’s an energy transformation. Grid operators won’t have the luxury of purity; they will be forced to turn to anything that works: coal, gas, and diesel. The clean energy dream remains, but the immediate reality is dirtier. Fossil fuels aren’t sticking around out of nostalgia; they stay mainly because the alternatives can’t scale fast enough.
The future is electric, but the bridge runs through legacy fuels. As AI, automation, and EVs accelerate, fossil energy becomes the fallback, not because it’s ideal, but because it’s reliable. This is no longer about climate virtue; it’s about national survival, or at least that’s the narrative the big players will sell. And the crowd? They’ll swallow it hook, line, and sinker, just as always. Decades of manipulation, and still they march to the same tune. To the game architects, the masses are cannon fodder, and honestly, can you blame them?
And no, this won’t dent uranium demand—quite the opposite. While the West drowns in red tape and indecision, the rest of the world is moving fast. China builds nuclear plants in 5–7 years, Russia does it in 6, and small modular plants are constructed even faster.
Meanwhile, the developing world is facing an energy explosion without AI. Add AI on top, and the equation breaks. They’ll embrace nuclear, coal, solar, everything, and anything because they have no time to debate ideology. They want power, and they’ll take it however they can get it.
