Headlines today are thick with wildfire smoke, heat maps, and ominous graphs. You don’t have to scroll far before bumping into another AI-generated apocalypse montage or a social media thread convinced we’re a hair's breadth away from total ecological collapse. Climate despair, once a fringe sentiment, is rapidly becoming the default. But here's the thing: it's not just exhausting, it's wrong.
In the latest episode of the Climate Confident podcast, I sat down with renowned climate economist Michael Jakob, the author of The Case Against Climate Doom amongst other books.
When I founded the Climate Confident podcast back in 2020, it was with a simple intention: to seek out and amplify the good news stories in the climate space. To educate folks on the good work being done in the sector, possible even to inspire action, and, if I'm being honest, to make sure I heard at least one hopeful story a week so I didn’t end up curled in a foetal position on the floor, sobbing in despair.
Michael's message? There is real progress being made, and if we want more of it, we need to stop catastrophising and start recognising the opportunity staring us in the face.
Doomerism Paralyses, Optimism Mobilises
Let’s be clear. Fear has its place. It can jolt people into awareness, spark conversations, even tip elections. But when fear metastasises into fatalism, we get something far more dangerous: apathy. If people believe it's already too late, why bother acting at all?
Jakob argues, and I agree, that this is the ultimate gift to the fossil fuel incumbents. They've moved from denial to delay. Now they're betting on despair. “Sure, it’s happening,” they say, “but there’s nothing you can do.” Nonsense. Every tonne of CO2 we don’t emit still matters. Every policy shift, every heat pump installation, every megawatt of new solar tilts the scales.
The Energy Transition Is Not Inevitable. It's Happening.
Let’s dispense with the idea that clean energy is a hypothetical future. UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in a landmark speech yesterday (22 July 2025) (full text), declared: "The sun is rising on a clean energy age."
The data backs him up. According to the latest IRENA report, in 2024, 91% of new renewable energy projects delivered power more cheaply than the lowest-cost fossil alternative. Solar is now, on average, 41% cheaper per kWh than the cheapest new fossil fuel plant. Onshore wind? 53% cheaper.
We’re not talking about boutique pilot projects. We added 582 GW of new renewables last year alone, displacing tens of billions in fossil fuel expenditure. The clean energy economy isn't "coming", it's already adding $320 billion to global GDP annually and supporting nearly 35 million jobs (Carbon Brief summary).
And the kicker? Renewables aren’t just cheaper. They’re much faster to deploy. More modular. More resilient. And they put power, literally and economically, into more hands than ever before.
Tipping Points Don’t Just Collapse. They Progress.
The climate narrative loves a tipping point. Arctic melt. Permafrost thaw. Amazon dieback. But Jakob reminds us that social and economic systems tip too, in the other direction.
We’ve passed critical thresholds where clean energy is now the default investment. Where electric vehicles in China outsell combustion models. Where even Texas, the heart of US oil country, leads the nation in wind capacity because it makes business sense.
This momentum matters. Once solar becomes cheaper than coal, it doesn’t just replace the next coal plant, it changes financial models, policy expectations, and manufacturing priorities. It becomes the default option. Positive tipping points compound.
Policy Follows Possibility
Jakob makes another key point in the podcast: cheaper tech makes stronger policy politically feasible. When EVs are affordable and heat pumps ubiquitous, carbon pricing doesn’t look like a burden, it looks like common sense.
We now have over 5,000 climate-related policies globally, many adopted in the past decade. Countries like Ethiopia are leapfrogging straight to electric mobility. Vietnam is building solar faster than it ever built coal. Europe’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is exporting decarbonisation incentives globally.
And it’s not just governments. Business is all-in. 2023 saw clean energy drive 10% of global GDP growth. In China, it was 20%. Nearly a third of the EU’s GDP growth came from clean energy last year.
This isn’t ideology. It’s macroeconomics.
What About the Grid? What About Storage?
Yes, challenges remain. Grid constraints, permitting delays, bottlenecks in critical minerals. But these are speed bumps, not roadblocks. The IRENA report highlights 3,000 GW of renewables waiting to connect to grids worldwide.
Energy storage is the critical unlock. Falling battery costs are transforming the economics of both stationary and mobile applications. According to IRENA, the cost of battery storage systems has dropped more than 90% in the past 15 years, making it viable to store surplus solar and wind and dispatch it when needed, flattening the volatility that once made renewables seem unreliable.
Much of the 3,000 GW of renewables waiting to connect to grids is solar, which peaks during the day and overwhelms local infrastructure. But when paired with storage, that midday surge can be absorbed and released over time, shaving those peaks, extending output, and smoothing integration. That means a significant portion of the backlog can now be unblocked simply because storage costs have fallen to the point where it’s finally viable at scale.
This plummeting price trajectory not only enables the grid to integrate more clean power but also accelerates the decarbonisation of transport. Cheaper batteries mean cheaper EVs, making them more accessible to consumers, fleets, and increasingly, heavier-duty transport sectors like delivery vans and HGVs.
And the technology isn’t standing still. We’re seeing new forms of thermal and mechanical storage, alongside smarter demand-response systems that optimise energy use dynamically. This is not science fiction. It’s deployment at scale.
Storage is the bridge between abundant renewable generation and reliable, always-on power. And now, it’s affordable.
Data Centres, AI, and the "New" Energy Hog
Guterres rightly called out the rise of AI-driven data centres, with some projected to use as much electricity as 100,000 homes each. But this isn’t a reason to despair. It’s a call to align AI growth with renewables.
Major tech firms now have clear targets: 100% renewable-powered data centres by 2030. They know the reputational and operational risks of doing otherwise. And if anyone can make 24/7 clean power work at scale, it’s the hyperscalers.
But let’s not overlook the flipside: AI is also one of the most promising tools we have for driving emissions reductions. Across dozens of episodes on Climate Confident and Sustainable Supply Chain, I’ve spoken with companies applying AI in imaginative and transformative ways, from precision agriculture that cuts fertiliser use, to industrial AI models that slash manufacturing emissions, to smart building systems that drastically cut energy use without compromising comfort.
If we deploy AI wisely, not only can we mitigate its energy demands, but we can unlock exponential sustainability gains across sectors.
Optimism With Teeth
None of this is a call for complacency. Optimism, the kind worth backing, is earned. It's the product of scrutiny, hard data, and a clear-eyed look at the levers still in our hands.
Jakob’s book, The Case Against Climate Doom (free download), is a free, open-access antidote to despair. It's not a lullaby. It's a call to action rooted in economic reality.
We should worry, but we should never give up. Not when we’ve got the tools, the momentum, and the incentive structures aligning in our favour. Not when we’re finally seeing progress at scale.
What Now?
If you’re a senior leader in energy, tech, infrastructure, or finance, the takeaway is this: the transition isn’t something to brace for. It’s something to lead.
Use your influence to accelerate it. Shift capital. Back policy. Reframe the narrative.
Despair is easy. Hope takes work. But hope is also what moves markets, rewrites playbooks, and builds the future.
If you’d like to dig deeper into the strategies and data behind this shift, I encourage you to listen to the full conversation with Michael Jakob: Podcast link.
And if you want the receipts? The UN speech (link), the IRENA cost report (link), and Carbon Brief’s analysis (link) are all worth your time.
This is our moment of opportunity.
Let’s not waste it.