The End of Carbon Fuels?
A Symposium of Views

Editors' introduction:

A New York street photographed in 1900 showed almost every vehicle pulled by horses. Just twelve years later, a photo of the same corner showed mostly cars. Few saw the complete disruption in transportation coming.

Today, some experts, including Stanford's Tony Seba, argue that the efficiencies of solar energy and electricity storage technology have made quantum improvements in just the last eighteen months. These improvements threaten to disrupt the energy industry. The surprise is not the emergence of these disruptive technologies, but the speed with which they are coming on stream.

By 2030, predicts Seba, all new energy will be provided by solar and wind. All new mass market vehicles will be electric. And there will be fewer of these vehicles, as autonomous vehicles make a dramatic mass entry into the market. "Oil, gas, coal, and nuclear will become obsolete," he argues.

Assume that the demise of fossil fuels becomes a reality. What will be the economic and geopolitical fallout for the OPEC countries, Russia, Turkey, Africa, the United States, and Canada? How will the disruption of the automobile industry affect Germany, China, and Japan (with Germany and China now working so closely on electric vehicle development)? How, if at all, will NATO be affected? The Paris Climate Accord?

If these predictions are correct, a lot of capital stock worldwide will become obsolete. Who will gain from new investment opportunities, and who will be stuck with worthless debt? Who will be the winners and losers? And how should today's policymakers plan for these potential shocks to the global system?

Fifteen replies follow, from Marco Annunziata, Martin Neil Baily, W. Bowman Cutter, Andrew DeWit, Deborah Gordon, Gary N. Kleiman, Robert E. Litan, Edward N. Luttwak, Robert A. Manning, J.W. Mason, Wolfgang Münchau, Daniel Pipes, Roger B. Porter, Jeffrey D. Sachs, and Bret Swanson.