The global energy crisis is accelerating a shift to renewable sources and hastening the end of the dominance of fossil fuels, according to India’s Power and Renewable Energy Minister Raj Kumar Singh.
Renewables paired with energy storage are now cheaper than coal after the fuel’s price surged in recent months, while fossil sources are also experiencing a lack of investment in new production, Singh said Wednesday in a speech at the Sydney Energy Forum.
“This will actually hasten the energy transition,” Singh said. “Once you have round-the-clock renewables, that’s renewables plus storage, that are viable, then that’s the end of the story for fossil fuels.”
Turmoil in the global energy sector that’s triggered shortages in some nations and sent power and fuel prices soaring has multiple causes, according to Singh.
“This is a crisis which has been in the making for some time” and exacerbated by issues including under-investment in supply and a push by producers to raise margins, he said.
The energy crisis began about half a year before situation in Ukraine with shortages of coal, natural gas and then oil as a result of “preemptive underinvestment,” Daniel Yergin, vice chairman at S&P Global Inc., said at the conference