Why does capital love fossil fuels? It’s not hard to explain. They exist in a small number of discrete locations, where the right to exploit them can be owned and monopolised. Most can be extracted commercially only at scale, excluding small competitors. They can be stored and traded all over the world, allowing prices to be optimised across time and space. Renewable energy, by contrast, can be generated almost anywhere, by almost anyone with a small amount of money to invest.

Renewables might now be cheaper than fossil fuel in the vast majority of cases, but this makes them less attractive to capital, not more. Fossil fuels are uncompetitive and highly profitable. Renewables are highly competitive and not very profitable.

As a result, fossil fuel extractors will fight tooth and nail to prevent market forces from operating. They demand the equivalent of the royal monopolies granted by the English Crown centuries ago, excluding competitors and enabling old technologies to fend off newer ones. Their enormous profits allow them to bend politics to their will, attacking and maligning their critics, sowing disinformation and denial and assisting the election of those who favour them. In Donald Trump, they have found the monarch who will grant them their exclusive charter.

Read more at The Guardian