As covered in The Lawyer last month, the climate change issue is front of mind for all the big energy providers – for practical reasons as much as for idealistic ones.

And it’s not only big oil and gas. Nation states are also reassessing their energy mix – and the Covid-19 pandemic has only encouraged their desire to move to a greener future.

Anne Lapierre, global co-head of energy at Norton Rose Fulbright, sets out the big picture: “There has been an ongoing increase in energy demand around the world,” she says. “There will be 8.8 billion inhabitants of this planet by 2100; the question is, how do we do cater to the demand that stems from this, in particular when it comes to access to water and power in developingcountries such as those in Sub-Saharan Africa?”

Indeed, Sub-Saharan Africa is only the tip of the iceberg – massive population growth in India and China will see energy consumption reach new highs. China’s commitment to reduce its carbon footprint took the world somewhat by surprise this year, but it was a logical end point to the situation it finds itself in. “China is not supporting coal; China is supporting any means of power production that will cater to its vast need,” Lapierre says. The country’s nuclear programme is large but its renewable one is 10 times the size. “They run the greatest programmes in everything because they are so short of power.”

In a strange way, the pandemic has allowed nations to take a step back and look at their energy needs anew. All governments are having to set up programmes to inject cash into their economies: “The question is, what do you invest in with all this money?” asks Lapierre. “Is it going to be put towards going back to business as usual or do we use this investment to accelerate the transition. Obviously there is no clear cut answer, but it is true that there is a trend towards supporting and accelerating the development of the energy transition.”

In Germany, for example, Angela Merkel has announced a €9bn programme to develop hydrogen in Germany. France has made the same decision. It previously had a €100m hydrogen technologies programme. Its new one is €7bn, with €2bn committed for the coming three years.

The European Union has made its own commitments on top of those made by member states, and many other nations are investing in clean energy as well. Morocco is just one example. In the 1980s around 70 per cent of its people had access to electricity; now that figure is 99.9 per cent. “Where there is a long-term plan, well done, it works,” says Lapierre. But the country is going further: “Because Morocco has few natural resources compared to its neighbour Algeria, the king made the decision to have 42 per cent renewable energy in the mix by 2020, and then increased that to 53 per cent. In fact they are planning to produce much more than that, because they plan to export it as well.” Morocco is testing all types of tech, from solar to wind to hydrogen and more. Across the world, in Peru, in Chile, in Mexico, a similar thing is happening.

Will the oil and gas companies be out of business any time soon? No: the energy transition will take 20 years or more to complete and it is oil and gas that will pay for it. Energy companies “need to adjust to the variable price and the lack of demand at the moment, and if they don’t adjust in the long term they could suffer ,” says Lapierre, but 90 per cent of their work is still their original core business of oil and gas and they are richer than any of the other utilities around the world. It is interesting to see that the most carbon-intensive companies are probably going to be the drivers of this transition..”

The most exciting piece of the energy transition – from a consumer point of view, anyway – is that the world becoming ‘smart’ will allow individuals to participate in the energy revolution in a meaningful way themselves, and even make some money from it.

You will be able to have a solar panel on your roof sell 100 per cent of what you produce back into the system when you go on holiday. You will be able to make money from your e-car, charging its battery at an hour of the day when demand for power is low, while injecting power on the grid at when demand, and therefore prices, are higher.

Lapierre says: “As soon as we make things bilateral, as soon as we have the capacity, infrastructure, volume and the data on the pricing, then the consumer will start to become a producer and vice-versa.”

It will take time, and it isn’t a fait accompli, but the future can bring about a win-win-win situation – for the old oil and gas giants, for individual people, and for the planet.