If we’re serious about phasing out fossil fuels, not just trimming demand at the edges, but actually dismantling their stranglehold on our economies, then there’s really only one strategy that gets us there fast, affordably, and at scale: electrify everything.
That’s not hyperbole. It’s a conclusion rooted in over a century of energy data, accelerating technology trends, and the cold, hard physics of efficiency. Ember’s latest report, The Long March of Electrification, pulls back the curtain on what’s actually happening behind the confusing swirl of climate headlines: electrification isn’t just desirable, it’s already winning. And it has been, quietly and relentlessly, for over 100 years.
But now, we’re at a tipping point. And we’ve got to move faster.
Electricity: The Engine of Energy Progress
Electrification is often misunderstood as a newfangled decarbonisation tactic, a kind of techno-utopian Band-Aid for our oil-soaked 20th century. In reality, it’s been the backbone of modernisation since Edison lit up Pearl Street. According to Ember, global electricity demand has doubled every couple of decades for over a century. And in 2007, electricity overtook oil as the largest provider of useful energy, the energy that actually powers our devices, homes, factories, and vehicles.
Why? Because electricity is simply better. More efficient. More controllable. Cleaner at the point of use. And increasingly, cleaner at the point of generation too.
Consider this: between 2018 and 2023, electricity accounted for 63% of the growth in global final energy demand. Fossil fuels contributed just 5%. The rest? Largely static. If that trend continues, and there’s every reason to believe it will, fossil fuel demand doesn’t just slow down. It starts to decline in absolute terms. And fast.
Electrification Is Already Wrecking the Fossil Fuel Party
Let’s call this what it is: structural disruption.
Electricity now delivers 34% of useful energy globally. In buildings, it’s already 45%; in industry, 35%. Meanwhile, fossil fuel demand has peaked in two-thirds of countries for final energy. It plateaued in industry back in 2014, in buildings in 2018, and likely in road transport around 2019. That’s not a hypothetical. That’s IEA data.
And the gap between electricity and fossil fuels is about to widen, not because of some abstract climate idealism, but because electric technologies are just better.
Take heat pumps. A modern unit delivers 3–5 units of heat for every unit of electricity it consumes. A gas boiler struggles to hit 0.9. It’s not even close. And in colder climates, where early heat pumps once struggled? Those technical limits have been smashed. Scandinavian countries are electrifying heating with gusto.
Same with EVs. China, the largest car market in the world, saw EVs make up over 48% of new car sales in 2024. And EVs aren’t just a car replacement; they’re becoming part of the energy system. During the April 2025 blackout here in Spain, I used my EV to power my house via V2L. Gasoline can’t do that. EVs are batteries on wheels. Fossil cars are dead weight.
Even maritime shipping, long considered the poster child for “hard to electrify” is now starting to flip. Just last week, Australian shipbuilder Incat signed a deal to build two battery-electric ferries for Danish operator Molslinjen. These all-electric ships will carry 600 passengers and 200 cars each, powered by massive battery banks. That’s not a demonstration project. That’s commercial fleet decarbonisation, in motion.
The Efficiency Multiplier
There’s a myth that electrifying transport and heating will drive runaway electricity demand. It won’t. Why? Because electricity is so much more efficient at turning energy into motion, heat, or light that it reduces overall energy needs.
Electric motors are ~90% efficient. Internal combustion engines? 20–30% on a good day. So when you swap petrol for electrons, you cut the energy input required by a factor of three or more.
Fossil fuels are astonishingly inefficient. On average, only about one-third of the energy in coal, oil, or gas is actually turned into usable services like heat, movement, or light. The rest? Lost as waste heat. In power plants, internal combustion engines, gas boilers — we’re running an energy system designed to throw most of the energy away.
By contrast, electric technologies convert 80–95% of input energy into useful output. That’s why switching from a petrol car to an EV or a gas boiler to a heat pump doesn’t just cut emissions — it slashes total energy use. This is how electrification breaks the myth that climate action must mean energy austerity.
That’s why, even under deep electrification scenarios like IEA’s Net Zero by 2050, global electricity demand grows at a perfectly manageable ~3% per year. The same pace we’ve had since the 1980s. We’re not breaking the system. We’re just using it smarter.
Everything That Can Be Electrified, Will Be
This isn’t just a techno-optimist talking point. It’s a historical inevitability. As Ember notes, every major wave of electrification, from lighting and motors in the 1910s to modern appliances in the 1950s, followed the same pattern: technical viability → cost parity → mass adoption.
We’re seeing the same curve now in sectors once labelled “hard to electrify”:
Heavy trucks? BYD, Tesla, Volvo, and Daimler are already delivering long-range electric HGVs.
Industrial heat? Companies like Rondo and Electrified Thermal Solutions are building electric thermal batteries to replace fossil-fired boilers.
Short-haul aviation? Harbour Air’s electric seaplanes are already flying in Canada.
Steelmaking? SSAB’s fossil-free steel, made using hydrogen from electrolysis, is already shipping to carmakers.
Even sectors like aviation and shipping, where full electrification remains difficult today, have electrifiable cores. Sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) are a necessary bridge, yes, but they should be a stepping stone, not a crutch. We were told heavy goods vehicles couldn’t be electrified, remember? That didn’t age well.
Why This Must Happen Now
Every year we delay full-scale electrification, we lock in more fossil fuel infrastructure, power plants, pipelines, petrol stations, furnaces, that will become stranded assets tomorrow. Worse, we delay the benefits.
Benefits like:
Cleaner air: The switch to electric transport and heating slashes NOx, SO₂, and particulate emissions. That means fewer deaths, less asthma, and lower healthcare costs.
Energy independence: Countries that electrify can power their economies with sun, wind, and water, not imports from unstable petro-states.
Economic resilience: EVs, heat pumps, and batteries are modular, scalable, and increasingly domestically manufactured. That’s jobs. That’s competitiveness.
Grid flexibility: With smart charging, vehicle-to-grid (V2G), and demand response, electrification isn’t a load problem, it’s a solution.
And of course: climate stability. The IPCC is crystal clear. To avoid 1.5°C, global CO₂ emissions must fall by ~50% by 2030. That’s five years away. The only realistic way to do that is to electrify, clean the grid, and electrify some more.
No More Excuses: The Barriers Are Political, Not Technical
Let’s be honest: the fossil fuel industry knows exactly how dangerous electrification is to their business model. That’s why they’ve fought it for decades, lobbying against EV incentives, spreading disinformation about heat pumps, and buying up clean tech patents to bury them.
And too many politicians, captured by fossil lobbies or paralysed by short-termism, have enabled them. Just look at the foot-dragging in the US over transmission buildout. Or the EU’s dithering on heat pump subsidies. Or the UK’s rollbacks on clean energy commitments under pressure from tabloids and Tory backbenchers.
This is not a technology gap. It’s a courage gap.
What Needs to Happen Next
To electrify everything at the pace required, we need three big shifts, none of them easy, all of them essential:
Massive grid investment.Transmission, distribution, and storage must scale like never before. That means smart grids, more interconnectors, and faster permitting, not more excuses.
Market redesign.Time-of-use pricing, dynamic tariffs, and capacity markets that reward flexibility, all critical for making electricity the default fuel of choice.
Political leadership.We need policymakers to stop treating electrification as a side hustle and start treating it as the main act. That means banning new fossil heating systems. Setting phase-out dates for combustion engines. Ending subsidies for oil and gas. And investing in the clean supply chains that power the electric future.
Final Thought: Electricity Is Destiny
In the early 20th century, electric lighting replaced gaslamps not because people were eco-conscious, but because it was better. Cleaner. Safer. Cheaper.
We’re living through the same shift now, at planetary scale. Electricity is no longer an alternative. It is the default. And everything else - oil, gas, coal, is legacy tech. Obsolete, polluting, and increasingly uneconomic.
If we want to build a world powered by clean, secure, and affordable energy, we don’t need to invent it. We just need to plug into it.
If You Want to Go Deeper
Ember’s The Long March of Electrification is one of the most illuminating reads I’ve come across this year. It’s data-rich, historically grounded, and profoundly hopeful, but only if we act on it.
Let’s not “transition” anymore. Let’s transform.
Let’s electrify everything, and end the fossil age for good.
This post was originally posted on TomRaftery.com