Coal is political and environmentally untenable. Nuclear is politically unpalatable in many places, unaffordable, and following Russia’s attack on the Zaporizhzhia, Europe's largest nuclear plant, an unacceptable security risk. The inflexibility of nuclear power station output also makes nuclear difficult to integrate with the variable demand of electric vehicles. I worry that many countries will sacrifice their climate goals to achieve security through a system that combines electrification of transport and coal-fired power. We do not have to do this.

Across the world, the public have been promised that they will be able to benefit from the falling price of renewable energy, but they have been misled. Regulators and politicians acted with the best possible motives as they sought to provide cheap and green energy, but many people failed to understand the true underlying dynamics of a system dominated by renewable energy. In moving from a system where supply could easily adjust to follow demand to one where supply would be driven by the weather, policymakers appear not to have properly accounted for the value of the stability services provided by thermal generation, nor the cost of provisioning stability for a system based on renewables.

A week on from the close of festivities in Glasgow, I want to look at some of the winners and losers and why COP26 may not have been the most important thing that happened to the climate this autumn.

Electrification with renewables will be the primary mode of the energy transition, and its weaknesses are causing the transition to stall. It’s time to discover dynamic harmonisation, the means by which we can optimally integrate multiple modes of energy and the work that it powers.

This is the third in a series of reports on understanding the energy transition. Previous reports have looked at the roles of oil and hydrogen. This one looks at the role of the electricity grid and why our conception of value in the electricity system is holding back the energy transition.

Hydrogen has a cornerstone role to play in the next round of the transition. The question is where hydrogen will outcompete other modes, like electricity and refined petroleum.