In the quest for a sustainable energy transition, the debate is split between two main camps: technical innovation and behavioural change. What the both miss, argues Franco Ruzzenenti, is that increased efficiency can paradoxically lead to higher energy consumption. In this piece, Ruzzenenti puts forward a manifesto for the energy transition, arguing that efficiency is not the saviour we once thought.

In the quest to the energy transition there are two main parties who have monopolized the debate over the means and strategies to be pursued. One party believe the issue is mainly, if not solely, technological, a mere substitution process at the top of the pipeline (fossil free energy sources), or addition process at the bottom (carbon sequestration or compensation). Andrew Lo, MIT Sloan finance professor, argued that the word energy transition is misleading and we should use instead that of energy addition, hinting not only to the new, foreseeable technologies to be added (in his case, either fission or fusion power) to the incumbent ones, but also appealing to unconscious desire of portraying the transition as an expanding frontier rather than a contracting. The other party, on the contrary, consider the transition as mainly a behavioral revolution or, to use a much more fashionable and flamboyant wording, an emergent behavior.