Explained · The Energy Transition
The Energy Transition
EnergyThe capacity to do work, and to power civilisations · TransitionA shift from one state to another · The global shift from fossil fuels to lower-carbon energy sources.
The energy transition is the rebuild of how the world generates, moves, and uses energy. Away from fossil fuels, which have powered industry for about two centuries, toward electricity drawn from lower-carbon sources including wind, solar, nuclear, and hydro. It is not a single policy, a single technology, or a single country. It is a direction of travel, pushed by climate science, energy security, and the falling cost of the alternatives, and pulled back by the practical difficulty of rewiring a system that took a century to build.
Offshore wind is not the whole answer, but it is one of the biggest moving parts, particularly for countries with long coastlines and strong winds. In the UK, offshore wind already supplies a meaningful share of electricity, and the pipeline of announced projects, if delivered, would reshape the grid over the next two decades. The decisions being made now, about where to build, who pays, which projects go ahead, and which get dropped, will set the shape of the energy system well past 2050.
A note on scope. EOS Omnia is UK based, and the pages that follow use the UK as the working example, because it is the market we know best and where our data is most complete. The underlying principles apply globally. The specifics, subsidy mechanisms, grid institutions, regulators, and cost levels, differ by country. Readers in Germany, the Netherlands, the US, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, or elsewhere will recognise the shape of the argument here, and should translate the details to local context.
How you read this page depends on why you are here. We have written the explanation four ways, not because the facts change, but because the questions do. Pick the entry point that fits you, or read more than one. Each page links to the others.
Twenty-five years, in numbers
What countries actually built, 2000 to 2025
Slogans are easy. Megawatts are not. Across the thirty-seven countries IRENA tracks at this level of detail, the world has built more electricity-generating capacity since 2000 than in the previous fifty years combined. It has also retired remarkably little of what was already there. The transition is real, it is large, and it is not yet a substitution. It is mostly an addition.
Three transitions, three different shapes
The same data sliced three ways. The UK retired coal at speed and replaced it largely with gas plus offshore wind. Germany doubled down on solar while retiring nuclear. China built more of everything than anywhere else, including more coal than any country has ever built, and more solar.
Source, IRENA Electricity Capacity Statistics 2025, OnGrid plant only, 37 countries, 9 technologies. Fossil fuel data is incomplete in the IRENA file for Germany, Denmark, France, and Poland, where IRENA's coverage focuses on the renewable build.
New here, want the basics
How we power things, why it is changing, no jargon
Starts from first principles. What the energy transition actually is, why wind and solar lead the new build, how a wind farm works, and honest answers to the questions you have probably already thought of.
Principium sapientiae, the beginning of wisdom.
Show me the data and the tech
Capacity factors, grid limits, supply chain, tradeoffs
Written for readers who want the numbers, the technology, and the bottlenecks. Turbine size trajectories, fixed versus floating, the grid connection queue, critical minerals, intermittency. Evidence first, slogans last.
Per data ad veritatem, through data to truth.
Where is this going, who pays
Investment, policy direction, risks to the thesis
For readers thinking in decades, not news cycles. Investment flows, subsidy mechanisms, cost trajectories that have not always gone the expected way, who wins commercially, who pays, and the risks to the whole plan.
Quo vadimus, where are we going.
I live near this, real questions
Bills, curtailment, coastal impact, community benefit
Straight answers for the readers closest to the projects. Why bills are high if wind is cheap, what curtailment payments actually are, what the coast will look like, and whether any of this money reaches the communities nearby.
Vox populi, the voice of the people.