When Survival and Self-Interest Agree, Markets Stop Arguing

Why energy, security, and capital are finally aligned 

"There is no embargo on sunlight."

When Jimmy Carter said that in the late 1970s, it didn’t sound poetic. It sounded practical. The world was in the middle of oil shocks, energy shortages, and long lines at gas stations, and Carter was naming an uncomfortable truth: modern economies had built themselves on energy systems that were efficient, yes, but also fragile, distant, and exposed.

He wasn’t making a climate argument. Climate, as we understand it today, wasn’t yet the organizing principle. 

He was making a security argument. 

A systems argument. 

A human argument.

Sunlight doesn’t pass through choke points. It doesn’t rely on shipping lanes. You don’t negotiate for it. You don’t sanction it. You don’t wake up one morning to discover someone else has decided you can’t have it anymore.

For decades, that idea sat on the shelf. Not because it was wrong, but because it was early.

Let’s Be Honest About the World We’re In

Before going any further, let’s acknowledge reality.

Fossil fuels and hydrocarbons will be part of the global energy mix for a long, long time. Anyone suggesting otherwise is either ignoring physics, ignoring infrastructure, or selling something.

As my friend Sandra Odendahl puts it, bluntly, and correctly:

“If we were to turn off hydrocarbon infrastructure tomorrow, it would not be long before we would freeze, and starve in the dark.”

She’s right. Modern civilization, including food systems, hospitals, cities, industry, run on energy-dense hydrocarbons and deeply embedded infrastructure. You don’t “switch that off.” You don’t moralize it away. You manage it. You evolve it. You change the marginal decision, again and again, until the system looks different.

Acknowledging that reality isn’t a lack of ambition. It’s a prerequisite for progress.

And here’s the important part: recognizing that hydrocarbons will be with us for decades does not mean we should move slowly. In fact, it’s precisely why we can’t afford to.

The Transition Isn’t Optional

The energy transition isn’t a lifestyle choice. It isn’t branding. It isn’t about virtue.

It is necessary for our social stability, our economic durability, and our environmental survival...and for corporate growth, capital preservation, portfolio resilience, and long-term value creation.

Left unmanaged, climate risk shows up not as abstract models, but as food insecurity, health crises, migration pressure, political instability, and rising security risk. This isn’t ideology. It’s systems behavior.

What is new, and genuinely encouraging, is that for the first time at scale, the things we must do to survive are aligning with the things markets and governments want to do anyway.

That alignment is the story.

At some point, markets don’t debate anymore. They just reallocate.

The Green Premium Didn’t Just Disappear. It Flipped.

For years, clean energy carried what was politely called the “green premium.” It was cleaner, yes, but also more expensive, slower to deploy, and dependent on policy support to compete.

That era is over.

According to the IEA and more sources than can be mentioned here, solar and wind are now among the cheapest sources of new electricity in most of the world. Battery costs have fallen sharply. Deployment timelines are measured in months, not decades. Marginal operating costs are close to zero.

At this point, the green premium hasn’t just vanished...it has turned positive.

Clean energy today is often:

• Cheaper

• Faster to deploy

• Modular and scalable

• Easier to finance

• Capable of being built end-to-end, domestically

Insisting that renewables only make sense “because of climate” is like insisting email only made sense because it used less paper than fax machines. Technically true. Entirely beside the point.

Peak Oil Was Never About Running Out

For decades, “peak oil” was framed as a geological debate: would we run out of hydrocarbons? That is how I interpreted the phrase, too.

That turned out to be the wrong question.

The real shift isn’t about peak production. 

It’s about peak trade. A recent report entitled The New Joule Order from the Carlyle Group clarified this argument.

We are not running out of oil. We are running out of confidence in globally traded energy as the backbone of national resilience.

Energy that must be extracted in one place, shipped through contested routes, priced globally, and consumed somewhere else is, by definition, exposed. Not always. Not catastrophically. But structurally.

What we’re seeing now is a steady move away from that exposure. Not because of ideology, but because of risk.

Security Is the New Lens

This is where the conversation quietly changes.

Governments and investors are no longer optimizing solely for the lowest-cost electrons. They are optimizing for security-adjusted returns.

That means valuing energy systems that are:

• Domestic

• Distributed

• Hard to disrupt

• Difficult to weaponize

In markets, what can’t be traded can’t be weaponized, and that turns out to be incredibly valuable.

Renewables aren’t interesting because they’re green. They’re interesting because they decouple domestic economies from global volatility. They reduce exposure to distant shocks that instantly show up as inflation, instability, and political pressure at home.

This is what the new “security premium” really means.

What About Energy Exporters?

It’s a fair question. Countries like the U.S., Canada, and many MENA nations produce more energy than they consume. Why would they care?

Because even exporters are price takers.

Oil prices are set globally. A disruption thousands of miles away still shows up at home. Producing energy doesn’t insulate you from volatility, it just means you’re exposed on both sides of the trade.

Clean energy offers something different:

• Stable domestic power prices

• Reduced exposure to global fuel shocks

• Increased industrial competitiveness

There’s another layer too. From a balance-sheet perspective, it makes far more sense to export high-value hydrocarbons while powering your domestic economy with zero-fuel-cost energy. That isn’t anti-oil. It’s pro-math.

And then there’s the longer-term risk that doesn’t get enough airtime.

Stranded Assets Aren’t a Climate Concept

They’re a financial one.

Long-cycle fossil infrastructure assumes stable demand, stable trade, and stable pricing decades into the future. That assumption is getting weaker.

As importing nations pursue energy independence and electrification, traded volumes shrink. Markets thin. Volatility rises. Assets built for a different world begin to look… optimistic.

None of this requires oil to disappear. It only requires alternatives to keep getting cheaper, faster, and easier to deploy.

Which they are.

This is why capital is moving. Not because investors have suddenly become idealists, but because risk has shifted.

Where Climate Tech Investing Fits

Climate tech isn’t a side bet on virtue. It’s the mechanism through which this realignment happens.

Capital is flowing into grids, storage, electrification, efficiency, and clean firm power because these assets reduce systemic risk, improve resilience, enhance competitiveness, and cut emissions as a consequence.

When survival, economics, and security all point in the same direction, capital tends to follow. Quietly at first. Then all at once.

Back to Sunlight

Jimmy Carter understood something simple and profound: the safest energy is the kind you don’t have to argue about, negotiate for, or defend.

We will use hydrocarbons for years to come. We must. Turning them off overnight would be catastrophic.

But that reality doesn’t excuse delay. It explains urgency.

Because every incremental decision, every new power plant, every grid upgrade, every investment, either locks in fragility or builds resilience.

There is still no embargo on sunlight.

And in a world relearning the cost of dependence, that may turn out to be one of the most valuable truths of all.

To read more, you can purchase The Gigacorn Hunter: Seven Principles for a Climate Investor here.