Another Terrible Year Gets Even Worse

Sometimes you read a headline and think, 'Well, there's the year in review wrapped up with a bow.' Forbes' year-end assessment of 2025 as 'A No Good, Terrible, Very Bad Year For The Energy Transition' captures what most of us in the energy sector already knew: the clean energy cheerleading finally met reality, and reality won.

The magazine's withering assessment catalogs what it calls 'a series of setbacks and shifting public policies' that 'impeded the progress of the energy transition.' Translation: the subsidies dried up, the permitting nightmares got worse, and voters decided they actually like reliable electricity more than virtue signaling.

Policy Whiplash

The shifting political winds Forbes references aren't exactly subtle. Between federal policy reversals, state-level renewable mandates hitting cost overruns, and local communities pushing back against transmission projects, 2025 became the year that energy transition planning collided with energy transition reality.

What Forbes diplomatically calls 'setbacks' likely includes the usual suspects: offshore wind projects getting shelved due to cost overruns, battery storage facilities catching fire, and utilities quietly extending the retirement dates on perfectly functional natural gas plants because the alternatives aren't ready for prime time.

The 'shifting public policies' part is particularly rich. After years of mandating renewable targets without much thought to grid stability or consumer costs, regulators are discovering that physics and economics don't care about your net-zero pledges. When the lights go out or bills double, voters tend to remember come election time.

The Optimism Shortage

Perhaps the most telling line in Forbes' assessment is their observation that 'prospects for 2026 offer little cause for optimism.' This from a publication that's spent years cheerleading the energy transition. When even the optimists start hedging their bets, you know the narrative is shifting.

The lack of optimism for 2026 suggests this isn't just about one bad year of implementation hiccups. It's about fundamental structural problems that aren't getting solved by throwing more subsidies at the problem. Grid reliability issues don't disappear because you mandate more renewables. Supply chain constraints don't evaporate because you set ambitious targets. And basic economics don't change because you really, really want them to.

Reality Bites

What makes Forbes' assessment particularly noteworthy is that it comes from the mainstream business press, not some oil industry trade publication. This is the same magazine that's been running breathless coverage of renewable energy milestones and electric vehicle adoption rates. When they're ready to call 2025 a 'terrible year' for the energy transition, it signals a broader recognition that the emperor's new clothes are looking a bit threadbare.

The energy transition was always going to be messier, more expensive, and take longer than the PowerPoint presentations suggested. But 2025 appears to have been the year when that reality became impossible to ignore, even for true believers.

For those of us who've been watching this unfold from the traditional energy sector, Forbes' assessment feels less like news and more like validation. We've been living through the practical challenges of grid management, fuel reliability, and cost management that the renewable advocates have been hand-waving away for years.

What's Next

The 'little cause for optimism' in 2026 isn't just about policy uncertainty, though that's certainly part of it. It's about the growing recognition that the energy transition is going to require the kind of long-term, expensive infrastructure investments that don't fit neatly into quarterly earnings reports or political election cycles.

Maybe 2025 wasn't a terrible year for the energy transition so much as it was the year we got realistic about what the transition actually entails. Sometimes that's what progress looks like: admitting the plan wasn't working and figuring out what comes next.

Forbes' pessimism about 2026 might actually be the most honest energy reporting we've seen in years. After all, the first step in solving a problem is admitting you have one.