Why the renewable energy transition can’t work — and what can
The renewable energy transition cannot work. Not because of politics. Not because of cost. Because of physics.
Hardback · £12.99 · Swift Press · published 24 September 2026
‘The energy system that feeds, heats and transports the world’s eight billion people is being dismantled — with confidence, with public money, and with almost no scrutiny — before anything remotely adequate exists to replace it.’From The Energy Trap
Energy policy is being written by people with no training in physics or power systems, no experience of producing energy, and no grasp of the economics of finite resource extraction. The result is the most consequential gamble in industrial history — and almost nobody is checking the arithmetic.
In this short, sharp book, Richard Lyon — electrical engineer, petroleum engineer and energy economist — strips the debate back to the physics. What he finds is alarming: the fossil fuels that built the modern world are running down, the proposed replacements can’t do the job, and the people in charge don’t understand the science well enough to realise.
But this is not a counsel of despair. There is a way through — if we stop wasting what remains on systems that can’t work, and start building the one that can.
Energy gradient, energy density, and areal power density: the rules no subsidy or press release can repeal. You’ll never read an energy headline the same way again.
Hydrocarbons aren’t just fuel — they’re the feedstock for the fertiliser, steel, cement and plastics that keep eight billion people alive. Why ‘electrify everything’ can’t replace the menu.
What reserve figures actually measure (accounting, not geology), and how to read what really remains.
Does a renewables-powered system return more energy than it consumes? Nobody has measured it. You’ll understand the energy cliff — and how little margin for error there is.
The three most popular reasons for believing none of this matters — the efficiency illusion, the hydrogen mirage, and the decoupling delusion — tested one by one against the physics.
Money is a claim on future energy — why printing more can’t fix less, and what that means for your pension, prices, and everything you own.
A practical programme for the managed descent: where the remaining inheritance should go, and how an informed public forces better choices than the ones being made in its name.
‘It is the best book on energy you will ever read. Superbly written, thrillingly argued and utterly terrifying.’Matt RidleyAuthor of The Rational Optimist
‘The Energy Trap is a magnificently clear and concise layout of what is humanity’s number one problem… This mercifully brief book is the corrective.’James Howard KunstlerAuthor of The Long Emergency
‘Richard Lyon’s devastating demolition of the energy transition … exposes the fantasy at the heart of the exercise: you are borrowing against future economic output to build a system that reduces future economic output.’Kathryn PorterEnergy consultant, Watt-Logic
‘The Energy Trap is short, sharp and completely incisive. It should be on every MP’s reading list.’Andrew MontfordDirector, Net Zero Watch; author of The Hockey Stick Illusion
Richard Lyon is an electrical engineer, petroleum engineer and energy economist. He served in the Royal Air Force before spending over twenty-five years in the oil and gas industry, holding senior operational and commercial roles in the UK, Norway, Azerbaijan, Congo and Cameroon. His master’s research quantified the degree of optimism in institutional estimates of remaining oil reserves.
The Energy Trap grew from a conviction, formed over three decades of producing, managing and studying energy, that the gap between energy policy and physical reality has become dangerous — and that the public are perfectly able to acquire and apply the knowledge needed to challenge the policies being made in their name.
Richard writes regularly on energy, physics and policy at his Substack. Join thousands of readers getting the analysis behind the book — and be first to hear publication news, events and extracts.
Out front, Richard shows his working. In the chat, readers argue it through together — physics first, tribe never. People are already in there, picking the numbers apart.
Join the chatThe Energy Trap lands on 24 September. Pre-order your copy now, or join the launch list to hear the moment it’s out — and how to help it land.