Does “The Iron Law of Energy” mean that we are doomed?
Richard Lyon’s recent article "The Iron Law of Energy" is a compelling critique of our transition to renewables, arguing that it defies fundamental principles governing successful civilisations.
IN THE IRON LAW OF ENERGY Lyon argues that “successful civilisations always move up the energy ladder toward more concentrated, more reliable power sources” and conversely “every historical example of a move down the energy density ladder has been involuntary” and led to collapse.
I have followed him on SubStack for some time. Lyon has extensive experience as an oil and gas operations manager. He is qualified in electrical engineering, power systems and energy economics. Therefore, when he writes about the inevitable collapse of civilisation due to our clean energy transition, it seems to me that it would be a good idea to understand what he has to say and take it seriously.
At the end of his article Lyon references "The Collapse of Complex Societies" by Joseph A. Tainter. Written in 1988, this book offers a powerful framework for understanding societal disintegration that strongly aligns with Lyon’s energy-centric view. Tainter defines collapse as a rapid, significant loss of an established level of sociopolitical complexity. His central thesis is that investment in socio-political complexity, as a problem-solving response, often reaches a point of declining marginal returns.
I found it difficult to find fault with either author as their ideas have much in common with my thoughts on this topic. Then I remembered reading about the Copernican Principle in Richard Gott’s book “Time Travel in Einstein’s Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel Through Time”. This was almost 30 years ago. I still remember the shock of learning about a simple principle that could successfully predict the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the length of runs of shows on Broadway. Could I use Gott’s Copernican Principal to find holes in Lyon’s conclusions?
Lyon and Tainter suggest that we are at a unique point in history when events can conspire to limit our future prosperity. Gott’s statistical viewpoint suggests that there is no such thing as a unique point in time and therefore we can ignore specific events, such as the consequences of the current transition to clean energy. I chose this alternative viewpoint, partly to play devil’s advocate but also to better explore Lyon’s argument and tease out any weaknesses.
Spoiler alert – I didn’t find any.
The Iron Law of Energy Transition
First, I’ll recap Lyon’s main ideas and show how they are supported by Tainter.
Lyon proposes that the "clean energy transition" is fundamentally flawed because it represents an unprecedented move down the energy density ladder. In doing so, he presents a number of persuasive arguments.
Energy Density
Energy density refers to the amount of energy storable per unit of material or space. Lyon highlights the difference between fossil fuels (approx. 44 megajoules per kilogram) and commercially available batteries (~1 megajoule per kilogram), i.e., a ~40:1 ratio. High energy density is crucial for stockpiling, transport, and buffering against disruptions, a capability that clean energy technologies lack.
Power Density
Power density measures energy flow per unit of land area, a "crucial, non-negotiable parameter". Lyon argues that the low power density of clean energy technologies fundamentally cripples their ability to replace existing, higher-density facilities.
Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI)
EROEI is the ratio of energy output to the energy input required to produce it. Fossil fuels currently have an EROEI of around 20:1. Lyon asserts that a fall in power density inherently leads to an "astronomical increase in land area" and a "catastrophic fall in EROEI" due to the increased energy required for infrastructure.
We can test this claim. A simplistic evaluation of EROEI for wind is about 24:1 and solar PV about 13:1 (see table at end of this article). However, this comparison is misleading since the headline figures for wind and solar take no account of:
Grid integration costs (e.g., transmission expansion, curtailment)
Backup generation (e.g., gas peakers or spinning reserves)
Energy used in storage systems (like batteries or hydrogen)
Overbuilding required to smooth output
Environmental/land-use trade-offs
Once these are factored in, more realistic system-level median values are about 7:1 for wind and 5:1 for solar PV, strongly supporting Lyon’s argument. Interestingly, this also mirrors what we hear from the green lobby, supported by the media. Wind is the cheapest form of energy, but only if we deliberately ignore everything else needed to make it work!
In fact, it’s worse than it sounds because, as Lyon points out, fossil fuels had a peak EROEI of about 100:1, so we are already on a steep downward trajectory. The implication of this is that to invest in technologies already known to have smaller EROEIs is nothing short of suicidal.
Not least this is because the trillions of dollars spent on renewables is not only a colossal waste of money but is also a disastrous misallocation of capital that could have achieved so much more if it had been invested effectively. This includes finding better ways of adapting to climate change, research into extending healthy lifespans and any number of positive social and educational programs. In the UK alone since 2006, £220 billion has been spent on decarbonisation efforts that have provided no economic benefits.
Coming back to Tainter's core concept, demonstrated across many sectors, continued investment yields less and less benefit per unit of input. This perfectly echoes Lyon's concerns about falling EROEI and the diminishing "power quality" of alternative energy sources. In fact, it isn’t hard to think of many areas of society where this decline is apparent, absent “incredible” innovations. These include oil & gas exploration, combustion engine efficiency, battery storage capacity, crop yields, wind turbine efficiency and even physics, stuck as it is trying to find a Grand Unifying Theory.
High Quality Energy
High quality energy is concentrated, controllable, storable, transportable, and versatile. It enables complex, high-value work with minimal overhead. Low-quality, diffuse sources, conversely, demand far greater investment of materials, land, and their own energy to be made useful. Lyon contends that civilisational complexity is built on high-quality energy, and attempting to sustain it with low-quality sources is futile.
The Bridge Fuel Problem
Bridge fuel refers to the energy that we need to maintain the fabric of society as we transition. Lyon points out that new energy systems require vast infrastructure and immense quantities of additional energy for their construction. However, this transition energy is not accounted for in current "clean transition" plans, especially as existing high-quality sources are prematurely shut down. A good analogy is to imagine shooting all the horses when the first car was invented – we are doing the modern equivalent of that today.
Lyon concludes that the clean energy transition is a dangerous fantasy rooted in techno-optimism and a disregard for physical constraints. He warns that “energy contraction ideology”, cloaked in euphemisms like "de-growth" and "efficiency," is in reality "energy rationing". Historically, energy rationing leads to declining living standards, social instability, and resource wars. Therefore, the choice is ultimately between a high-energy future of continued prosperity and a low-energy future of inevitable collapse.
Societal Impact
Tainter argues that:
human societies and political organizations, like all living systems, are maintained by a continuous flow of energy
He notes that "more complex societies are more costly to maintain than simpler ones, requiring greater support levels per capita". This directly supports Lyon's premise that energy quality and quantity are foundational to civilisation.
Tainter's work implies that the relentless pursuit of complexity without considering its costs is inherently unsustainable, leading to vulnerability. His "Runaway Train model" of complex societies shares a similar fatalism to Lyon's warning about our current trajectory.
He also highlights the "vast disruptions and overwhelming loss of life" that collapse entails for industrial societies where primary food production is not local - farmer’s inheritance tax anyone? This directly mirrors Lyon's concern about "mass casualty events" following downward energy transitions.
Richard Gott’s Copernican Principle
Turning now to the Copernican Principle, in essence, Gott offers a simple statistical method for predicting the future lifetime of any phenomenon, based on its current age. The principle proposes that we are not "unique observers" in time. Therefore, any observation is most likely occurring in the middle of a phenomenon's existence.
Gott wrote a simple equation that provides a confidence interval for future duration. A key takeaway is that a good first approximation of how long something will last is how long it has already lasted. This is also known as the Lindy Effect, suggesting that the future lifetime of non-perishable items is proportional to their past lifetime. Gott's approach emphasises objective statistics over trying to "untangle a complex underlying web of causes" or "human psychology".
Applied to industrial civilisation (a few centuries old in its current form), suggests a likely continuation for a similar period. This contrasts sharply with Lyon's dire prediction of "inevitable collapse”. Lyon's argument for a unique, unprecedented "downward" energy transition implicitly challenges Gott's assumption of non-privileged observation. If Lyon is correct, the current moment is unique because humanity (at least here in Europe) is attempting something physically untenable.
Lyon's "non-negotiable constraints imposed by physics and engineering" seem to clash with Gott's reliance on statistics that abstract away underlying causes. While Gott suggests that "anything not prohibited by the laws of physics will be achieved by humans given enough time", Lyon asserts that the proposed clean transition is prohibited by physics. This creates a direct contradiction. If Lyon's physical assessment is accurate, then Gott's statistical prediction (which assumes no physical prohibition on continuation in the current form) would not apply.
However, Tainter notes that "complex societies... are an anomaly of history" and "emerged comparatively recently". This could be interpreted through the Lindy Effect. If societies are so recent (a few millennia vs. hundreds of millennia of simpler human societies), then their predicted future lifetime might still be relatively short compared to older, more stable forms of social organisation. Therefore, Lyon's argument could be seen as identifying the mechanism by which this "anomaly" could rapidly revert to a more "normal human condition of lower complexity", providing a causal explanation for a potential abrupt end predicted by the Copernican Principle's lower bounds.
Additionally, we observe that many nations are not following our path. As I wrote recently in UK Climate Leadership: Are we leading everyone off a cliff?, where we are leading is probably not where others want to follow. The US has recently re-adopted a pragmatic, market led approach to energy that not only delivers cheap reliable energy but also shields it from geopolitical threats. As a result across most of the states their industrial electricity prices are a quarter of ours. China, India and Russia have no intention of following our lead and continue to grow their economies on the back of fossil fuel energy.
Therefore, it’s entirely possible to align Lyon’s negative outlook for the UK (and Europe more broadly) with Gott’s Copernican Principle understood in the context of Tainter’s ideas about simple vs. complex societies.
Conclusion
Lyon did not reference Gott or the Copernican Principle in his article, but I thought it could be in interesting way to test Lyon’s argument.
Lyon's "Iron Law of Energy Transition" finds substantial theoretical and historical backing in Tainter's work on the collapse of complex societies. Both highlight the critical role of energy in maintaining complexity, the inescapable reality of declining marginal returns on investment, and the vulnerability of societies when these costs become unsustainable.
Tainter's detailed analysis of historical collapses demonstrates the systemic pressures that arise when complexity outstrips its support, a process that mirrors Lyon's concerns about the energy quality and EROEI of proposed energy transitions.
However, Gott's Copernican Principle, offering a powerful statistical lens, presents a different perspective. It suggests that, statistically, current phenomena are likely to continue for a period proportional to their past duration, implying a degree of continuation. Lyon's argument for the "clean energy transition" being "physically unworkable" and a "dangerous fantasy" directly challenges this statistical expectation by positing a unique, physically constrained historical moment that could lead to an abrupt break in historical patterns.
The core of the debate lies in whether human ingenuity, as suggested by Gott, can truly overcome the "non-negotiable constraints" of physics and energy identified by Lyon, or if industrial civilisation, as Tainter's work implies, is currently experiencing declining marginal returns that will ultimately force a "downward" shift in complexity, with catastrophic consequences as predicted by Lyon.
For me, Lyon presents a compelling case, but I have always been impressed by Gott’s Copernican Principal. Reconciling these ideas seems to require an inevitable realignment of our current civilisational model. If this is the case, then the question is how widespread such a realignment would be given that Europe, and the UK in particular, seem hell bent on this doomed clean energy transition?
Therefore, Gott cannot save our society from Lyon’s collapse. Rather, the Copernican Principle implies that whatever society results from the collapse of our current modern one, it will be very different. In all likelihood, it will be much simpler and much poorer. It is also likely to be one subject to global conflict and the process of transitioning will be extraordinarily painful. The only hope appears to be that we halt this insane clean energy transition as soon as possible.
Wish us all luck!
Summary of EROEI Estimates
