Energy economist Robert Bryce offers up the following sobering fact in his valuable Substack column. In the last 18 years, the world has spent $4.1 trillion force-feeding wind and solar power. That’s more money than the Gross Domestic Product of Germany, the world’s fourth-largest economy.

But the much ballyhooed “transition” from fossil fuels to wind and solar has been a bust and their growth has been eclipsed by the continued growth of hydrocarbons. In 2004, hydrocarbons provided 86% of the globe’s primary energy. Today, the share of hydrocarbons has only dropped to 82%. Wind and solar are 5%, and the rest is produced by hydro, nuclear, and biomass. In absolute terms, hydrocarbon use went up 3.4 times faster than wind and solar.

Gee, that’s some “energy transition” we’re experiencing.