Why energy transition is down but not out

• A "We Didn't Start the Fire"-style rundown would include: White House policy U-turns; some oil giants and banks pulling back; AI power demand; and other signs of a big reset, new pragmatism or whatever you label it.

Driving the news: Into this mix lands the latest sustainability report from Al Gore's Generation Investment Management.

• It takes the pulse of low-carbon energy growth and threats. "We will come out of this period having sustained damage to the cause of a cleaner future," it finds.

Yes, but: "The opponents of the energy transition can slow it down, but we do not believe they can stop it," it adds.

• It offers a tour through drivers like China's push to become an "electrostate" built on renewables, EVs and more — and keep exporting those technologies worldwide.
• But China, the world's largest polluter by far, also keeps building new coal plants, and its appetite for tougher climate policies is unclear.

Friction point: Gore told Axios that Trump is more "loaded for bear this time around" than in his initial term, four years that saw EV sales and renewables surge.

• "The factors that overcame his opposition to the transition in his first four years are even more powerful today," he said in an interview.
• He noted cost declines for renewables and batteries, and the report emphasizes that emissions growth — but plenty of clean tech action, too — is concentrated outside the U.S.
• "If you look at it on a global basis, we get a distortion field here in the U.S. now with Trump's jihad against the sustainability transition," Gore said.

The intrigue: The J.P. Morgan report explores how nations' geopolitical goals are creating a "new energy security age" of evolving allegiances.

• Think "new forms of infrastructure nationalism, resource weaponization, and partnerships shaped by technological and mineral interdependence."
• This mix is bullish for fossil fuel production and exports in some places — including the U.S.
• But some regions will use their "strategic national resource advantages" to boost competing tech and minerals, and curb reliance on fossil imports.

"Nations' economic futures hinge on how they play the natural resources hand they have been dealt — via policy, investment, and alliances — amid AI-driven demand spikes, conflict shocks, and access to capital," Derek Chollet, head of the JPMorganChase Center for Geopolitics, said in a statement.

Catch up quick: The bank's report adds to a trend.

• Multiple analysts say global upheavals — like trade wars and actual wars — may increasingly spur countries to replace some oil and gas imports with homegrown electrons.

The bottom line: "The risk is not that the transition won't succeed. We are going to prevail in this," Gore told Axios.

• Instead, he said, the risk is the slowdown that enables even more harm from climate change.