TT#3: How the “mid-transition” calls us to action

One of my favorite ways of understanding what needs to be done to for the energy transition to succeed is to think about it through the lens of the “mid-transition.”

To the best of my knowledge, the concept originated with a seminal 2022 paper on the subject written by Emily Grubert of the University of Notre Dame and her co-author Sara Hastings-Simon of the University of Calgary. They used the concept of the “mid-transition” to describe the problem space in which the new, clean, electric energy system struggles to take market share away from the old, dirty, fossil-fueled incumbent system. It’s a struggle for both systems because the “electrotech” systems need the old “petrotech” systems to get out of the way, even while many other systems and customers of it still depend on it. (And if the “electrotech” vs. “petrotech” framing isn’t familiar you to, you might want to check out Energy Transition Show Episode #267 – Japan: Petrostate or Electrostate? with former IEA Director Nobuo Tanaka.)

The mid-transition is a critical concept that ought to be put front and center of every conversation and every conference about the energy transition, because it describes where the proverbial rubber meets the road. It illuminates where the real challenges of the transition are, as well as the specific actors who are either fomenting the transition or opposing it.

Over the past five years, Emily has made several appearances on the Energy Transition Show to explore some of the challenges of the mid-transition at length:

·      In Episode 140 (before the “mid-transition” term was introduced), she discussed how to manage the intermediate period where natural gas distribution systems need to be maintained even as loads transition off gas and onto the electricity grid.

·      In Episode 145, on the Texas blackout of 2021, she detailed some of the unseen interdependencies and unexamined assumptions about the interplay between the gas and electricity systems in Texas, and how those assumptions and interdependencies broke down.

·      In Episode 185, the mid-transition itself was the focus, after Emily and Sara published their paper on the subject.

·      In Episode 252, Emily’s post-doc Josh Lappen joined in to discuss the specific issue of the UK’s last blast furnace at the Scunthorpe plant nearly being shut down in 2025, forcing the UK government to deploy the military to keep it operating. It was a classic mid-transition case: How can a country replace a critical technology like blast furnaces with a low-carbon alternative while preserving national security and jobs?

The Scunthorpe plant suddenly cropped up again this week, a year after the UK government took over operation (but not ownership) of it. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who’s been under fire not just by the opposition parties but by significant number of ministers in his own Labour party after they lost almost 1,500 councillors in local elections across England last week, apparently thought that calling for legislation to nationalize the Scunthorpe plant would shore up his position politically, saying “Strong nations in a world like this need to make steel.” After the hostile stance that President Trump has taken by applying tariffs on the United States’ longtime trade partners, it’s hard to criticize any nation for seeing fit to be prepared to meet more of its own manufacturing needs.

Just recently, on May 7, Emily joined Akshat Rathi on his Zero podcast, reviewing all of the above issues through the mid-transition lens. The main topic at hand there was whether the Iran war might accelerate the energy transition, a topic we explored here as well in the previous issue of Transition Times.

As more countries try to figure out how to transition their own energy systems off of burning fossil fuels and onto the power grid, they’re going to find themselves smack dab in the middle their own mid-transition challenges, so this is a timely and useful way to look at how they’ll respond not only to the pressures of the lost oil and gas from the Persian Gulf and the many consequences that ripple out from the strait’s blockade, but to the energy transition in general.

Which is why I was particularly pleased to see a new report on Portugal from the International Energy Agency (IEA) published May 8, 2026. The Portugal 2026 Energy Policy Review, led and authored by Peter Journeay-Kaler, is focused on “Energy Security in the Mid-transition.” The report was developed through extensive engagement with governments, regulators, system operators, industry, and civil society in Portugal and designed to provide practical recommendations that can support real-world energy policy, regulatory, and market reforms.

As Journeay-Kaler explained on LinkedIn:

Portugal is entering a phase of the energy transition that requires managing two interconnected energy systems moving in opposite directions:

• a clean energy system based on renewables and electrification that must scale rapidly

• and a legacy fossil fuel system that must decline in an orderly way while avoiding price shocks and stranded assets

This is becoming especially visible in the electricity sector. Gas-fired generation is declining rapidly, and delivering energy security, emissions reductions, and affordability increasingly depends on distributed renewable generation and non-fossil flexibility solutions.

Managing this transition successfully will require accelerating economy-wide electrification coupled with grid planning, storage deployment, market reform, and consumer participation.

One hopes that every government in the world will be engaging in similar analyses in order to understand exactly what needs to be done in their countries to ensure the energy transition is a success, and not unduly burdened by the legacy systems of its past.

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