The world seems to be entering a new era, and one of the most important questions is what that will mean for energy. A brief summary: clean sources of energy are more abundant and cheaper than ever before. The number one clean-energy superpower (and, confusingly, also the largest carbon emitter) is China. However, the US president-elect is a climate denier who loves fossil fuels and is promising an anti-China trade war. To complicate that, he has adopted as his chief sidekick the world’s first clean-energy oligarch, Elon Musk. Given these ingredients, what’s the future for energy?

Before the US elections, I visited Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency in Paris. The IEA publishes the annual World Energy Outlook, considered the sector’s Bible. Birol told me that the “age of oil and gas” is gradually giving way to the “age of electricity”, largely powered by renewables and nuclear.

The IEA predicts that renewables, mostly solar, will account for four-fifths of all new power generation capacity through to 2030. Birol says countries are choosing renewables not to stop climate change. They’re doing it because renewables are now often cheaper than fossil fuels. Prices of most clean-energy technologies — solar, wind, lithium-ion batteries and battery storage — are around their lowest ever.