THE END OF FOSSIL FUELS? UNDERSTANDING THE PARTIAL CLIMATISATION OF GLOBAL ENERGY DEBATES Stefan C. Aykut and Monica Castro To be published in: Stefan C. Aykut, Jean Foyer, Edouard Morena (Ed.) Globalising the climate: COP21 and the climatisation of global debates. London and New York, Routledge "If 150 nations are taking it seriously and setting targets, even if they don't make them, that will generate massive investment and a huge amount of private-sector activity […] And then you have to hope that somebody comes up with clean-energy technology, which makes it competitive with fossil fuel, and then, boom, you get your low-carbon economy." ‖ (John Kerry, US Secretary of State 1 ) Introduction Fossil fuels are at the heart of the climate problem. They account for over 80 % of global energy consumption, constitute the main source (~69 %) of global greenhouse gas emissions, and are responsible for about 78 % of emission increases in the first decade of this new century (IPCC 2014, 354). Thus, the Paris agreement objective of holding global warming to below 2 has radical implications for fossil fuel production. Recent analyses suggest that about 2/3 of known fossil fuel reserves would have to be left unexploited to have a fair chance of reaching that goal (McGlade et Ekins 2015). Unsurprisingly then, issues of fossil fuel production, trade and use are at the centre of climate debates: economists call for ―internalising‖ environmental costs associated with the combustion of fossil fuels, via (global) carbon taxes or carbon markets; civil society movements run campaigns against target fossil fuel industries and press governments to stop fossil fuel exploration and extraction; global organisations like the OECD, World Bank and G7 call for phasing out fossil subsidies; and an increasing number of national governments initiate policies to support energy production from renewable sources and transform energy systems toward more sustainable modes of production and consumption. In parallel, and partly as a consequence of such discussions,