Coal phases out in wealthier countries first More recently it's the oil and gas industry that's been under attack. Prices have tumbled and investments have started drying up. The number of oil rigs active in the U.S. fell last month to the lowest since records began in the 1940s. Producers—from tiny frontier drillers to massive petrol-producing nation-states—are creeping ever closer to insolvency.
"What we're talking about is miscalculation of risk," said BNEF's Liebreich. "We're talking about a business model that is predicated on never-ending growth, a business model that is predicated on being able to find unlimited supplies of capital."The chart below shows independent oil producers and their ability to pay their debt. The pink quadrant at the bottom right represents the greatest threat to a company's solvency. By 2015, that quadrant starts to fill up, and Liebreich warned, "It's going to get uglier." U.S. oil patch heads to the insolvency zone
Oil and gas woes are driven less by renewables than by a mismatch of too much supply and too little demand. But with renewable energy expanding at record rates and with more efficient cars—including all-electric vehicles—siphoning off oil profits at the margins, the fossil-fuel insolvency zone is only going to get more crowded, according to BNEF. Natural gas will still be needed for when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, but even that will change as utility-scale batteries grow cheaper. The best minds in energy keep underestimating what solar and wind can do. Since 2000, the International Energy Agency has raised its long-term solar forecast 14 times and its wind forecast five times. Every time global wind power doubles, there's a 19 percent drop in cost, according to BNEF, and every time solar power doubles, costs fall 24 percent.
And while BNEF says the shift to renewable energy isn't happening fast enough to avoid the catastrophic legacy of fossil-fuel dependence—climate change—it's definitely happening.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-06/wind-and-solar-are-crushing-fossil-fuels