The clinching shift in solar power will come when the battery storage is cheap enough and lasts long enough for users to draw down their suplus generated during the day to cover needs at night Photo: Reuters

The props beneath the global oil industry are slowly decaying. The big traded energy companies resemble the telecom giants of the late 1990s, heavily leveraged to a business model already threatened by fast-moving technology.

Citigroup warns – or cheerfully acclaims, depending on your point of view – that world energy markets are entering a period of “extreme flux”, with oil caught in triple encirclement by cheap natural gas, much more efficient vehicles and breathtaking advances in solar power as scientists crack the secrets.

The combined effect is to “bend” to the curve of global oil use over coming years, eroding the assumptions that have underpinned a […]