It's true. In the 1990s, I'd cover coal conferences and watch delegates head in droves for the foyer whenever an environmental speaker came on.

When the protest group Rising Tide was formed in 2004, arguments were raised against covering their statements because doing so only legitimised "extreme" views.

The fossil fuel industries largely ignored the drumbeats - or thought they could - until the climate activists went to work on the banks, which began refusing finance to coal companies.

IN THE NEWS:

The World Bank headed the shift in 2013, followed by a few big insurers, and by 2018 the doors of the commercial world were slamming shut in earnest.

In the Australian power market, coal-fired stations are increasingly outbid in daytime by wind and solar suppliers.

Even though coal is often needed to keep the grid going at night, the overall lack of profitability means the Hunter's big coal-fired power stations are on death row, or heading that way.

Because 80 per cent or so of our coal is exported, things are not as bad in the mines, but the traffic is all one way.

The Power and the Passion series will examine our energy transition from every angle, and we will do what we can to promote the region's view as a whole.

My first five years after school were spent working for the Electricity Commission, and I always felt that experience helped me in my early days writing about coal and industry for the Herald.

For starters, it gave me a practical grounding in the mechanics of power supply, and an appreciation of how much energy is involved when politicians and boosters talk about adding gigawatts of capacity as though it can all be achieved with the wave of a wand.

But those years spent crawling around power stations and switchyards with a tool bag probably helped instil a bias toward baseload power over the mix-and-match grab-bag of power and storage sources intended as replacements for the Erarings and Liddells and Bayswaters of the world.

I know I don't miss having to scrub coal dust out of the pores of my skin, and deep down I know that digging great holes in the ground comes with its costs.

But I am also leery of the optimistic predictions of grid regulators and government advisers who warn of looming pinch points in one breath, but say they are confident the grid will handle the removal of coal-fired power stations with the next.

The doubts I did have about the ability of solar and wind to do the job when the conditions are right have long gone.

Yes, solar farms will need to be kept clean and wind turbines will need maintaining, but so do coal-fired power stations, and constantly.

But at the risk of repeating myself, if South Australia's "Big Battery" stores enough power to run Tomago aluminium smelter for eight to 12 minutes, then it's an enormous storage task simply to get a renewably powered grid through a single night.

Solve the storage problem and I'll shut up.

But I can't see it fixed with the current levels of battery technology, and at a cost that will not force household and industrial power prices through the roof.

And if electric cars are to replace internal combustion engines, we may need twice as much electricity as now, and massive transmission upgrades because household fast charging will probably require three-phase power (415 volts) at home instead of the usual single-phase 240 volts.

More broadly - and readers will set me straight if I'm wrong - it seems to me that if the world walks away from coal it will be the first time in history we've stopped using a resource before it was exhausted.

OK, we've wound back dramatically on asbestos for health reasons, but it's still being bought and sold in poorer countries.

I'm over-simplifying, but England only really began serious coal mining in the 1500s as the massive forests it had cut to down to keep warm and to build ships were all but exhausted.

Those famous "green fields" weren't there originally.

Now, with the United Nations driving national governments towards "net zero emissions by 2050", the coal mines will dwindle, but skyrocketing demand for lithium, cobalt, copper and rare earths is already driving a new era of mining with its own set of environmental consequences.

Ditto for "transitional" gas.

There's a reliable zero-emissions answer to all these issues, but it starts with N and has a waste problem I don't like.

But if we can't burn coal and the renewables drive falters - for starters, the far-off dream of "green hydrogen" will require even more power on top of electric cars - then Australia may face a choice between going nuclear and living like hippies.

Or meerkats. But unlike the insurance ads, it won't be "simples".

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: