EXCLUSIVE: “The Great Power Shift” - Inside the biggest campaign in a generation to end fossil fuel dependence

There are campaigns that do more than ask for attention. Ones that can change a whole economy, for the better.

Leading NGO, 350.org, just launched today, one of these historic campaigns: The Great Power Shift. And it does so, at a rare point in history: the technologies needed to move beyond fossil fuels are finally available for everyone. Their cost is now lower than polluting alternatives. Even more strikingly, the risks of the status quo have become self-evident, to all. In other words, today’s case for change is no longer only moral or environmental. It is economic. It is social. It is painfully practical.

The merit of this campaign lies not only in its rhetoric or timing, but also in its grounded research. For the first time, the bill is being counted. And the math speaks for itself.

A war thousands of kilometres away [in Iran] now appears inside every family budget. Oil moves, gas moves, electricity moves, transported goods move, food moves. The shock does not stay in the energy sector. It travels through petrol prices, heating bills, cooling costs, transport, fertilizers, shipping, refrigeration and packaging. Families do not pay once. They pay again and again.

They pay directly, through higher electricity, fuel and heating bills. They pay indirectly, when groceries, public transport and everyday goods become more expensive. 

They pay again when governments step in to cushion consumers from fossil fuel shocks… by financing fossil fuels themselves. Public money is indeed used to make fossil fuels look cheaper than they are: through price caps on petrol and gas, tax breaks for drilling and production, and public guarantees for new oil projects. The mechanism changes. The result does not. The true cost of oil is shifted from producers to citizens, through higher taxes, deeper public debt and weaker public services, as money that could fund schools, hospitals or infrastructure is routed back into fossil fuels.

And then, once again, citizens pay again, less visibly but no less painfully: through health systems strained by polluted air, contaminated water and oil-derived microplastics; through higher health insurance premiums; and through home insurance bills that rise as (fossil-fuel-driven) climate risks, from floods and fires to droughts and storms, become harder to ignore.

This is the curse of fossil fuel dependence. It is sold as cheap, but it keeps sending the invoice.

The world increasingly resembles a sick man who visits the doctor and asks not to be cured, but to have his pain prolonged. He asks for another subsidy, another emergency measure, another temporary relief package. He wants the fever lowered, but not the infection treated. And so the illness continues. The patient survives the day and weakens for tomorrow.

That is the central insight of 350.org’s campaign: fossil fuels are not only warming the planet. They are making life more expensive for us all.

While governments debate (with incredible striking short-sightedness, or worse, under the barely disguised influence of oil lobbyists) more fossil fuel subsidies, households are already absorbing the pain.

This very week, another fact should stop us cold: oil majors are reporting record profits from the same instability that pushes costs onto citizens, and from a system that still uses public money to support the fuels driving pollution, household insecurity, climate disaster, economic dependence, and systemic risk.

TotalEnergies, for example, reported sharply higher first-quarter earnings in 2026 amid war-driven oil price increases, with Le Monde reporting a 51% rise in net profit. People pay the costs, while polluters collect the gains.

The public had already paid before the latest crisis arrived. OECD and IEA data show that global support for fossil fuels remained at $916.3 billion in 2024 (compared to $807b for all renewable energies!). Public money is being used to protect people from shocks created by the very fossil fuel system that public money continues to sustain.

And the deeper bill is only now coming into view. According to a figure newly surfaced in the report, households carry an additional $12 trillion a year in hidden fossil fuel costs, composed of government subsidies, health impacts and climate damages. That is roughly $1,400 of hidden fuel costs for every person on the planet, every year.

This is why the campaign’s first demand, to stop funding the problem, is not only a climate demand. It is an affordability demand.

Every dollar spent prolonging fossil fuel dependence is not only a dollar that is not spent on cleaner energy, public transport, energy storage, heat pumps, solar rooftops or communities. But is indeed directly spent on keeping the exact system alive that keeps households exposed to the next price shock, the next war, the next supply disruption, the next emergency budget.

The second demand, to make polluters pay, is just as much about household economics as climate justice. During fossil fuel shocks, why ordinary people face higher bills while oil and gas companies (often government-owned and regulated) can benefit from higher prices? Windfall taxes, the report argues, are therefore not a punishment or symbolism, but rather they are a way to redirect crisis-induced profits towards people actually facing the crisis costs.

The third demand is to build energy that works for everyone. Here, the economics have already changed. IRENA found that more than 90% of new renewable capacity in 2024 already delivered power at a lower cost than the cheapest new fossil fuel alternative, and the green energy cost advantage is only increasing amid rising oil prices and always-cheaper renewables. 

The Great Power Shift is more than a slogan. It is an historic chance to rethink energy and money. It is a call to stop using public funds to extend the life of a system that makes households poorer, governments weaker and the planet less stable. It is a call to make those who profit from crisis contribute to its costs. And it is a call to build clean energy systems that put power back in people’s hands.

The question is no longer whether the world can afford to move beyond fossil fuels. It is how much longer we can afford not to. If this campaign succeeds in making that simple truth impossible to miss, it may do more than change minds. It may help change the economy, for good.

Read the full 350.org report here: https://350.org/the-great-power-shift/