(LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-rotary-phones-smartphones-what-teaches-us-energy-benoit-marcoux-yaqme/)

Rotary phones were robust, lasted decades, needed no charging, and offered excellent sound quality. They cost little and rarely failed. By contrast, today’s smartphones are expensive, fragile, replaced every few years, and need daily recharging—yet deliver poorer sound quality during calls.

So why did the world switch?

Because smartphones do more.

They don’t just make calls—they connect us to work, maps, media, social networks, banking, photography, and entertainment. In short, the value they deliver goes far beyond the original function of telephony.

This is a key insight for the energy transition.

Yes, the old system was reliable and cheap. Fossil fuels are dense, dispatchable, and the infrastructure is mature. But like rotary phones, it’s a legacy system optimized for a past reality.

Clean electricity—solar panels, heat pumps, EVs, batteries—may seem costly, fragile, or less “plug-and-play” to some. But it opens the door to more value: cleaner air, energy independence, digital controls, decentralized resilience, long-term cost stability, and new services and industries.

The energy transition, like the telecom revolution, is not just a replacement. It’s an upgrade. And just as we didn’t adopt smartphones because they were cheaper or simpler, we won’t transition to clean energy just because it’s cheaper per kWh. We’ll do it because it’s better—in more ways that matter.