The date on the calendar changes every day – day by day, month by month. Yet we attach special significance to the change of the year. For a few days before New Year’s Eve, we indulge the illusion that the world will start to work differently simply because the old calendar has run out of pages and a new one has been put up. Let me say this clearly: it won’t. And certainly not in the energy sector.
For energy systems, the first of January is no different from the thirty-first of December. Electricity must flow just the same, voltage must stay within permissible limits, and there is no room for post-holiday sluggishness.
And yet, every year we try to draw energy into New Year rituals. “The new year will hit wallets.” “Major legal changes are coming.” “In 2026, the government is preparing an energy revolution.” And so on. We speak of breakthroughs, acceleration, dramatic shifts. This is sure to be the “decisive year.” As if the energy transition were a New Year’s resolution: starting on Monday, starting in January, this time for real. The problem is that the energy system does not believe in new beginnings. It is built on continuity.
The new year also exposes another illusion—that change is simply a matter of will. We would like the old problems to end with the fireworks: expensive fuels, underinvested grids, political indecision. But that is not how it works. Energy is not a sprint; it is a marathon—run at the edge of endurance, with no option to drop out. Every delay, every postponed decision, every poor last-minute compromise comes back – not in January, but when we least expect it.
This is why breakthroughs in energy rarely look spectacular. They do not begin with grand declarations, but with dull office meetings and small decisions taken years earlier. With projects that survive political change. With regulations that were not perfect, but were implemented consistently. The new year favors big words. Energy prefers small, systematic steps. Without enthusiasm, but without interruption.
There is a philosophical lesson in this. Energy reminds us that the future does not arrive suddenly or out of nowhere. In a sense, it accumulates. It is built quietly into everyday reality, beyond the headlines, against the prevailing mood. And that the worst thing one can do at the beginning of the year is to confuse hope with a plan.
Perhaps the best New Year’s resolution for energy is neither acceleration nor revolution. It may be acceptance of patience. Acceptance that real change has no single start date, does not fit into one calendar year, and does not end with a success to be tallied in December. In energy, there are no true new beginnings. There are only consequences.