Houston after 2040

When Daniel Yergin speaks, Houston would be wise to listen.

The vice chairman of the research firm IHS Markit and all-around guru of oil and gas won a Pulitzer for his book documenting the history of petroleum - "The Prize." Now he has a prediction about the future.

By 2040, the fossil fuel industry will lose its tight grip on the transportation industry.

Houston must start preparing now for a coming seismic shift in economic trends.

"This will be the biggest change in the auto ecosystem since the beginning of the 20th century," Yergin said ("Oil may lose auto market by 2040," Page A1, Tuesday).

Ride sharing, electric cars and new efficiency standards will cause global oil demand to plateau.

Today Houston sits at a nexus of energy trade. But what happens when the definition of energy shifts from oil and gas to batteries and renewables? The same thing that happens to any business when people stop buying their products. The change won't occur overnight, but a hazy vision of our energy destiny is coming into focus.

In this week alone:

Tesla released an all-electric big rig truck - the Tesla semi. Walmart has already placed 15 preorders even though production isn't slated to begin until 2019.

The Norwegian Central Bank recommended that the nation's $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund divest all holdings in international petroleum companies.

"It's very significant symbolically because it sends a signal that even the people who make money from oil and gas are coming up with divestment plans," Michael Webber, deputy director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, told the New York Times. "The Norwegian view is that oil has had a good run and will have a good run for a couple of decades but it's not the only future that is out there."

The United Nations concluded its climate conference in Bonn, Germany, where every nation on the globe except the United States affirmed support for the Paris accord.

With each passing day, private companies and national governments are all moving closer to a future where Houston's role in the world becomes an afterthought. The year 2040 may seem far off in the distance, but soon enough we're going to pass a turning point that our city won't be able to ignore. And like any big change, things will happen slowly, then all at once.

In "The Prize," Yergin points to the moment when Winston Churchill transitioned the British navy from coal to oil as the tipping point in humanity's reliance on petroleum.

"Mastery itself was the prize of the venture," Churchill said, referencing all the strategic benefits of an oil-based navy.

It isn't hard to imagine some command-and-control structure, like the Chinese government or Wal-Mart management, one day deciding to untether itself from the entangling global ties of our oil and gas economy and totally embrace a new model of electric vehicles and renewable power.

If Houston wants to survive and thrive beyond 2040, we must start carving for ourselves an economic niche that doesn't rely on an oil boom. The city will have to invest in education, strengthen connections with global markets and build resilience into our municipal soul. But like Churchill said, mastery itself will be the prize of the venture.