Engie

Engie added 4.2 GW of renewable capacity in 2024, bringing total installed renewables to 46 GW—43% of generation capacity, up from 41% the prior year. The €73.8 billion energy company demonstrates metabolic switching at industrial scale: progressively shutting down gas-fired plants (lower utilization rates in 2024) while scaling solar, wind, and battery storage (5+ GW storage operational or under construction). This isn't fuel diversification. It's organism-level reprogramming of energy metabolism from carbon-intensive substrate toward renewable substrate as environmental conditions (carbon pricing, regulatory mandates, technology costs) make the old pathway economically unviable.

The phase transition shows in financial results. Renewable EBIT reached €2.2 billion in 2024, up 7.3%, while gas-fired generation contributed less as plants shifted from baseload to peaking capacity—running only during demand spikes rather than continuously. The organism isn't abandoning gas infrastructure. It's converting gas plants from primary metabolism (constant operation) into backup metabolism (activated during stress). This mirrors how brown fat functions in mammals: dormant during normal conditions, activated rapidly when external temperature drops below survivable thresholds. The Combined Cycle Gas Turbine fleet becomes Engie's metabolic insurance—costly to maintain but essential for grid stability during renewable intermittency.

The 7 GW annual renewable capacity addition target from 2025 onward reveals accelerating phase transition velocity. At current rates, renewables will dominate Engie's generation portfolio by 2027-2028, relegating fossil fuel assets to backup status rather than core business. The €10 billion total capex in 2024, with 84% allocated to renewables and energy solutions, quantifies resource reallocation: capital flows toward high-growth, regulation-favored pathways (renewables, storage, hydrogen) while legacy pathways (gas, coal) receive maintenance investment only. This is autophagy of business units—the parent organism harvests cash flows from declining divisions to fund growth in emerging divisions.

The Belgian nuclear extension (Tihange 3 and Doel 4 for 10 years) represents pragmatic metabolic reality. Renewables provide energy but not dispatchable capacity—solar generates during sunny days, wind during storms, but neither produces on demand. Nuclear provides constant baseload that batteries and gas can't yet economically replace at required scale. The organism maintains multiple metabolic pathways simultaneously because no single pathway satisfies all constraints. Engie's 55% reduction in GHG emissions since 2017 (to 48 million tonnes in 2024) proves the transition is real, but the retention of gas and nuclear infrastructure proves the transition isn't complete—organisms don't abandon old metabolic pathways until new pathways reliably supply required energy under all environmental conditions.