Cars, aviation, steel ... the stranded assets risk spreads far beyond fossil fuel firms | Andrew Simms

VW is paying the price of revelations that 'clean diesel' is as much a lie as 'clean coal' - in a low-carbon economy 100s of energy intensive industries will have to reinvent themselves or become similarly exposed

Imagine you invested heavily in glam rock silver spandex clothing just as punk music happened. You'd suddenly be left with a lot of shiny stuff you couldn't shift. It would be a 'stranded asset' - the victim of an unanticipated devaluation due to shifting fashion (though you might argue it was always a liability).

Increasingly, mainstream acceptance that money poured into fossil fuels risks becoming trapped in similarly stranded assets, raises the intriguing possibility that the logic might leak out and touch other parts of the economy which are heavily dependent on the same fossil fuels.