[HN Gopher] Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce f...
___________________________________________________________________
Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel
dependence
Author : geox
Score : 262 points
Date : 2026-03-19 11:15 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| Yeah, I live in Spain and probably once again we'll have
| restrictions on AC in the summer just like at the start of the
| Ukraine war. Hopefully, we can avoid actual blackouts.
|
| The bizarre thing is that our government still wants to close
| down the remaining nuclear power plants. One of the issues with
| our proportional electoral system is that smaller, more extreme
| parties can become kingmakers and in our current situation the
| centre-left governing party relies on the support of the far-left
| party to stay in power, and those guys are rabidly anti-nuclear
| power.
|
| But this should be a clear signal that we need renewable power
| and nuclear power and we need to speed up the adoption of
| electric vehicles. Ending the tariffs with China that stop us
| benefiting from their affordable PV panels and electric cars
| would be a good step towards this.
| DaedalusII wrote:
| what do you think of theory that denuclearisation movement in
| west europe was funded by CCCP? it makes sense to think
| CCCP/Putin would finance subversive movements to remove nuclear
| and coal and make the region dependent on russian energy
| exports
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| I think some of them are definitely funded by them, there was
| an article about it I saw:
| https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russia-funding-
| europe...
|
| They fund other stuff that weakens and divides Europe too
| like the separatist movements in Scotland, Catalonia etc.
|
| That's not to say that all the people in these movements are
| Russian agents or that these groups don't have some good
| points and legitimate grievances, but nonetheless they are an
| easy, cost-effective way for Russia to attack us.
| miohtama wrote:
| Related the children book from Germany
| https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20221101-the-cloud-
| the-n...
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| Of all the silly things I've seen Europe do over the last 20
| years, getting rid of nuclear plants has to be one of the
| strangest. Sure, we all want solar but it's not there yet.
| Hidden forces here would not be a surprise.
| ipython wrote:
| Well, lets not forget that Europe was downwind of the worst
| nuclear accident in world history. https://radioactivity.eu
| .com/articles/nuclearenergy/chernoby...
|
| That sort of event doesn't fade away quickly and definitely
| influenced energy policy that persists to this day.
| Thankfully the tide is turning due to safer designs.
| pydry wrote:
| An absurd conspiracy theory.
|
| Nuclear power has an LCOE that is 5x the cost of solar and
| wind. _Nobody_ would build it on cost alone.
|
| The only reason countries build and run nuclear power plants
| is because it shares supply chain and a skills base with the
| nuclear military.
|
| Which means they have nukes (France, Russia, US) or they they
| want to take out an option to one day build a nuke in a hurry
| just in case for a threat that is usually very obvious
| (Sweden, Japan, South Korea).
|
| This was clearly recognized when Iran started building
| nuclear power plants but when Poland _suddenly_ got
| interested in 2023 ostensibly "because environment" after
| decades of burning mountains of coal nobody batted an eye.
| mono442 wrote:
| Solar and wind are intermittent. Grid scale energy storage
| is not even a thing yet.
| defrost wrote:
| https://reneweconomy.com.au/big-battery-storage-map-of-
| austr...
| mono442 wrote:
| That's not much. Projects listed there can't store energy
| for winter needs.
| defrost wrote:
| Ahhhhhhh . . . it's Australia.
|
| Winters here have more sunshine than UK summers.
| triceratops wrote:
| It's windy and sunny in the winter too.
| pydry wrote:
| Neither could French nuclear plants when they were turned
| off for weeks at a time for emergency maintenance.
|
| So, France fired up the gas.
|
| 5x cheaper electricity, on the other hand, makes power-
| to-gas economic, which can smooth out seasonal variations
| in a carbon neutral way.
| modo_mario wrote:
| Isn't power to gas still ridiculously inneficient?
|
| Last I checked it seemed like something pushed by gas
| companies since it upholds gas infrastructure and most of
| the intermittence is currently supported by gas.
| pydry wrote:
| It's very costly compared to normal gas but it's still
| marginally cheaper to use solar and roundtrip p2g to use
| on a cold, windless night than it is to use nuclear power
| produced on any day of the year.
|
| There's just zero economic incentive while polluting gas
| is dirt cheap and maxxed out solar and wind rarely even
| covers 100% of current electricity demand.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| This data is a year old now:
| https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-solar-storage-
| spring-2025/
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > when Poland suddenly got interested in 2023 ostensibly
| "because environment" after decades of burning mountains of
| coal nobody batted an eye.
|
| Polish discussion about nuclear energy has always been
| openly tied to national security and energy independence,
| given its/Europe's reliance on Russian energy exports.
| Especially given its northern geography, nuclear is better
| for base load stability. (The environmental is also
| important, and strides have been made to reduce emissions.)
|
| Of course, there has also been discussion in Poland about
| nuclear sharing or even seeking to acquire/build nuclear
| weapons itself, also openly, but I don't think anyone is
| actually pursuing this in earnest.
| jmclnx wrote:
| > The bizarre thing is that our government still wants to close
| down the remaining nuclear power plants.
|
| That is very weird, even Germany stated recently that closing
| down their Nuclear Plants was a big mistake.
|
| For a very long time, I have always said France is smarter than
| what people give them credit for. Spain should take a peek over
| the mountains at France to see what a sane energy policy looks
| like.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| Even France shut down the Superphenix. It was just built too!
| A waste of ten billion dollars because the government gave in
| to these extremist environmental groups. One of them even
| fired an RPG at it while it was being built.
| kuerbel wrote:
| ... it was shut down in 1998, relevant section from German
| Wikipedia as the English version is lacking details:
|
| In June 1997, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin announced the
| closure of the power plant as one of his first official
| acts. He justified this step by pointing to the enormous
| costs the plant incurred. In the preceding ten years, it
| had produced no electricity for most of the time due to
| malfunctions. It even consumed considerable amounts of
| electricity to keep the sodium in the cooling system above
| its melting temperature. Each pipe carrying sodium and
| every tank was equipped with heaters and thermal insulation
| for this purpose.
|
| ... so it used a lot of energy while being shut down
| because of malfunctions for most of those 10 years. Seems
| like shutting it down was the best course of action.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| It had problems but it was new technology. That's always
| the case. Now only China, Russia and India have Fast
| Breeder Reactors.
|
| Plus there was the pressure from Les Verts and Sortir du
| nucleaire, the Molotov cocktail attacks by the Federation
| Anarchiste, the RPG attack by the Cellules Communistes
| Combattantes etc.
|
| It was a highly political decision.
| clydethefrog wrote:
| Strange how there are so many progressive radical groups
| and somehow the anti-nuclear activists are the only ones
| that manage to change the energy agenda in favour of the
| very powerful lobby of the fossil fuels. The animal
| activists never changed the subsidies to animal
| agriculture, the activists for international causes like
| Palestine haven't managed much either.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > For a very long time, I have always said France is smarter
| than what people give them credit for. Spain should take a
| peek over the mountains at France to see what a sane energy
| policy looks like.
|
| Incidentally, if I remember correctly, one of the causes (or
| things that made it worse) of the almost day-long blackout we
| (Spain) had last year was because France disconnected one of
| the links to Spain without notifying us properly.
| kdheiwns wrote:
| A lot of people thought France was just being arrogant for
| not going all in on becoming dependent on the US and
| maintaining their own ways of doing things. These past few
| years, it's been paying off for them. Hopefully other
| countries will wisen up and not allow their defense and
| entire economy to be dependent on the US or any other big
| country. It always comes back to bite them in the ass. The
| post WW2 decades were unusually stable and assuming it'll be
| that way forever is not wise.
| bluGill wrote:
| You can't do everything, and the smaller your country the
| less you can do. France isn't doing other things because of
| the opportunity cost.
|
| Of course the EU is bigger than the US and there is value
| in duplicated/distributed effort. The EU as a whole should
| be thinking "partner with everyone, but have our fingers in
| every single pot someplace just in case".
| kuerbel wrote:
| No, we did not. Katharina Reiche and that guy from Bavaria
| are certainly not "Germany" or the majority of Germans. No
| atom reactor is going to be built, it's just typical rhetoric
| from both of them.
|
| Not even the major energy suppliers are interested in
| building new nuclear reactors.
|
| I was not against prolonging the phase out for a bit, but we
| don't even have a permanent storage solution after all this
| time.
|
| They aren't even compatible with climate change:
| https://www.euronews.com/2025/07/02/france-and-
| switzerland-s...
| blackguardx wrote:
| You don't need rivers for nuclear reactor cooling, they are
| just very convenient.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| > even Germany stated recently that closing down their
| Nuclear Plants was a big mistake
|
| Well that's because we have a new government, CDU was always
| in favor of nuclear power.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| in the election that is running in Denmark right now it looks
| like nuclear power is back on the table.
| tfourb wrote:
| Why would you invest in nuclear power, which is several times
| more expensive per kwh than wind + battery in Denmark, which
| also has excellent links to reliable hydropower from Norway
| and Sweden? Especially when your greatest external security
| threat is Russia which has openly threatened targeting
| nuclear reactors of a country they are trying to invade?
|
| Not to speak of the inconvenient fact that Uranium is not a
| resource found in sufficient quantity in Europe and current
| European nuclear reactors get their fuel from Russia and
| Niger, not exactly reliable havens of stability.
|
| Nuclear power makes certain sense for nations that want a
| military nuclear arsenal and are willing to subsidize nuclear
| reactors to retain the required workforce and research base.
| For everyone else it is a money sink and a complication when
| designing their grid for renewable energy.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Why would you invest in nuclear power, which is several
| times more expensive per kwh_
|
| Because the related lobby pays well and a huge power
| station project (which runs well into the tens of billions)
| has much larger space for bribes
| crimsoneer wrote:
| Alternatively, because nuclear power still works at
| night.
| coldtea wrote:
| If only we had some way to store energy
| mrmlz wrote:
| At scale.
| tfourb wrote:
| You mean like 27 Gwh of yearly installed capacity kind of
| scale? https://www.solarpowereurope.org/press-
| releases/new-report-e...
| mrmlz wrote:
| As a Swede i'd like to cut the cord to Denmark/Germany.
| That would greatly reduce our electricity costs in
| south/mid Sweden.
|
| Let them enjoy their "cheap" wind and battery solution.
| tfourb wrote:
| You export more to Norway + Finnland than to Denmark +
| Germany: https://www.scb.se/en/finding-
| statistics/statistics-by-subje...
|
| And my guess would be that it would be much more
| expensive for you to build out (and hold in reserve)
| enough generation capacity to satisfy your theoretical
| peak demand than it costs to have interconnected grids
| and a large efficient market, even if you are a net
| exporter.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Why would you
|
| I am unfortunately not the one empowered to make these
| decisions, nor do I know the reasoning of those who are, I
| just noted it seems back on the table based on discussions,
| maybe because
|
| >Nuclear power makes certain sense for nations that want a
| military nuclear arsenal and are willing to subsidize
| nuclear reactors
|
| since also on the table seems to be making a deal with
| France for Nuclear Weapons access, as I understand what I
| read.
| dncornholio wrote:
| Wind + Battery doesn't exist. Wind and solar renewables are
| dependent on natural gas plants at this moment. This is why
| nuclear is still a consideration, it's more "green" then
| most "green" energy.
| toraway wrote:
| By that definition, nuclear is also "dependent on natural
| gas" because it's a baseload power source that can't
| dynamically follow demand.
| tfourb wrote:
| Wind and solar are not "dependent" on natural gas plants.
| You can observe this quite well by simply building a wind
| or solar plant, connect a battery and a load. It works
| and it works well.
|
| Many national grids do not have enough renewable
| generation capacity to satisfy 100% demand at all times
| yet. When renewable generation is not sufficient, the
| difference is made up with generation from fossil-fueled
| thermal plants. But the existence of thermal power plants
| shouldn't be confused with any form of technical reliance
| on them. 100% renewable grids are inherently possible. If
| only, because you can simply enlarge grids geographically
| to the point that wind and solar production averages out.
| In combination with planned overcapacity (you can simply
| "switch off" wind and solar if you don't need
| generation), you strictly speaking don't even need
| batteries. It's just much more economical.
| modo_mario wrote:
| >Many national grids do not have enough renewable
| generation capacity to satisfy 100% demand at all times
| yet.
|
| When will it make sense for many countries? Because the
| difference between peak production and a winter dip for
| germany in let's say Berlin is enormous.
| tfourb wrote:
| First of all there is no alternative that makes sense.
| Climate change is real and its consequences are more
| expensive and catastrophic than any trade-offs we'll have
| to make for a 100% renewable grid.
|
| The good news is that going 100% renewable is probably
| less onerous than most people expect. If we get our act
| together politically, we can easily build the grids,
| generation, storage and intelligent loads required. With
| the exception of a few industrial processes, the
| technology is already existing and economically viable,
| but it also gets better and cheaper every year.
|
| I never get why people are so opposed to renewables. In
| the past (and apparently present), we have spent
| multiples of what we'd need for 100% renewables on stupid
| wars. Now we could transform our economy with dramatic
| positive consequences even if we ignore climate change
| completely (think air quality and corresponding public
| health concerns, as well as political risks associated
| with fossil fuels).
|
| It will be one of the breakthrough developments of human
| civilization and unlock tremendous potential, but people
| are concerned with the aesthetics of windmills and
| bickering about minor subsidies, while there is literally
| an economic crisis going on because some ships with
| liquified dinosaurs on boats can't get to their
| destination on time ...
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Why would you invest in nuclear power, which is several
| times more expensive per kwh than wind + battery in Denmark
|
| Strategic mix.
|
| I'm not saying its a good or bad idea, but nuclear can be
| used as a tool with batteries to make wind much more
| reliable. urianium sourcing can be an issue, but sadly so
| are batteries. (granted nuclear fuel is changed more often)
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Nuclear is a strategic _drone target_ first and foremost.
| It 's harder to take out renewables and batteries because
| they are more distributed.
| tfourb wrote:
| > Strategic mix
|
| Nuclear doesn't vibe well with a grid that is supposed to
| be dominated by renewable electricity generation. You
| can't simply increase or decrease nuclear generation and
| even if you could, it would make the economics even
| worse, if you wouldn't keep their utilization at maximum
| capacity.
|
| So if nuclear is supposed to have a "strategic" effect on
| your electricity mix, you have a substantial (20-40%)
| block of your electricity generation that is essentially
| static. That in turn requires you to have static demand.
| But static demand is poison for a renewable generation.
| You actually want demand to be highly dynamic via grid-
| tied batteries and dynamic loads (i.e. electric car
| charging, scheduled appliances and heating, cost-
| dependent production) so that it can be tailored to
| supply and keep the grid stable.
|
| > I'm not saying its a good or bad idea, but nuclear can
| be used as a tool with batteries to make wind much more
| reliable.
|
| I doubt that this is a requirement for Denmark. There is
| tremendous hydro capacity in northern Scandinavia and the
| country is tied into the EU and UK grid.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > You can't simply increase or decrease nuclear
| generation and even if you could, it would make the
| economics even worse, if you wouldn't keep their
| utilization at maximum capacity.
|
| you totally can, and for keeping the grid stable, they
| are absolutely grand.
|
| But to your point, pan continental links are not that
| practical for making up ~30% of a country's peak demand.
|
| > you have a substantial (20-40%) block of your
| electricity generation that is essentially static. That
| in turn requires you to have static demand.
|
| If you look at the grid on aggregate, there is always a
| static demand. If you look at https://grid.iamkate.com/
| you'll see the variance in use is 30% over 24 hours.
|
| For denmark (and the UK) wind is a great source of power,
| but its not always there, even at grid level. Currently
| the UK uses gas to bridge that demand. The UK is rolling
| out batteries, and thats going to help with price in the
| peaks. (currently most of them are used to stabilise
| rather than "peaking") But _currently_ battery capacity
| is only really measured in hours. Ideally we'll be
| measuring capacity in weeks. The hard part there is
| pricing reserve capacity, especially as it leaks.
|
| Now, where nuclear comes in, is allowing the grid to
| arbitrage night time production from nuclear, into peak
| demand or, when wind is short. (in addition to
| bridging/stabilising) This gives a country more options
| to
|
| We will see something like this bridging capacity in
| spain in the next few years. They have a much less well
| developed battery grid, but have more sun so the
| generation is a bit more predictable day to day. The
| problem spain needs to overcome is the morning and
| evening peaks. From memory its something like 1-2
| gigawatts (but it could be more.)
| tfourb wrote:
| > The problem spain needs to overcome is the morning and
| evening peaks. From memory it's something like 1-2
| gigawatts (but it could be more.)
|
| The EU has collectively added 27 Gwh of battery capacity
| in 2025 alone. If Spain only needs anything close to 2 GW
| of load for around 2 hours in the morning and evening
| each, this seems to be inherently achievable.
|
| > you totally can, and for keeping the grid stable, they
| are absolutely grand.
|
| Nuclear plants can load follow at about 5% of their rated
| capacity per minute. This is glacial in the world of
| electricity.
|
| At the moment, this would theoretically work, because you
| have gas peaker plants that can adjust much faster and
| pick up the slack while nuclear plants come up (or down)
| to speed.
|
| But countries like Spain and Denmark want to have a 100%
| renewable grid within two decades (much shorter than the
| typical lifetime of a nuclear reactor). So gas peaker
| plants are increasingly not an option.
|
| The reality of the grid at that point will be a lot of
| wind and PV capacity (because it is dirt cheap). Nuclear
| is not compatible with those on its own, because a cloud
| passing over a large PV installation will drop power much
| quicker than nuclear will be able to follow.
|
| Of course you can build a ton of batteries to act as a
| buffer. And guess what, that's exactly what we are doing
| right now. But at that point, why do we need nuclear
| again? Simply building batteries is already much cheaper
| than building a substantial nuclear generation capacity
| and while batteries will continue to become cheaper while
| nuclear won't.
|
| Also, if you require new nuclear plants to load follow on
| a regular basis, it completely destroys the already bad
| economics of the technology. You need to run those at
| capacity continuously to make even remotely sense.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Nuclear plants can load follow at about 5% of their
| rated capacity per minute. This is glacial in the world
| of electricity.
|
| which is why batteries are really great. We have couple
| of batteries that are 180 and 300gwh, which can turn on
| frighteningly quick. The iberian market is really young
| at the moment for batteries, they have a way to go before
| batteries make a dent in prices (which is great for us)
|
| The spanish grid has about 16% nuclear:
| https://www.ree.es/en/datos/todate Now spain's grid
| usually has a whole bunch of solar sites in curtailment,
| which means they can turn on power fairly quickly. Which
| is where batteries come in, as the curtailment could be
| flowing into batteries, and that sweet sweet energy sold
| at a stonking profit in the evening.
|
| But!
|
| Denmark isn't the spanish grid. They have less
| predictability, so need bigger storage to account for the
| variability of wind.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Same as Sweden. Creating divisive issues from nothing decades
| after the possibility passed.
|
| At least the MAGA Hard right is staring to come around. Who
| could have guessed that they like extremely cheap distributed
| energy generation!?!?
|
| > _Why MAGA suddenly loves solar power_
|
| > The Trump-led attack on solar eases as the right reckons
| with its crucial role in powering AI and keeping utility
| bills in check.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/03/02/katie-
| mil...
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Yeah, sucks they're trying to shut down our nuclear power, I
| agree. However, we're lucky the country is so sunny, if we
| could cover the inland deserted areas with solar panels,
| batteries and what not as an alternative, I'm OK with that as a
| compromise I suppose.
| Chyzwar wrote:
| Levelized Cost of Energy for solar is 30-60$ and 100-200$ for
| nuclear. In the case of Spain, it is cheaper to build more
| energy lines with Morocco and battery storage than to use
| nuclear. Spain already has some of the cheapest energy in
| Europe thanks to renewables.
|
| In the case of Germany, nuclear makes sense, but it is not
| clear where you would buy fuel for it, It might still be a
| supply chain risk since Russia and Kazakhstan are the main
| players there.
| samuel wrote:
| It's not that easy, and the 2025 blackout good evidence of
| that. Renewables need a grid that's engineered for them and
| that require significative investments. Without them, closing
| power plants (of any kind) is, IMO, nonsensical.
|
| Ironically, Spain has plenty of Uranium, but there is an
| environmental law that doesn't allow its mining.
|
| https://alpoma.medium.com/uranium-in-spain-8ef975763257
|
| This country is crazy.
| tfourb wrote:
| But doesn't nuclear power present a complication when
| designing a power grid for renewable energy? It is
| basically very expensive caseload energy that needs
| permanent demand, when the entire proposition of a
| renewable-focused grid is that you manage a non-certain
| production with dynamic demand (via batteries and price-
| sensitive usage).
| modo_mario wrote:
| Nuclear production doesn't react in seconds but it
| doesn't need permanent demand as far as I know? What
| makes you think that?
| tfourb wrote:
| A nuclear reactor can load-follow (increase or decrease
| their output) by up to 5% of their rated capacity per
| minute in normal operation: https://snetp.eu/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/05/SNETP-Factsheet-...
|
| For power plants, this is glacial. A power grid has to
| balanced perfectly on a sub-second level. Also, you can
| only do this down to about 50% of rated capacity. Below
| that you have to switch it off completely.
|
| If you combine this with renewable generation, it all
| falls apart. A cloud passing over a large PV installation
| will drop generation much faster than nuclear plants will
| ever be able to follow (by increasing generation). So if
| you want to have a substantial share of renewable
| generation (which, remember, is the cheap stuff), you
| can't have more than a token nuclear capacity, because
| you need to invest the money you might want to spend on
| nuclear on battery and hydro storage.
|
| The other aspect is the economics of nuclear itself.
| Nuclear power plants are the most capital intensive
| generation capacity you can build. Even when driving them
| at the maximum of their rated capacity, the have a
| levelized cost of electricity several times that of PV
| and Wind per kwh. Requiring routine load following for
| nuclear would basically guarantee that no one ever builds
| a nuclear reactor again.
|
| There are reasons to build new nuclear, but it's not
| cheap/reliable power generation. You build it to have
| access to a nuclear industrial base, as well as the
| research and professional community to run a military
| nuclear program. Or you actually succeed in creating a
| Small Modular Reactor, which might be suitable for niche
| applications (i.e. power isolated communities in extreme
| remote locations). Or you are simply fascinated by the
| technology and want to invest a ton of money on the off
| chance that it will produce some unforeseen technological
| breakthrough (though arguably you'd do better with
| investing in nuclear fusion from my limited understanding
| of the research).
| Krssst wrote:
| For reference: nuclear power plants can do load
| following: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load-
| following_power_plant#Nuc...
|
| It's more cost efficient to keep them running all the
| time since most of the cost of nuclear is building the
| power plant, but power output can be adjusted if needed.
| kuerbel wrote:
| No it's not. Nuclear plants are not compatible with climate
| change. Spain and it's rivers will be too warm to cool them
| down: https://www.euronews.com/2025/07/02/france-and-
| switzerland-s...
| Ekaros wrote:
| Well only to certain point. When the rivers will
| naturally be too hot. You can start making them even
| hotter and it does not matter anymore.
| surfaceofthesun wrote:
| That may require retrofitting the plants to use open loop
| cooling instead of closed loop. That would increase water
| consumption.
| yayachiken wrote:
| > It's not that easy, and the 2025 blackout good evidence
| of that. Renewables need a grid that's engineered for them
| and that require significative investments.
|
| The outage in spain had multiple complex causes.
|
| While the grid had a rather routine instability/oscillation
| on-going during time of the incident, the actual point-of-
| no-return was completely non-technical: Prices crossed into
| the negatives, which caused generation to drop by hundreds
| of megawatts and load to increase likewise within a minute
| (!) because the price acted as a non-technical synchronized
| drop-off signal for the grid.
|
| In grids where the price action is not forwarded directly
| to the generators and consumers there would be no incentive
| to suddenly drop off decentralized generation. So for
| example in Germany a black-out would not happen like this.
|
| You can download the full ENTSO-E report here: https://www.
| entsoe.eu/publications/blackout/28-april-2025-ib... (See
| page 10 for a broad incident timeline)
|
| Unfortunately, to have an informed opinion, you pretty much
| have to read all these pages, because the situation is just
| so complex. Otherwise, you just fall for agenda pushing
| from all sides.
| phatfish wrote:
| Yup, its interesting that a community supposedly of
| "engineers" are happy to claim expert knowledge of
| domains in which they have no experience.
| yayachiken wrote:
| That being said, I was apparently also under the
| impression of outdated or just plain wrong information.
|
| While the report I listed mentions the sudden loss of
| decentralized generation as starting point of the
| blackout, and also specifically mentions small-scale
| rooftop PV, it says that the cause for that sudden
| synchronized drop-off is actually unknown.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Please tell me how renewables cause a lack of reactive
| power. Which was the source of the Iberian blackout.
|
| All reasonable grids already force renewables to handle
| reactive power if they want to connect, like they do for
| all electricity generation.
|
| It is a trivial expense, but still an expense so no one
| does it unless forced.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Existing nuclear power is acceptably cheap. For France the
| longterm LCOE for running their fleet to EOL is EUR60 per
| MWh.
|
| The problem is new built nuclear power which costs EUR180-240
| per MWh excluding insurance, backup, final waste disposal
| etc.
|
| It also won't be online until the 2040s meaning it is
| entirely irrelevant as as solution to anything on a time
| scope not on the level of decades.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| Yeah, but that reminds me of Nick Clegg in the UK in 2010
| saying:
|
| > By the most optimistic scenarios... there's no way they
| are going to have new nuclear come on stream until 2021,
| 2022. So it's just not even an answer
|
| Well, now we are in 2026, and we still have the same
| problem.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| The UK has had complete political unity on building new
| nuclear power since 2006. That tells you the timelines.
|
| For Hinkley Point C with the latest estimate being the
| first reactor online (not commercially operational) in
| 2030 that gives a "planning to operation" time of 24
| years.
|
| For Sizewell C EDF are refusing to take on any semblence
| of a fixed price contract and they are instead going with
| a guaranteed profit pay as you go model. Where ratepayers
| handout enormous sums today to hopefully get something in
| return in the 2040s.
| elil17 wrote:
| Even if it didn't make sense to build new nuclear, that
| doesn't mean it makes sense to shut of existing nuclear.
| yodelshady wrote:
| Levelised Cost of Energy is the highest, in the entire
| _developed world_ , in the UK, which has enough wind and
| solar installed to entirely meet needs today.
|
| It is NOT cheap, it is cheap for _sellers_ , because they
| account on the basis of a MWh being equally useful all the
| time. It isn't. There are TWh-scale shortfalls in winter
| because, and a _medieval peasant_ understood this, a shortage
| of ambient energy is _what winter is_ , and it's worth paying
| energy penny you have to avoid its worst effects.
|
| Business is not better. I've worked in the chemicals
| industry, and conferences in Europe have been like a wake for
| the last decade. I've overseen large orders go to China
| because, I could not _give a shit how much it cost_ , the
| European green alternative - for delivery within Europe -
| could not guarantee timeframes, due to reliance on
| renewables. The Chinese shipped product could. That is your
| "cheap".
|
| You can buy uranium from Russia, Kazakhstan, Mali, Canada,
| US, Australia, or the sea if you really want to, all of those
| have large reserves, and store multiple years' worth more or
| less _by accident_ , modern industrial processes actually
| struggle to make sense at the low volumes nuclear requires.
| Bringing that up as a problem is just not honest.
| mrks_hy wrote:
| Can you please source and explain your claims? They don't
| match my understanding.
|
| For example:
|
| > Levelised Cost of Energy is the highest, in the entire
| developed world, in the UK, which has enough wind and solar
| installed to entirely meet needs today.
|
| Do you mean cost per country (not levelized?)? Even then,
| UK energy is not the most expensive.
| flir wrote:
| They can't (because LCoE is a per-project or per-
| technology measure, not a grid-wide measure, for a
| start).
|
| UK energy is expensive because we have gas-linked
| wholesale pricing. That's nothing to do with the true
| cost of renewables. I'm going to go out on a limb and say
| they're being disingenuous.
|
| (Gas-linked pricing was implemented for sensible reasons,
| but I don't see how it continues to be tenable today).
| mrks_hy wrote:
| Yes, that's what I thought, but wanted to give them the
| benefit of the doubt.
| modo_mario wrote:
| >Levelized Cost of Energy for solar is 30-60$ and 100-200$
| for nuclear.
|
| With the storage for shitty winter weeks? What's the source
| on that one? Mind you I love solar since i'd like to go
| relatively off grid one day but i've heard too much bullshit
| around this.
|
| >but it is not clear where you would buy fuel for it, It
| might still be a supply chain risk since Russia and
| Kazakhstan are the main players there.
|
| There's a lot of locations from my understanding and a lot
| more that don't produce anything simply because Russia and
| Kazakhstan and such don't make it worthwile. It's a tiny
| share of the cost of production in the end.
| Leherenn wrote:
| I believe the standard is 4h of storage.
| Chyzwar wrote:
| Russia and Kazakhstan control almost 50% of global
| production and enrichment of uranium. Even today 17% EU
| supply come from Russia.
|
| Uranium mining is not pretty, read about "in situ leaching"
| mining.
| remarkEon wrote:
| The Americans can give Germany all the fuel they'd ever need.
| If you go solar, you are trading one supply chain dependency
| for another. France's strategy is, once again, completely and
| totally vindicated.
| UltraSane wrote:
| LCOE for 24/7 reliable solar electricity is a LOT higher than
| $60
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| > Yeah, I live in Spain and probably once again we'll have
| restrictions on AC in the summer just like at the start of the
| Ukraine war. Hopefully, we can avoid actual blackouts.
|
| I live on Spain . What the hell restrictions are you talking
| about ?
| hijodelsol wrote:
| This did happen in summer of 2022, but only in public
| buildings, private households were not affected, so the OP's
| point seems a bit overly dramatic. Given that AC usage is
| highest when solar production is also highest, this seems
| highly unlikely given the solar build-out of the last 4
| years.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| That included offices though so work was difficult.
|
| I guess private homes weren't included because of the
| difficulty of enforcement.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| It was in 2022 and 2023: https://cerneasesores.es/real-
| decreto-ley-14-2022-obligacion...
| somelamer567 wrote:
| That would then make sense why Russia's dirty tricks squad
| likes to back extreme-Left and extreme-Right parties, and is
| likely behind calls for proportional representation: it would
| give the geopolitical aggressors an effective veto over
| national politics and prevent the emergence of a European
| superpower on land they consider "theirs".
| readitalready wrote:
| Seems Europe also has the option of using Northern Africa as a
| solar energy hub as well. Is that a viable option?
| nradov wrote:
| Purely from an engineering standpoint that is an attractive
| option. But North African countries have often been
| politically unstable. It's risky to place your energy
| security in the hands of a region that could erupt in another
| coup or civil war at any time.
| g8oz wrote:
| I thought the proposal for a solar link between Morocco and
| the UK was a great idea. Unfortunately the UK government
| has decided not to back it with a contract for different
| guarantee.
|
| https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/
| fy20 wrote:
| There's plenty of land in Spain that would be suitable too.
| Outside of the major cities, Spain is very sparsly populated:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fe.
| ..
|
| It could actually be beneficial in a lot of places to have
| agrovoltaics.
| giantg2 wrote:
| This might make sense on a larger timeframe but stating that
| your grid isn't stable enough to support AC demand while also
| pushing for electric car adoption seems counter intuitive. It
| would likely take years to improve the grid to support
| accelerating electric vehicle demands.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Years and tens if not hundreds of billions; the Netherlands
| is experiencing this, after a decade of cheap solar, a rise
| in EV, and new builds being built fully electric on the
| consumer side, and many datacenters and green energy
| generators built on the business side, our grid is at
| capacity to the point where new businesses can't get
| connected and new housing projects are put on hold (I think);
| the grid can't manage any more. The grid manager Tennet spent
| 15 billion last year, and will need to keep doing that for at
| least another decade - and that's a relatively small country.
| outime wrote:
| Spain's situation is bad: very high gas prices (now at the same
| level as Finland, despite much lower purchasing power), poor
| public transport (train) services, opposition to nuclear
| energy, electric cars that are only affordable for the wealthy
| (and even then, the infrastructure makes them difficult to
| use), high VAT on electricity, etc. All this in a country where
| many people have to ration their heating or air conditioning
| because they often can't afford it under normal circumstances.
| Population seem to not care much about being miserable as the
| same parties that do nothing about it keep getting elected so
| good luck I guess.
| gib444 wrote:
| Poor train service? (Recent accidents aside)
|
| Any areas in particular?
| outime wrote:
| Well, I think that's a bit of an aside but sure:
|
| - Track maintenance is horrendous, and it's public
| knowledge (not that it wasn't known before, it was just
| hidden)
|
| - Many high-speed trains are now running much slower after
| the accident, and will continue to do so. Also,
| compensation for delays has been significantly reduced
|
| - Some rather important routes (Madrid-Malaga, for example)
| still have no service after the accident
|
| - The public train company (Renfe) is now setting up a bus
| company and openly saying that this is going to be very
| useful for years to come (wink wink)
|
| - Cercanias is absolute garbage in most areas but
| especially in Madrid, with constant delays, broken trains,
| etc
|
| - The pricing situation has improved with recent
| competitors (Ouigo, Iryo, etc) but it's often still
| laughable - I've been taking flights instead of trains when
| I travel there since they're much cheaper (and nowadays
| definitely much faster, given all the issues)
|
| I could continue but I guess that's plenty. I'd say taking
| a train in Spain nowadays is an exercise of faith for many.
| gib444 wrote:
| Sorry didn't mean to go off on a tangent, it's just I
| like trains, and Spain (and have an Interrail trip coming
| up and I was considering including Spain. They are
| famously Interrail unfriendly though)
|
| I followed the accident but not much news following, so
| that's really really interesting. I didn't know Madrid-
| Malaga still has no service, nor that Renfe had set up a
| bus company!
|
| I haven't been to Madrid for a few years. Sad to hear the
| Cercanias is so bad these days
| outime wrote:
| If you ever visit Madrid again, I can say that buses and
| the metro usually work pretty well (they do get quite
| crowded at peak hours, but I guess that's the case
| everywhere) and you probably won't need to rely on
| Cercanias for typical "tourist" activities. If you're
| planning to travel between cities though, I'd be a bit
| wary of long-distance trains!
|
| PS: Roads are becoming worse as well but I've seen worse
| abroad. Just wanted to point out that infrastructures in
| the country are decaying quite a bit in general.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| Here in Catalunya the Rodalies (commuter rail) is
| absolutely abysmal.
|
| Yeah, the high speed AVE trains are nice if you want to go
| to Madrid, but if you just want to get to work it's a
| disaster.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| The far-left are not the cause of the nuclear close down, nor
| are they unilaterally holding the government hostage in this
| area.
|
| The centre-left party made the agreement with the power
| companies in 2019 when they were not yet in coalition, for
| economic reasons.
|
| The far-left, _now_ in the coalition, _does_ consider nuclear a
| red line. It is unknown what the cost of crossing it would be.
| But I believe it 's irrelevant, because if the centre-left
| party would be governing alone, they wouldn't walk back the
| agreement now. No matter price of oil, the investment in
| nuclear has a too large price-tag, and would take way to long
| to reap any benefits. If any - given the current progression on
| renewables.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| > One of the issues with our proportional electoral system is
| that smaller, more extreme parties can become kingmakers and in
| our current situation the centre-left governing party relies on
| the support of the far-left party to stay in power, and those
| guys are rabidly anti-nuclear power.
|
| A side comment but I'm sad to say I don't think that another
| electoral system (or at least not FPTP) fixes this issue of
| there being a niche group being kingmakers.
|
| In FPTP the dynamic that occurs is that an enormous amount of
| seats become "safe" and then the kingmakers end up being the
| relative handful of seats that are likely to trade hands. This
| ends up creating distortions where certain regional seats and
| regional issues rise well above how important they should be.
|
| PR seems like a more fair way to represent a niche group. At
| least they are a genuinely representative part of the
| population, and the influence isn't an accident of electoral
| math distortion.
| noobermin wrote:
| Like 1 year ago, wallstreet bros were being interviewed saying
| they decided all the green pledges and all that was woke from the
| pre-trump 2 era, and I haven't heard anything at all about
| climate change really from any world leader in the last few
| years. I guess once again, people have their coming to jesus
| moment when it's far too late.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| Although the results are very similar, the motivation of energy
| independence is quite different that of climate change.
|
| America has ample supplies of natural gas, oil etc. and so
| doesn't need to turn away from fossil fuels to be energy
| independent. Whereas in Europe we do as there isn't much
| natural gas or oil and even the coal that remains is difficult
| to extract and thus less economical.
| bluGill wrote:
| Even at that, America is rapidly turning away from oil as
| wind and solar are so much cheaper. The leaders are putting
| on the brakes, and the change is uneven - but there is a lot
| of wind and solar going up in the US even now and it has been
| happening for 15+years.
| tialaramex wrote:
| > America has ample supplies of natural gas, oil etc. and so
| doesn't need to turn away from fossil fuels to be energy
| independent.
|
| In the short to medium term. The natural gas, oil etc. are in
| fact finite resources created over a tremendously long period
| of time in pre-history and so once they run out you're done.
|
| You could run nuclear power plants much longer, perhaps even
| indefinitely, and of course wind and sunlight are renewable,
| Sol doesn't give a shit what we do, it's going to shine on
| the planet and cause winds here until long after we're dead.
| But the dinosaur juice runs out, it's a quick burst and then
| if you didn't transition too fucking bad game over.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| Yeah, exactly. We have a relatively short window of a few
| centuries, perhaps less, to master nuclear power (perhaps
| even nuclear fusion), photovoltaic panels, efficient wind
| turbines (including more complex offshore construction) and
| deploy them all at scale.
|
| And to do it all before we cook ourselves in greenhouse
| gases.
|
| I'm rather optimistic about it but it does seem that most
| people don't fully grasp the importance of such a
| transition.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Ha. I wasn't talking about the cooking. We're well into
| "I hope we get lucky" territory on that, let alone in "a
| few centuries". I was talking about literally running
| out.
|
| The US is a large place with a lot of potential for
| extraction, so if you ignore the bit where the hostile
| climate kills them instead they could keep extracting at
| similar rates for maybe a century or more, but it does
| run out.
| sharemywin wrote:
| Wonder how much WFH could help. Seems like during covid demand
| went way down.
| duskdozer wrote:
| Heavens no! How could we ever afford to be more productive
| overall? Just think of the effect on corporate real estate
| prices.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| That's true. I wonder if the government might force companies
| to allow WFH if there are petrol shortages.
|
| They did it during covid so I wouldn't rule it out.
| billcube wrote:
| It helped on reducing traffic, spending more time with family,
| favouring local shops... Why we went back still is a mystery
| for me. Even if it was "working from a coworking space" or
| anything that was not the downtown open-space.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Exactly, put AI in the office instead.
| THansenite wrote:
| Because downtown city centers were missing out on office
| worker revenue and started giving incentives to companies who
| brought people back into the office. I 100% believe the
| reason we went back into the office at all was because of
| this despite all the talk of 'in-person collaboration.'
| duskdozer wrote:
| I remember reading articles about local politicians insisting
| companies and governments do return to office for no other
| reason than to have the workers spend money downtown for
| lunch. Not even implying it, directly stating it.
| Qem wrote:
| ...and increasing valuation of office real state.
| whalesalad wrote:
| But think of the commercial real estate market?!?! What about
| the chopped salad slop bowl market?! Dry cleaning?! This would
| shatter the fabric of our precious society. We need butts in
| seats. We need to foster open communication and cross
| functional pollination.
| giarc wrote:
| WFH and the almost 100% shutdown off airline travel at the
| beginning of the pandemic resulted in nearly 0 change in CO2
| emission and levels in the atmosphere.
|
| https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...
| Qem wrote:
| Of course we shouldn't expect a couple of years of shutdown
| to significantly reverse 200 years of man-made atmospheric
| CO2 accumulation, but surely it would help stop the problem
| to get worse if the widespread WFH effort were sustained
| after the pandemic.
| interloxia wrote:
| It's a bit off topic but that didn't sound right to me.
|
| According to the following it was a reduction but yes near
| zero in the context of total emissions. A few hundred million
| tonnes reduction ain't nothin none the less.
|
| "plummeted from more than 1 000 Mt CO2 in 2019 to less than
| 600 Mt CO2 in 2020, in the context of the pandemic.
|
| In 2023, aviation accounted for 2.5% of global energy-related
| CO2 emissions, "
|
| https://www.iea.org/energy-system/transport/aviation
| abustamam wrote:
| I don't have data but I was always under the impression that
| consumer use of fossil fuels (ie gas) was a drop in the bucket
| compared to enterprise use of fossil fuels (shipping
| trucks/boats/planes, private jets, etc).
|
| The whole "reduce your carbon footprint PSA" was just a ruse.
| johnny_canuck wrote:
| > The whole "reduce your carbon footprint PSA" was just a
| ruse.
|
| It is especially true in the context of this war when the US
| is attacking oil infrastructure which is causing catastrophic
| environmental damage:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/world/middleeast/iran-
| oil...
|
| Similarly related to the paper straw meme that has been
| circulating the last while.
| Qem wrote:
| Also: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/30/carbon-
| footpri...
| abustamam wrote:
| Yikes. I never really thought about the environmental
| impacts of war mainly because no one seems to talk about
| it.
|
| Now that I know about it, it just infuriates me that
| anyone could even criticize any individual person's usage
| of fossil fuels.
| abustamam wrote:
| Ugh don't get me started on paper straws! At least EVs are
| a cool way to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, however
| ineffective it may be at scale. But nobody likes paper
| straws.
| Mashimo wrote:
| But the companies have a large carbon foodprint to deliver a
| product or service for the consumer.
|
| When I buy a large SUV / Truck, and never drive it, is that
| not counted negative towards my carbon foodprint?
| abustamam wrote:
| > But the companies have a large carbon foodprint to
| deliver a product or service for the consumer.
|
| I agree that that's _why_ they have a large carbon
| footprint, no company is just burning fossil fuels for fun.
| But it doesn't change a) the fact that they do have a large
| carbon footprint, and b) entire cities could ban gas cars
| and everyone could take public transit and it still
| wouldn't make a dent in the global carbon footprint.
|
| As I think you're alluding to over-consumerism as a cause
| of companies having a large carbon footprint, that's part
| of it. But unless everyone just stops consuming, it's not
| gonna change anything. If it were legislated that big
| companies needed to reduce their carbon footprint by X% by
| Y date I think that would be the most effective, short term
| at least.
|
| > When I buy a large SUV / Truck, and never drive it, is
| that not counted negative towards my carbon foodprint?
|
| I don't know why it'd be negative. Zero or neutral, at
| best, but not negative. Negative would entail you're
| somehow removing CO2 from the environment.
| Mashimo wrote:
| Oh my bad, I used negative wrong.
|
| I mean if I buy a car (and never drive it) and have a
| phone, ipad and computer that I never use. Is it not ME
| who has a huge carbon footprint?
| pibaker wrote:
| I wonder where the gulf states are going to end up.
|
| They have tried hard to build economies that aren't just fossil
| fuel exports. Tourism, trade, finance, luxury living for rich
| foreigners... but everything they have tried is contingent on
| peace in the region. I doubt foreigners are looking forward to
| layovers in Dubai now there are Iranian drones heading their way.
|
| Maybe future travelers will not see two trunkless legs in a
| desert, but empty condo towers and abandoned super cars still
| loaded with labubus.
| lm28469 wrote:
| They also spent decades sending money to the US to buy
| influence and protection, which instantly vaporized the second
| a missile was launched their way.
| cpursley wrote:
| The big story I think is how handily they took out billions
| of dollars of US radars and that these air defense systems
| are not up to the task (we actually already knew this from
| Ukraine, but media worked overtime to ignore this fact). In a
| way, all this supposedly "superior" US and Israeli tech (at
| least on the defense side, offense is a different story) has
| been exposed. I do think focused engineering efforts could
| close this gap, that was needed already 4 years ago.
| lukan wrote:
| It actually works pretty well, considering how much they do
| shoot down, but if there is enough incoming, some will get
| through.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > It actually works pretty well
|
| As long as you don't look at the receipts yes,
| technically it works very well, in every other aspect
| it's a massive waste of resource and money.
| lukan wrote:
| The war in itself? For sure, but if a million dollar
| rocket saves a billion dollar radar system against a
| 50.000 drone, it still seems working as intended.
| lm28469 wrote:
| 10+ radars have been destroyed, I'm not sure which ones
| were "saved"
|
| https://abcnews.com/International/us-allied-radar-sites-
| midd...
| dmix wrote:
| That doesn't say 10+ radars have been destroyed. It says
| radar sites have been attacked 10 times across 7
| locations in 6 countries, with some damaged and some
| destroyed.
|
| This biggest loss was the mobile THAAD radar in Jordan ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/TPY-2_transportable_radar
| There's also evidence they hit a building in Saudi Arabia
| containing a AN/TPY-2 but it's not clear if it was
| damaged
|
| Plus a couple videos of fixed radomes getting hit by
| drones
|
| Defending against ballistic missiles is well known to not
| be perfect, even against Iran's lest sophisticated
| missiles it's very difficult. But the high end missile
| systems are worth trying. The main problem is the lack of
| cheap drone interceptors which has been a blaring siren
| since Ukraine war started that the US neglected by not
| treating it as an emergency.
| cpursley wrote:
| C-RAM radars - at least one US embassy was hit with an
| elcheapo drone as well, rendering it useless. Thats a
| legit problem and was only possible because they took out
| most of the important ballistics radars first.
| dmix wrote:
| How would a THAAD in Jordan help stop drones in Iraq?
| That's not the only radar they operate.
|
| The C-RAM was in Baghdad, the high end radars hit were in
| the other gulf states.
|
| The CWIS is probably the best anti-drone tool the US has
| but they have far too little of them and can get
| overwhelmed. They should have listened to Ukraine.
| nradov wrote:
| The Israeli missile defense systems have worked amazingly
| well considering the scale of the threat.
| cpursley wrote:
| Not against the fast ballistics.
| 0dayz wrote:
| Ballistics are much harder to shoot down period there is
| not a single system that has 100% success rate, Ukraine
| reports around 42-77% success rate[1].
|
| Hence why army folks were so alarmed by Russia/China
| developing and having ready prototypes that can go
| hypersonic.
|
| [1]https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-
| research/publications/comme...
| lm28469 wrote:
| Is this why they're silencing anyone talking about
| damages and arresting anyone taking videos/photos ?
| clydethefrog wrote:
| Just last night:
|
| "It's worth pointing out that Hezbollah has managed to
| get rockets right down to the south of Israel today - and
| that is unprecedented. Never before has Hezbollah managed
| to get rockets so far south into Israel."
|
| https://aje.news/b8762y?update=4414645
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Sending is easy, but hitting something... They are
| shooting at an open desert and Gaza while exposing their
| launch teams.
| dboreham wrote:
| No serious person believes ballistic missile defense works.
| This isn't a fringe belief. There was a major movie with
| this theme released last year.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Isn't this a different thing? I tend to assume when
| someone is talking about ballistic missile defense, they
| are thinking of ICBMs. A House of Dynamite is an example
| of that. But that seems substantially different from the
| regional missile defense that seems much more effective.
| Mach 5 is pretty fast, but Mach 25 is considerably
| faster.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The lay public is almost certainly unaware that perfect,
| nation scale ICBM defense is fucking impossible. At least
| in the US.
|
| People in Israel are probably more accustomed to what a
| "High but not perfect" interception rate means.
|
| But people in the US are just really dumb about things.
| They probably think it just needs "Enough money" or "A
| breakthrough" as if that's just a magic spell you can
| cast to get around physics.
|
| However, modern anti-ballistic missile defense systems
| are effective enough that if you spend enough money you
| can defeat, with high probability, half to most of the
| incoming weapons. It involves firing many many
| interceptors against each incoming threat. It does not
| scale.
|
| This is why it is generally deployed as a way to _blunt_
| , possibly not even _defeat_ a North Korean nuclear
| attack. Nothing more.
|
| Shorter range ballistic missiles suck. They still have
| the crazy high velocity terminal phase, but they are way
| cheaper to produce. I don't think it's possible to defend
| against them economically.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| And now Iran is deploying ballistic missiles with cluster
| munitions separating in flight.
|
| Good luck countering that, especially if they steer to be
| able to steer them.
| 0dayz wrote:
| This is not mostly true: Israel's anti air defense works
| surprisingly well against Iran's attack, the issue has
| always been 2 things:
|
| Who has more missiles to throw?
|
| And the Patriot is still top class in it's designed goal:
| shooting down ballistic and cruise missiles.
|
| The second big thing is that no one has designed air
| defense to take into account effectively slow moving
| artillery pieces that have the same maneuverability as a
| missile.
|
| Because that is what drones are and what has been the
| biggest glaring problem for but the USA, Israel and Russia
| (the gulf states both use Russian and US anti air defense).
| cpursley wrote:
| The aging Patriot in particular was exposed in Ukraine.
| You can watch video after video of them failing even
| against older ballistics - they have basically no chance
| against hypersonic and other fast ballistics, especially
| ones with active measures (flares, maneuvering - there
| was a really wild one from a few weeks back). And there's
| a number out of this conflict as well. The are still
| great at shooting down jets, however. Top of class is
| actually S-4/500, this is basically acknowledged fact by
| even the Pentagon at this point. I think a lot of people
| are in denial about this due to a combo of Hollywood
| narrative and ideological reasons, but the Russians math
| very good - it's reality. But even so, those are not the
| right systems for fighting drone attacks - nobody really
| has it together with that. Both of these are solvable
| problems, it's just a lot of hard math + piles of money.
| 0dayz wrote:
| It has around 42-77% success rate according to Ukraine
| themselves against specifically Iskander 9M723 and KN-23.
|
| And your comment makes 0 sense considering S-400 was more
| designed against aircrafts and cruise missiles than
| ballistic missiles.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| And that success rate comes after significant
| improvements to the Russian weapons and finesse. They
| were much less effective early in the war.
|
| Cat and mouse is always a factor in war. The patriot
| wasn't very good when it was first introduced and took
| some refining to become the gold standard, which it still
| is.
|
| It still works very well against planes too, reaching out
| and downing EWACS aircraft at the edge of it's range.
|
| They were neither designed nor expected to have 100%
| defense rate, but 50% is lower than expected. 75% isn't
| great either.
| sateesh wrote:
| Presume the reference to trunkless legs is to the Shelly's
| famous poem Ozymandias
| (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias)
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Well at least they will have much less money to meddle in
| Africa, I guess.
| morkalork wrote:
| Yes, what's happening in the Sahel absolutely barbaric and is
| shamefully swept under the rug in Western media because of
| the countries sponsoring it.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Maybe future travelers will not see two trunkless legs in a
| desert, but empty condo towers and abandoned super cars still
| loaded with labubus.
|
| Maybe they actually will gaze upon it and despair (just not for
| the reason the original poem said :-))
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Some of them will not exist at all in their current form by
| summer
| jmstfv wrote:
| They're done. They export oil/LNG, import food, invest the
| proceeds in the US companies/treasuries and brand themselves as
| logistics hubs + safe havens for the global rich. It's all out
| of the window now.
| Delphiza wrote:
| Our company made a 'bet' that energy management, sustainability,
| clean energy and whatnot would become a big thing. This was
| around the time of COP26 (2021) where there seemed to be a
| societal drive for reducing carbon emissions and a general
| acceptance that climate change was a thing. We employed young and
| enthusiastic sustainability consultants, we run a successful
| project to reduce energy consumption in polymer manufacturing, we
| build product that worked. That part of our business has shut
| down completely.
|
| Unfortunately governments were reluctant to really get behind
| regulations that were needed, and the business case for
| investment in any drive to sustainability did not exist. People
| lost interest as inflation went up, and other things seemed more
| important. The market was flagging and Trump's "drill baby drill"
| was the final nail in the coffin.
|
| The world was _nearly_ there to rapidly accelerate reducing the
| dependency on fossil fuels on the back of climate change. Instead
| we went back to fossil fuel cars and built energy-intensive AI
| data centres. We collectively dropped the ball and one day will
| look back on it as a missed opportunity.
| triceratops wrote:
| There were many sliding doors moments for action on climate
| change. The 2000 US presidential election was the first
| significant one.
| yabones wrote:
| There have been plenty of inflection points like that
| throughout history. Famously, Jimmy Carter installed solar
| heating on the roof of the white house. Reagan took them down
| shortly after.
|
| It seems like we never quite learn our lesson about energy
| security...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_at_the_White_House...
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Ah, it feels so good to sit on the front seat watching WW3
| unwrapping slowly, elegantly, deadly.
|
| I might reach my dream life (no work just binge hacking kernels)
| sooner than I expected. Now I just need to pretend I don't need
| money as well.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| You might need to pretend that you don't need energy either!
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I'm fasting! No need for energy at all.
| lelanthran wrote:
| Got a wind-up computer, have you?
|
| (Maybe that OLTP project was onto something, after all)
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Seriously, might consider buying a few solar panels, but
| just for camping needs. It's impossible to setup locally
| due to regulation and such.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| It's probably also good to have things on hand as an
| insurance policy anyway. If shit hits the fan regulations
| don't apply anymore. No one is going to complain about
| solar on your roof if the grid isn't reliable.
| bluGill wrote:
| That puts you in an energy deficit, but you still need and
| are using energy. Until your body is decomposed it uses
| energy (after you die your body is energy for the bacteria
| decomposing it).
|
| Fasting can use previous/saved energy, but it still needs
| energy.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Yeah, that was half of a joke.
| thedangler wrote:
| In a world where peoples home might be taken away because
| interest go up because oil prices is nuts.
| nradov wrote:
| Interest rates change for all sorts of reasons. People who take
| out variable rate home mortgages are always gambling. Sometimes
| they win, sometimes they lose.
| Mashimo wrote:
| It would be very hard for me to take a variable rate mortgages,
| while not having the money to pay for it.
|
| Feels like stressful living.
| lm28469 wrote:
| The US about to discover you can't just blindly follow fanatics
| in religious wars without any consequences.
| hiddencost wrote:
| I mean given that our secretary of defense has a Deus Vult
| tattoo... and this:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/03/us-israel-iran...
|
| I think we might be the fanatics starting a religious war.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| I think the parent comment was referring to the same fanatics
| you are
| buckle8017 wrote:
| Pretty sure he was talking about Israel.
| morkalork wrote:
| Also a gigantic Jerusalem cross tattoo.
| 22122 wrote:
| the crusaders wanted the holy land to belong to christians,
| not to jews
| megous wrote:
| Anyone has any respect left for US Americans after they elected
| this? This is so ridiculous at so many levels:
|
| Not US hollywood culture or whatever Americans culturally
| exported in the past all around the world, but _this_ will
| forever represent US Americans in my mind. That this is how they
| overall want to be seen and represented as all around the world,
| seemingly:
|
| "Israel, out of anger for what has taken place in the Middle
| East, has violently lashed out at a major facility known as South
| Pars Gas Field in Iran," President Trump posted on X.
| "Unfortunately, Iran did not know this, or any of the pertinent
| facts pertaining to the South Pars attack, and unjustifiably and
| unfairly attacked a portion of Qatar's LNG Gas facility."
|
| "NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL pertaining to this
| extremely important and valuable South Pars Field unless Iran
| unwisely decides to attack a very innocent, in this case, Qatar,"
| the U.S. president also wrote, proceeding then to threaten to
| "massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field at an
| amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or
| witnessed before."
|
| What even is this style of communication and thinking behind it
| from a leader of the richest country in the world? Is he a child?
| Who can even be impressed by this... unbelievable. Feels like
| we're like living in a very dumb, very deadly, reality show.
| manyaoman wrote:
| The thing is that back in 2024 Kamala didn't exactly come
| across as a much better option, although in hindsight she
| likely would have been.
| krapp wrote:
| Kamala was always obviously a better option than Trump. Let's
| not pretend people didn't know who and what Trump was, or
| that his behavior after 2024 came as a shock to anyone.
| whacko_quacko wrote:
| A majority thought differently. They knew who Trump was and
| who Kamala was, and they voted for Trump. That's how it
| goes in a democracy... Anyways, they're getting what they
| voted for
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Nit: a plurality, not a majority.
| nixon_why69 wrote:
| I'm not so sure that's true. Trump is making very
| different decisions in this term than his first term. I
| think a lot of his voters thought, "Everything was fine
| in his first term while all the liberals were crying all
| the time, I'd like more of that". This time around,
| things are not fine and we're seeing the regret show up
| in the polling numbers.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I think most people expected Trump Two to be a similar shit
| show to Trump One. I was no fan, but he was generally
| popular on the issue of the economy during his first term,
| and I think a lot of people had the economy as their
| primary consideration in 2024. Flooding the zone works,
| they tuned out all the rhetoric as partisan noise.
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| > I think most people expected Trump Two to be a similar
| shit show to Trump One
|
| While they were being warned that his team spent 4 years
| planning on how to get rid of anyone who pushed back, and
| he wouldn't be hamstrung this time.
|
| The people who thought 2.0 would be like 1.0 were simply
| choosing to beleive it despite all of the evidence
| suggesting otherwise.
| lesuorac wrote:
| How is 2.0 not like 1.0?
|
| Impounding government funds, check.
|
| Using CBP (ICE) against US citizens, check.
|
| Assassinating Iranian officials, check.
|
| Tariffs, check.
| triceratops wrote:
| > in hindsight she likely would have been
|
| It took you hindsight? I could've told you that in 2024 with
| regular sight.
| megous wrote:
| You don't have primaries to pick sensible candidates to begin
| with? In either party, of course.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| As someone who's been pushing for renewables for quite a while
| now it's dismaying that it's taken a war to accelerate this push,
| but I'm glad to see that it's happening at least.
|
| It's doubly dismaying that my own country (US) is still doubling
| down on fossil fuels despite everything.
|
| The concern about a new dependency on China is real, but
| renewables do have the advantage that once you have the
| infrastructure in place it keeps working without continuously
| importing fuel. Nonetheless, China has done a good job building
| up their PV/battery manufacturing capacity (including via
| subsidies for a while if I'm not mistaken) and to the extent the
| rest of the world wants to avoid a dependency on them _we should
| do that too_.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I guess the oil industry is laughing their ass off nowadays.
| They can sell at such a premium. Inflation? YP.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It's just pulling forward future gains while shrinking the
| time horizon, if the world speeds the transition to
| renewables and electrification from this. Short term gain for
| faster irrelevance.
|
| Oil to $200/barrel please, as long as possible, same with
| LNG.
|
| Edit: _Iran attack wipes out 17% of Qatar's LNG capacity for
| up to five years, QatarEnergy CEO says_ -
| https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/2026/03/19/iran-
| attack-... - March 19th, 2026
|
| Looks like the global clean energy transition will be getting
| back up to speed.
| chii wrote:
| It will take longer than the duration of the war to
| realistically transition to renewables in any quantity that
| truly matters.
|
| So the oil companies are happy because this temporarily
| brought forward future demand and thus profit, as well as
| expend a bunch of money/resources from competitors of oil
| which predicates a high price per barrel to make financial
| sense. If/when oil prices drop back down, these renewable
| investments might not compete.
|
| To truly transition over will mean doing it with the world
| kicking and screaming imho. It cannot be made smooth.
| graemep wrote:
| Businesses are short termist these days. They will be happy
| to pull forward gains. Shareholder value, right?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Certainly, but you can solve for that with windfall taxes
| or nationalizing the oil industry in your jurisdiction,
| if there is the will. Based on all available evidence,
| the will does not exist.
|
| Broadly speaking, the overall system dependent on energy
| must adapt or die. The capital exists to decarbonize
| rapidly. How hard the arm must be twisted is the natural
| experiment to observe. In the meantime, all critical
| fossil assets are legitimate targets in the operating
| environment.
|
| These are all choices. If you are unhappy with the
| outcomes of choices you have the authority to make, make
| better choices.
| anonymars wrote:
| Heh, depends on who's nationalizing the oil industry.
| Isn't that the common thread for the present-day
| situations of Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba?
| markus_zhang wrote:
| If you tell me I can make 10 million bucks this year, with
| the penalty of not making anything for the rest of my life,
| I guess I don't mind?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Would you have made it anyway? Can we stop you? Does it
| cause a negative externality that will be more rapidly
| diminished if you pull forward this gain? Consider it a
| premium paid by fossil fuel consumers to encourage a more
| rapid transition from fossil fuels by pushing pain into
| the energy market for the next half decade.
|
| Congrats to those who won the lotto, enjoy your luck.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Eh, definitely not me, still a salary slave. But yeah
| kudos to whoever won the oil lottery.
| noelsusman wrote:
| Oil companies love $90 oil, but much higher than that and you
| start to run into demand destruction issues in the medium
| term.
| davedx wrote:
| I've been arguing with Europeans on twitter (including an
| environmental scientist) who believe this war shows we need to
| resume drilling in the North Sea and Groningen.
|
| It feels like this collective insanity will never end
| watwut wrote:
| The Russian threat in the short term is very real and this is
| making Russia stronger. And the economic threat to Europe in
| the super short term is bigger then the one to America ...
| and will help internal fascist movements that are very much
| already empowered there (and sponsored and supported by BOTH
| Russia and America despite being very much homegrown).
|
| So, like, both I guess.
| layer8 wrote:
| > It feels like this collective insanity will never end
|
| You're referring to Twitter, right? ;)
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| twitter is a self-selected group these days, even assuming
| these are real people and not some kind of propaganda op.
|
| It's like going on stormfront and wondering why there's so
| many white nationalists on the internet.
| devilbunny wrote:
| > we need to resume drilling in the North Sea and Groningen
|
| Well, there's also the simple reality that the US doesn't
| actually need fossil fuels from the Middle East or Russia in
| the same way Europe does. It affects prices here, obviously,
| and an increase in energy prices can do severe damage to the
| economy, but it's not a potentially existential crisis in the
| same way.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Funny part about oil is that it's in everything. US is
| energy independent, but its supply chain is not. AI chips,
| for example, which prop up the entire economy need oil for
| the various materials needed to produce it.
|
| The other funny part about oil is that it has an inelastic
| demand. A 20% reduction in global supply doesn't mean a 20%
| increase in prices. It means increase in prices until 20%
| demand collapses (which could theoretically mean orders of
| magnitude of increase in pricing). Which means expensive
| fertilizers, medicines and pretty every other bare
| necessity.
|
| With these two facts, pretty much every country needs the
| oil from the Middle East.
| devilbunny wrote:
| Oh, I know, but "we are going to freeze to death in a
| month" is a _far_ stronger motivator than "the economy
| is going to go into a tailspin".
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Yes, this is correct, Europe energy policy is
| catastrophically behind and needs to pursue all paths
| simultaneously, because the future is very murky, Europe
| needs a LOT of power, and it's not clear which will work
| best:
|
| - Continue building out solar + battery storage
|
| - Resume drilling in domestic accessible offshore locations
| safe from trade disruptions
|
| - Recommission and build new nuclear plants
|
| - Build LNG import terminals to eliminate dependence on
| Russian gas
| slashdev wrote:
| I think Europe should resume drilling in the North Sea and
| Groningen if they have exploitable reserves there. Europe
| depends on energy imports and that won't change in our
| lifetimes (I'm in my early forties, so at least in my
| lifetime.) They should take advantage of whatever resources
| they have.
|
| I'm guessing you think otherwise? Why? Do you think the
| energy transition will be faster? What makes you think that?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It would be an inefficient use of capital to support more
| fossil exploration considering the deployment rates and
| cost decline curves of renewables and storage.
|
| _Ember Energy: European electricity prices and costs_ -
| https://ember-energy.org/data/european-electricity-prices-
| an... (updated daily)
|
| _Ember Energy: Wind and solar generated more power than
| fossil fuels in the EU for the first time in 2025_ -
| https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/wind-and-solar-
| gener... - January 22nd, 2026
|
| _Bloomberg: How Europe Ditched Russian Fossil Fuels With
| Spectacular Speed_ - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feature
| s/2023-02-21/ukraine-n... | https://archive.today/yxGp2 -
| February 21st, 2023
|
| > But what the past year has shown is that it's possible to
| go harder and faster in deploying solar panels and
| batteries, reducing energy use, and permanently swapping
| out entrenched sources of fossil fuel. Solar installations
| across Europe increased by a record 40-gigawatts last year,
| up 35% compared with 2021, just shy of the most optimistic
| scenario from researchers at BloombergNEF. That jump was
| driven primarily by consumers who saw cheap solar panels as
| a way to cut their own energy bills. It essentially pushed
| the solar rollout ahead by a few years, hitting a level
| that will be sustained by EU policies.
|
| (Europe has enough wind potential to power the world, their
| energy constraints are deployment rate of renewables,
| battery storage, and transmission)
| slashdev wrote:
| You're talking about electricity, so I assume your answer
| is directed to the natural gas fields at Groningen. The
| EU imports a lot of natural gas. Don't you think it would
| be better to have a domestic supply? It's better for the
| environment too.
|
| Heck right now, Europe is still burning coal (and worse
| yet - lignite coal) for electricity. Natural gas would be
| a huge improvement on that.
|
| Note that drilling for oil in the North Sea is a
| completely different subject, because that's not used for
| electricity generation, nor is electricity a substitute.
| EV market share in Europe is still far too low for that
| to be a conversation for a long time.
|
| Your comment is wishful thinking and ignores the current
| reality of how Europe imports and uses energy.
|
| But even if your best case scenario were somehow possible
| (and it really isn't) there's still money to be made
| exporting fossil fuels to the developing world. So your
| assertion "inefficient use of capital to support more
| fossil exploration" is just flat wrong.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| No, everything can move to electricity, China is doing
| it, Europe can too. You are free to your opinion, but the
| facts and evidence are clear. If you would like an hour
| of time with an expert from Ember Energy to explain this,
| happy to pay for that hour of time for you to update your
| priors and mental model on the topic of Europe's energy
| transition trajectory.
|
| > Note that drilling for oil in the North Sea is a
| completely different subject, because that's not used for
| electricity generation, nor is electricity a substitute.
| EV market share in Europe is still far too low for that
| to be a conversation for a long time.
|
| Europe's EV uptake will speed based on the price of oil
| increasing and remaining high for the foreseeable future.
|
| > But even if your best case scenario were somehow
| possible (and it really isn't) there's still money to be
| made exporting fossil fuels to the developing world. So
| your assertion "inefficient use of capital to support
| more fossil exploration" is just flat wrong.
|
| The developing world is leapfrogging fossil fuels and
| going straight to solar, batteries, and EVs. What will
| expensive LNG do to this market? It will force them to
| renewables and electric mobility faster. Ethopia's uptake
| of EVs after they banned combustion vehicles is an
| example of this. Why did they ban combustion vehicles?
| Because they have no domestic fossil fuel supplies and
| the import cost was crushing them; their EVs are powered
| by domestic hydro electricity production.
|
| Citations:
|
| _Surging Gas Prices Reignite EV Interest_ -
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-14/iran-
| war-... | https://archive.today/BkAfR - March 14th, 2026
|
| _Global EV sales hit 1.1 million - Europe surges while
| the US slides_ - https://electrek.co/2026/03/12/global-
| ev-sales-hit-1-1-milli... | https://archive.today/nhIbF -
| March 12th, 2026
|
| _EVs Avoided the Use of 2.3M Barrels of Oil per Day in
| 2025_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47420092 -
| March 2026
|
| _Electric Vehicle Sales Boom as Ethiopia Bans Fossil-
| Fuel Car Imports_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47068567 - February
| 2026
|
| _How we made it: will China be the first electrostate?_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44101275 - May
| 2025
|
| _Massive global growth of renewables to 2030 is set to
| match entire power capacity of major economies today,
| moving world closer to tripling goal_ -
| https://www.iea.org/news/massive-global-growth-of-
| renewables... - October 9th, 2024
|
| _The World Hit 'Peak' Gas-Powered Vehicle Sales -- in
| 2017_ -
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-30/world-
| hit... - January 30th, 2024
| slashdev wrote:
| I agree that it can. I won't live to see it, and I hope I
| live 50 years more.
|
| You're living in a fantasy world that doesn't exist.
|
| Global consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas all rose
| in 2025. We've not even peaked yet.[1]
|
| [1] https://news.mongabay.com/short-
| article/2025/12/record-fossi...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I've done my best to educate with facts and citations.
| Appreciate the discussion regardless. My offer stands to
| pay for you to talk to a subject matter expert.
|
| Edit (to respond to your edit):
|
| > Global consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas all
| rose in 2025. We've not even peaked yet.
|
| Do you think global LNG consumption will peak considering
| a material amount of production has been taken offline
| for the next five years as of today? If I am an LNG
| consumer on the global market, am I re-evaluating my
| options today for the next half decade of energy needs?
| And we are not even done yet with additional potential
| attacks on Middle Eastern fossil infrastructure as long
| as the conflict continues; there are more targets
| available, and more capacity that could be diminished for
| the foreseeable future.
|
| _Oil and gas prices jump after Iran and Israel attack
| gasfields_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47441351 - March
| 2026
|
| _Iran attack wipes out 17% of Qatar's LNG capacity for
| up to five years, QatarEnergy CEO says_ -
| https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/2026/03/19/iran-
| attack-... - March 19th, 2026
|
| From your citation:
|
| > Renewable energy continues to expand rapidly, but not
| fast enough for a total reduction in fossil fuels.
| Emissions from burning oil are projected to rise by 1% in
| 2025, while gas emissions are set to increase by 1.3%,
| and coal by 0.8%.
|
| These increases are not material in a world where
| 1TW/year of solar PV is being deployed. Global solar
| capacity doubles every three years [!!] at current rates.
| If that rate holds, without accounting for increases of
| that rate as more PV manufacturing capacity comes online,
| it will replace all fossil energy globally (not just
| fossil electricity, all fossil energy use) in under
| twenty years when you consider the efficiency gains of
| not burning fuel for energy.
|
| _Highlights of the global energy transition in 2025_ -
| https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/highlights-of-
| the-g... - December 17th, 2025
|
| > Solar and wind are now expanding fast enough to meet
| all new electricity demand, a milestone reached in the
| first three quarters of 2025. Ember's analysis published
| in November shows that these technologies are no longer
| just catching up; they are outpacing demand growth
| itself. Together, solar and wind supplied 17.6% of global
| electricity in the first three quarters of 2025, up from
| 15.2% over the same period last year, pushing the total
| share of low-carbon sources to 43%.
|
| > For the first time across a sustained period,
| renewables, including solar, wind, hydro and smaller
| sources such as geothermal, generated more electricity
| than coal. At the heart of this shift is solar, whose
| growth was more than three times larger than any other
| source of electricity so far in 2025, confirming its role
| as the dominant force reshaping the global power system.
| Another analysis showed that the world is set to add 793
| GW of renewable capacity in 2025, up 11% from the 717 GW
| added in 2024. At this pace, only a modest increase in
| annual additions is needed for the world to stay on track
| to triple global renewables by 2030.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-
| capaci...
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-installed-
| wind...
|
| _The exponential growth of solar power will change the
| world_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40746617 -
| June 2024 (66 comments)
| slashdev wrote:
| We're making great progress, this is true. But we're also
| still increasing our consumption of fossil fuels.
|
| Let's put a number on it. When do you think we reach 50%
| of today's consumption of fossil fuels? IEA seems to
| think it continues to grow until 2050.
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/climate/iea-energy-
| outlook-2025-9.69...
|
| If that's true, I don't think we reach 50% of current
| levels by 2100. That's my very non-scientific WAG. I'll
| be long dead by then. Europe, if they continued drilling
| in the North Sea and Groningen would have long since
| exhausted them - a great capital expenditure and
| investment to bring things back to the original subject
| of conversation.
|
| What do you think? That would give me a good window into
| how realistic your view is.
|
| I think where you're going wrong is perhaps not taking
| into account continued increases in per-capita energy
| usage worldwide. But of course that will happen, not just
| because of population growth, not just because of the
| rest of the world rising slowly towards Western standards
| of living, but continued technological progress which
| depends on energy (or at least it has been that way
| historically.)
|
| Doomberg (the green chicken) correctly observes that when
| we add a new energy source to the mix, we don't tend to
| decrease our consumption of previous energy sources.
|
| For example: global wood consumption for energy is at or
| near all-time high levels, with approximately 2 billion
| cubic meters (m3) of wood fuel consumed in 2023, up from
| 1.5 billion m3 in 1961. While the percentage of global
| energy provided by wood has plummeted from over 90% in
| the early 19th century to around 3-6% today, the total
| volume burned has increased, driven by population growth
| in developing nations and increasing bioenergy use in
| developed ones.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| Those people, and the world in general, would be better
| off burning natural gas for heating and cooking, rather
| than wood.
|
| But environmentalists in the west deny them that option
| because they _don't give a fuck about poor people_ , they
| can just freeze in the dark or choke on the fumes of
| whatever plant fibres / dung they can scavenge from the
| local environment.
|
| I don't know how else to frame it.
|
| I spent, more like wasted, two decades of my live in the
| cult of environmentalism, and they literally just out and
| say it: some people are going to die in the transition
| away from fossil fuels, oh well.
|
| That's easy to say when it's not you who's going to
| freeze in the dark.
| randerson wrote:
| Doesn't the world only have about 50 years [0] worth of
| oil remaining in the ground? Climate change and war
| aside, it seems like that should be a major reason to
| accelerate the change to renewables.
|
| [0] https://www.worldometers.info/oil/
| slashdev wrote:
| No I don't think so. The oil industry is very good at
| discovering and developing resources previously thought
| to be out of reach.
|
| People have been talking about peak oil for decades, as
| long as I can remember, and it never happened.
|
| I think we're technologically capable of extracting more
| oil, coal, and gas than we would ever want to. We would
| cook ourselves with the damage we'd do to the climate. I
| think that's the real constraint - and I hope we pay
| attention to it.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| > Why did they ban combustion vehicles? Because they have
| no domestic fossil fuel supplies and the import cost was
| crushing them
|
| Your closing argument is that some far away land with no
| nat gas / oil reserves of their own isn't convincing
| anyone with nat gas / oil reserves of their own.
|
| Europeans need inexpensive fuels to power their existing
| fleet or vehicles _now_.
|
| Ethiopia's plan doesn't generalise.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Europe has no choice but to lean into low carbon
| generation and EVs now, their hand is forced by
| geopolitical energy events outside of their control.
| These options are objectively cheaper than attempting to
| develop new domestic fossil resources.
|
| China will build every cheap EV Europe will buy if the EU
| cannot build them fast enough (citations on EU EV sales
| are in my comment you replied to), so buy them or
| experience economic pain and ongoing energy inflation
| from choosing to continue to burn fossil fuels for
| energy. These are straightforward choices to make. The
| clean energy path is the cheaper path, based on all
| available data as of this comment.
|
| (from your profile, "They force us to use extremely
| expensive renewable energy to run our energy efficient
| extremely disposable appliances," so I'm unsure how
| effective facts and data will be in this discussion, but
| I am trying very hard to share the relevant facts as a
| shared foundation to discuss from)
|
| Citations:
|
| _Germany 's Solar Boom Eases Power Costs as Gas Price
| Jumps_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47323028 -
| March 2026
|
| _Lazard LCOE+ 2025 [pdf]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47184980 - March
| 2026
|
| _Wind power slashed 4.6B euros off electricity bills in
| Spain last year_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46622463 - January
| 2026
|
| _France 's 2024 Power Grid Was 95% Fossil Free as
| Nuclear, Renewables Jumped_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42770556 - January
| 2025
| nandomrumber wrote:
| > Europe has no choice
|
| I've been following you for 13 years in this site, and I
| really expect more intellectually honest comments from
| you.
|
| You're trying to tell us that developing new battery
| technology, new storage technology, deploying more wind /
| solar and replacing the entire European vehicle fleet, is
| cheaper than building new oil / gas infrastructure.
|
| I'm not buying it.
|
| Regarding the comment in my profile, I've done warranty
| repair work on home appliances. Some manufacturers have
| moved to assembly methods that render appliances
| uneconomical to repair, or impractical. Also, in
| Australia, electricity price increases have been double
| or triple that of general inflation.
|
| The comment in my profile is an objective assessment of
| the facts, not an ideological screed.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > I've been following you for 13 years in this site, and
| I really expect more intellectually honest comments from
| you.
|
| I believe the failure is on your part, not my part, as I
| am simply providing facts. Whether you agree with facts
| is beyond my control. They remain facts. You keep
| stating, inaccurately, that renewables and batteries are
| expensive, when they are the cheapest combined generation
| technology. This is widely proven, and again, I am sorry
| if for whatever reason you are ignoring that fact.
|
| > Also, in Australia, electricity price increases have
| been double or triple that of general inflation.
|
| The facts do not align with your assertion. I have
| provided citations below to assist you in updating your
| mental model on the price and carbon intensity trajectory
| of the Australian power markets.
|
| _Power prices expected to fall by up to 10% from July,
| bringing 'welcome relief' to Australia's east coast_ -
| https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
| news/2026/mar/19/power... - March 19th, 2026
|
| > Power prices on Australia's east coast are predicted to
| fall from July because of increased output from wind
| generation and batteries, and falling electricity
| contract prices, with potential savings up to $1,320 for
| some small businesses. In a draft decision on Thursday,
| the Australia Energy Regulator (AER) proposed a price
| reduction for customers on standing electricity plans -
| known as the "default market offer" - of between 1.3% to
| 10.1% for residential customers, and between 8.5% and
| 21.2% for small businesses, depending on the region.
| Savage said reduced wholesale prices were the "biggest
| driver" behind the draft decision for 2026-27. "We've had
| lots more renewables come into the market. We've had good
| wind, solar and battery performance." The draft
| determination also introduces the "solar sharer" offer,
| an opt-in plan that includes three hours of free power in
| the middle of the day to take advantage of abundant solar
| energy. The energy minister, Chris Bowen, said the idea
| was designed to share the benefits of Australia's solar
| success. "For households that can shift some of their
| usage into the free power period, this can mean real
| savings on bills, whether that is running the dishwasher,
| doing the washing, or heating hot water during the day."
|
| Solar is so cheap and plentiful (as there is not yet
| enough battery storage on the network to time shift this
| power), they plan to give it away for free for ~3
| hours/day in parts of the Australian NEM system.
|
| _Australia 's renewables boom delivers coveted power
| price payoff_ -
| https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/australias-
| renew... - February 10th, 2026 ("Australia's wholesale
| electricity prices fell to the lowest in four years in
| 2025, bucking the rising price trends seen elsewhere and
| validating claims that renewables-heavy power system
| overhauls can help lower consumer power costs.")
|
| _Near 100 pct renewable electricity for Australia's main
| grid is achievable and affordable: Year 4 update_ -
| https://reneweconomy.com.au/near-100-pct-renewable-
| electrici... - January 29th, 2026
|
| _Big batteries oust gas in 'transformational' grid
| overhaul_ - https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-
| climate/big-batteries-... - January 26th, 2026
|
| _Australia becomes world's third-largest utility battery
| market_ - https://www.pv-
| magazine.com/2025/10/21/australia-becomes-wor... -
| October 21st, 2025
|
| Further data can confirm this at
| https://openelectricity.org.au/ (which has both carbon
| intensity and price data for all Australian electrical
| grids except the Northern Territory)
| nandomrumber wrote:
| I'm an Australian living in Australia connected to the
| eastern grid.
|
| I have the invoices from my electricity bills to prove my
| assertion.
|
| I used to pay 12 cents per kilowatt hour, now I pay 36
| cents or more. That's a 300% increase for electricity
| prices vs, if I recall correctly, 26% for general
| inflation over the same 25 year period.
|
| And you're trying to tell me I'm wrong.
|
| Why?
|
| I'll believe a drop in electricity prices when I see it.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Renewables do not reduce the need for grid investment
| costs between generators and you, that revenue and
| capital would be required regardless if you are unable or
| unwilling to produce all of the electricity to meet your
| domestic consumption requirements from rooftop solar and
| on site battery storage.
|
| Wholesale generation costs + distribution costs + taxes =
| your bill.
| slashdev wrote:
| I am 100% bullish on both solar energy and EVs, and I
| share your optimism around the technology.
|
| But I think you're being too optimistic about what this
| means for global fossil fuel usage. Definitely over the
| next decade, but potentially over much longer periods
| than that.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Because the continued survival of civilization depends on
| leaving fossil fuel in the ground. If the transition isn't
| fast enough then we will have horrible, lethal shortages,
| but that's still better than the worst climate scenarios.
| slashdev wrote:
| That may or may not be true. But it won't stay in the
| ground as long as there is money to be made by extracting
| and consuming it.
|
| Right now all that's happening is the US is extracting
| that natural gas, and the middle east extracting that
| oil, and Europe is importing it. Which pollutes more and
| costs more. Just develop your domestic supplies.
|
| I don't follow your logic.
| Tostino wrote:
| That is because that money is allowed to be made by
| externalizing the cost to future generations.
|
| People hate migrants enough as it is. Climate crisis
| migrations will make these "little" war migrations seem
| quaint.
| slashdev wrote:
| I agree, but that's the world we live in.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| > That is because that money is allowed to be made by
| externalizing the cost to future generations.
|
| I don't understand why you wrote this in response to the
| comment you replied to.
|
| No matter which way you slice it, the UK and Europe using
| the oil from wells physically closer to them _has to be_
| less energy intensive that shipping oil / gas from far
| away.
|
| What bearing does externalising anything have on that
| fact.
| Tostino wrote:
| Demand isn't static.
|
| Economics 101: if Europe taps new wells, global supply
| increases. Higher supply drives down prices. Lower prices
| induce more consumption.
|
| We wouldn't just be cleanly swapping imported fuel for
| domestic fuel 1:1; we'd be making it cheaper to burn more
| fossil fuels globally. The marginal emissions saved on
| shipping are completely wiped out by the net increase in
| total carbon burned.
|
| The only reason expanding that supply looks like a "win"
| on a balance sheet today is exactly because the long-term
| climate cost of burning that newly available fuel is
| still being passed on to the future.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| > long-term climate cost of burning that newly available
| fuel is still being passed on to the future.
|
| That's not science.
|
| That's wishful thinking.
|
| We can't actually know the long term climate-costs of
| burning fossil fuels.
|
| It's unfalsifiable.
|
| We don't have a second identical Earth we can use as a
| control.
|
| Expending the fossil fuel supply today (months) reduces
| the impact of global oil / gas shocks to people suffering
| high prices today.
|
| Waiting for your team to invent new battery and storage
| technology, and littering the countryside with wind
| turbines and replacing the entire existing vehicle fleet
| does nothing to help people now.
| Tostino wrote:
| Your initial claim was that Europe should start opening
| more wells for domestic production.
|
| If they started right now, that would help with this
| current oil/ gas shock in the market? They wouldn't come
| online until far after this is over.
|
| You know you're being disingenuous. This is not a
| discussion you're having in good faith so I'm going to
| just going to end it here.
| slashdev wrote:
| It would be useful against future supply shocks, don't
| you think?
| nandomrumber wrote:
| Months to years vs your plan of doing nothing for
| decades, with technology that doesn't exist.
| Scarblac wrote:
| The only direct thing we (the Netherlands) can do to
| prevent carastrophic climate change is to leave fossil
| fuels on our territory in the ground. Everything else is
| indirect.
| kyboren wrote:
| I know this is an unfathomable concept, but to actually
| "leave fossil fuels [...] in the ground" you have to
| _stop using fossil fuels_. Burning fossil fuels someone
| else refused to leave in the ground means--surprisingly--
| that fossil fuels weren 't left in the ground after all.
|
| And it turns out that we actually live on a shared planet
| with a common atmosphere; sourcing your fuels from abroad
| does nothing to prevent climate change. But it does mean
| that you are unable to secure some of the most
| fundamental inputs to your economy.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| You're willing to sacrifice the lives of at least some
| poor people who exist now, or are likely to exist in the
| near future, for a theory that is unfalsifiable.
|
| That's not since.
|
| That's brainwashing, and it's not even good brainwashing.
| myrmidon wrote:
| > You're willing to sacrifice the lives of at least some
| poor people who exist now, or are likely to exist in the
| near future, for a theory that is unfalsifiable.
|
| What exactly do you mean with "unfalsifiable"? We
| actually measure atmospheric CO2, sea level and
| temperature; that's plenty falsifiability to me. And the
| greenhouse effect itself is not even in question.
|
| Fossil emissions are sacrificing people not just from
| climate change in the future, but _right now_ from air
| pollution, too (about 5M deaths per year actually,
| according to https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38030155/).
| nandomrumber wrote:
| Climate science wants us to ignore the geological record
| and ignore geological processes.
|
| A cubic kilometre of lava at 1200 degrees C is enough
| energy for thirty (30!) hurricanes.
|
| It's entirely possible that sea temperature rise is a
| result of geologic processes at or near the sea bed, and
| when you warm a liquid dissolved gasses are liberated.
|
| But climate science wants us to ignore all that and place
| the blame entirely on human caused CO2 emissions and cow
| farts, while we are literally living through and _ice
| age_.
| xorcist wrote:
| What exactly is your argument here? That organic
| chemistry is all wrong and oxidization is unfalsifiable,
| or that the fossil industry itself is fudging the numbers
| to make it look life we're oxidizing less organic matter
| than we think?
| Scarblac wrote:
| It means having to make serious decisions on imperfect
| information, yes. But that's life.
| Arnt wrote:
| They're wrong.
|
| A couple of years ago the last of the exploration rigs in
| Norway left Norwegian waters. Because nothing that could be
| drilled (and hasn't already) can compete on price with solar
| etc.
|
| Lots of people think someone should do this or that. They
| don't invest their own money though, they just think someone
| else should do, etc.
| alvah wrote:
| How did 40 wells get drilled in the Norwegian shelf last
| year, and 42 the year before? You can't just make things
| up.
| myrmidon wrote:
| This appears to directly contradict you, with exploration
| activity increasing in 2025 (compared to 2024) to 49 wells:
|
| https://www.norskpetroleum.no/en/exploration/exploration-
| act...
| Arnt wrote:
| You're right. There must be something more to it.
|
| I notice that all the recent finds on sodir.no are close
| to existing fields, like 5km, or even in existing fields.
| My friend who told me this works in strange places, far
| from existing infrastructure. I assume there are
| different kinds of equipment, and he was talking about
| his kind, and I understood it to be more general.
| tac19 wrote:
| > It feels like this collective insanity will never end
|
| They simply do not believe that the consequences will be as
| bad as the models predict. And a lot of trust and good will
| has been expended on social issues, for example the fight to
| allow transgender people to use whatever bathroom they
| choose, or to promote childhood reassignment surgery, etc. As
| a strategic decision, we have taken our eye off the ball,
| climate change is actually an existential threat, bathroom
| choice never was. You can argue that we can do two things at
| once, but there is a cost for dividing our focus and effort;
| even if it didn't raise the hackles of those already less
| predisposed to worry about the environment.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > And a lot of trust and good will has been expended on
| social issues, for example the fight to allow transgender
| people to use whatever bathroom they choose, or to promote
| childhood reassignment surgery, etc.
|
| I think a lot of people miss this: each time you take up
| the good fight, you spend some trust/goodwill. If you're
| going to expend the public's goodwill, make sure that there
| is nothing more important to you than what you are
| expending it on, or expend less of it to save some trust
| and goodwill for this.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| The attention to those fringe issues is brought by those
| conservatives and lobbyists etc who explicitly want to
| distract and divide attention from climate change and
| renewables.
|
| It's strongly my opinion that there are far fewer people
| championing 'wokeness' than there are 'getting outraged by
| it's pervasiveness'. Mainly for the fact that all media
| like to seize upon controversy, thus turning minor fringe
| issues into multiple days in a row of front page headline
| items.
|
| Blech. I've done the same thing...
|
| Address climate change, accelerate the shift towards
| renewables. It's something that actually fucking matters!
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| > for example the fight to allow transgender people to use
| whatever bathroom they choose
|
| Ugh, I'm going to regret commenting here, but it really
| seems like this obsession is almost entirely on the right
| wing. In the US, the centrist Dems have been banging the
| appeasement drum for my entire political life, and it's
| gotten us nowhere.
|
| Like... the right isn't going to wake up and start caring
| about climate change if everyone just shuts up and lets
| them discriminate against the hate group of the moment. The
| bathroom thing is also such a bait and switch, same as
| sports. In my state, we removed protections for housing and
| employment discrimination against trans people because...
| one trans athlete existed?
|
| The real question we need to answer is why the right is so
| obsessed with other peoples' genitals, to the point that
| they have to make up stories and generate AI videos to get
| mad at.
|
| I for one am sick of people focusing on a tiny fraction of
| the population and making them a scapegoat for everything.
| You're absolutely right that climate change is a bigger
| issue - so why can't we focus on it?
|
| We can't focus on it because the anti-reality reactionaries
| are using trans people as a distraction. It's all one big
| malignant tumor on society, not a collection of unrelated
| issues.
| cogman10 wrote:
| It's all about propaganda. Rightwing media is incredibly
| well funded and a big portion of that reason is because
| rich people have been using propaganda to boost their
| industries since almost forever.
|
| Republicans in the late 60s were the party of the EPA.
| What changed? People like the Koch brothers dumped
| literal millions into rightwing outlets big and small to
| talk about how awesome it is to burn oil.
|
| A similar thing happened with smoking. Rush Limbaugh,
| even as he had lung cancer, was talking about what a myth
| it was that smoking caused lung cancer almost right up
| until his death.
|
| Whenever you find highly monied interests, you can find a
| right wing propagandist that will tell you black is
| white.
|
| And the insidious thing is that they don't spend their
| entire broadcast talking about the glories of oil or
| smoking. No, the best ones just insert it in as little
| throw away lines while talking about feminazis, gay
| people, trans people, black people, mexicans, etc.
|
| That's effectively how the propaganda works. Get people
| highly tuned up on an emotional topic and then just slip
| in here and there lies that you don't even think about.
|
| As a kid, I listened to probably a thousand hours of
| rightwing talkshow hosts because of my parents. Once I
| started viewing things with a more critical mind it
| became beyond obvious what game they are playing.
| Unfortunately, not everyone picks up on this game.
| chazzalpha wrote:
| The propaganda machine is powerful, precisely because the
| ultra-wealthy who fund it want the people to fight a
| culture war instead of a class war. The wealthy have been
| successfully astroturfing right-wing anti-democratic
| movements for decades, to the point that fascism is
| making a comeback. Climate-change denial was one of their
| earlier experiments, and anti-trans psyop is their most
| recent. The result is the same, creating false divisions
| among the masses who have more in common than they
| realize.
|
| The world is burning before our eyes. It is
| unconscionable to use the rights and the bodies of the
| marginalized to put out the fire. What would be the point
| of making a better society if it requires leaving the
| most vulnerable behind? How would that even be a better
| society? We must be cognizant of who the real enemy is
| and never do the oppressor's work for them. Billionaires
| have class solidarity; for our planet's survival, we must
| build solidarity as well. Fight the class war, and you
| fight climate change, transphobia, and all threats to
| life and liberty.
| tac19 wrote:
| > climate change is a bigger issue - so why can't we
| focus on it?
|
| What it needed was for strong left-wing people to stand
| up and denounce the distraction. To claim loud and
| proudly that transgender issues were not important when
| compared to climate change. To refocus the public on
| climate change and take the wind out of the fringe issue.
|
| Instead, we took to the street for BLM, when it wasn't an
| important issue, when compared to climate change. You
| can't blame the right-wing for the number of people who
| filled the streets for BLM... during a pandemic where we
| were supposed to socially distance. It cost us doubly.
| And not one important left-wing voice stood up and said
| so.
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| There's a Guante lyric I really like about this topic
| that I think highlights how I feel about your argument:
|
| "Those who turn hoses on water protectors
|
| Are those who cage "Stop Cop City" protestors
|
| And enforce the brutality of the border
|
| Same ones who enforce bans on drag performers
|
| Same ones who enforce bans
|
| On crossing state lines for abortions
|
| Some of those that work forces
|
| Are the same that burn crosses
|
| Are the same that burn everything
|
| For the bosses"
|
| I don't think we totally disagree, but I come down
| differently on where to point the blame.
|
| > What it needed was for strong left-wing people to stand
| up and denounce the distraction.
|
| I mean, that did happen.
|
| > To claim loud and proudly that transgender issues were
| not important when compared to climate change.
|
| That was said, along with housing
| prices/inflation/corruption.
|
| > Instead, we took to the street for BLM, when it wasn't
| an important issue
|
| Here's where you're really, really losing me. You're:
|
| 1. Pivoting to a totally different issue
|
| 2. Ignoring the role of the media in promoting the most
| controversial takes and presentation of both issues. It
| sucks to blame people for having values when the real
| problem is for-profit engagement-based media.
|
| 3. Ick - it really rubs me the wrong way to see people
| say "BLM wasn't an important issue when compared to
| climate change". That seems really easy to say if you're
| not under routine threat of state violence, but BLM was a
| reaction to a very real epidemic of state violence
| against black people. To those people, that kind of
| immediate threat IS as big a deal as climate change. If
| anything, criticize the branding of "defund the police"
| (which was so bad I half wonder if it was a psyop).
|
| Moreover, part of my original point was that climate
| change isn't a separate thing - it's a problem because
| the same systems that use wedge issues to divide us all
| benefit from the unsustainable status-quo.
|
| The realpolitik take on this seems so short sighted - it
| takes for granted that some progress can be made on
| climate change by ignoring our values, while also
| ignoring that alienating the affected groups makes it
| harder to change our society enough to do anything about
| climate change.
| tac19 wrote:
| > 1. Pivoting to a totally different issue
|
| No, i am not. It's the exact same issue. If you honestly
| believe that climate change is an existential crisis,
| then ALL other issues are by definition less important.
| That might be difficult to accept, because it feels like
| saying other issues aren't important. But that's not what
| i'm saying at all.
|
| What i'm saying is, if something is about to destroy the
| entire world, then every other concern is a distraction.
| What does it matter what bathrooms we use, or if the
| police are using violence too much, etc?
|
| Our actions speak to people who don't believe that
| climate change is real. Every time we take to the streets
| for ANY OTHER ISSUE, we re-affirm their belief that
| climate change isn't something to worry about.
|
| You are showing exactly why we have been less effective
| at convincing people than we could have been. Because
| even you are diminishing the importance of climate
| change. Why should "they" give up any freedom, or luxury,
| in the name of climate change, if we give ourselves
| permission to assemble in public during a pandemic for a
| BLM protest, that let's face it, accomplished little.
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| > No, i am not. It's the exact same issue. If you
| honestly believe that climate change is an existential
| crisis, then ALL other issues are by definition less
| important.
|
| You're using a very superficial argument and ignoring
| several of my points. If your literal home is on fire, is
| putting it out or running to safety less important than
| climate change? If you need to change an entire economic
| system to solve climate change, can you cavalierly ignore
| inconvenient members of that system that might be needed
| for a sufficiently motivated coalition? If you're worried
| about distractions, how can you blame the victims instead
| of the people committing the distraction?
|
| > What does it matter what bathrooms we use
|
| It ISNT about the bathrooms - that's the propaganda
| framing that you seem to have uncritically accepted. It's
| about random people trying to live their lives, and being
| denied housing and employment because of who they are.
| It's about the fact that we're talking about these people
| ONLY because of the propaganda machine.
|
| > if the police are using violence too much
|
| Must be nice that you apparently don't face the sharp end
| of this. To avoid triggering you with the "P" word, I'd
| suggest that _your life experience is not universal and
| you should consider trying to understand a little bit
| about other peoples ' lives_.
|
| > Our actions speak to people who don't believe that
| climate change is real.
|
| And ignoring our values isn't going to convince those
| people, and those people will still think we're a bunch
| of woke idiots because their media has captured their
| minds.
|
| > Every time we take to the streets for ANY OTHER ISSUE,
| we re-affirm their belief that climate change isn't
| something to worry about.
|
| [all sorts of citations needed for unsupported reasoning]
| tac19 wrote:
| I didn't ignore any of your points. If your house is on
| fire, then put it out. But DON'T start a social movement
| that distracts from climate change. Don't distract
| everyone by claiming that fire is the most important
| thing, worthy of gathering during a pandemic about.
|
| This isn't about propaganda, well not in the sense you're
| using it. The argument, which you seem to disagree with,
| is the importance of focusing on a single existential
| issue, and ignoring everything else. To actually prove to
| people that are doubters, that WE actually BELIEVE what
| we're saying. That this really is the key thing to be
| worried about.
|
| Everything else you're saying all amounts to the same
| argument, that climate change isn't important enough to
| take focus away from these other important issues. We
| just fundamentally disagree. And I contend your attitude
| is exactly why we have had so much trouble convincing the
| doubters that we're serious about climate change... when
| we're so willing to give just as much (if not more)
| energy to these other "distractions"
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| Your argument basically boils down to "Climate change is
| the most important thing, so action on any other issue is
| bad."
|
| I don't see you responding anywhere to the general
| categories of criticisms I raised:
|
| 1. Climate change isn't one thing - it's a systemic
| problem in a system with lots of problems. 2. It seems
| ludicrous to assume that suddenly people will listen to
| us about climate change if we ignore other issues,
| ESPECIALLY because doing so would make us (or at least,
| me) moral hypocrites. We haven't even discussed direct
| causal issues, like political corruption. I honestly
| think no meaningful action is possible in the US on
| climate change until we have major reforms of our
| electoral and media systems - where does that put me in
| your oversimplified schema? 3. You're completely ignoring
| my argument about immediate needs. This is actually kind
| of funny:
|
| > If your house is on fire, then put it out. But DON'T
| start a social movement that distracts from climate
| change.
|
| The fire in this metaphor IS a social problem! Putting
| the fire out IS a social movement!!
|
| I think we're going to have to agree to disagree, but
| either way - here's hoping we can do something meaningful
| about climate change. Have a good day.
| tac19 wrote:
| Social action has a price, both in effort, attention, and
| goodwill; there is no free lunch. If you are blind to the
| COST of social action you will fail to realize how you
| are hurting our chances of fighting climate change.
|
| If you honestly believe that it is an existential crisis,
| then you must accept that NOTHING WILL EXIST if we fail
| to address climate change. So any social gain we make
| fighting fires will be wiped out anyway if we fail to
| deal with climate change. That you don't see this, and
| that you are willing for all these other issues to share
| the stage with climate change, is a big problem. You want
| to blame the media, and the right-wing, and perhaps other
| things for the lack of progress, without fully
| comprehending your own part.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > In my state, we removed protections for housing and
| employment discrimination against trans people because...
| one trans athlete existed?
|
| I think you're sort of proving the parent's point - when
| you're in an existential fight, is it really that
| important that you use the limited attention of the
| public to fight for the rights of a _single_ person?
|
| Trans rights ain't even that popular; most people are
| okay with "you think you're someone else? Well, fine, no
| skin off my nose". OTOH, the majority of people globally
| aren't okay with "It must be a crime if you don't treat
| me as a member of the opposite sex".
|
| The identity politics, of all forms, sucked out much of
| the air from the room leaving precious little left for
| discussing things like climate change.
|
| Whether we like it or not, human attention is a limited
| resource. If you're going to allow a few vocal nutters to
| direct the course of _your_ discussion, then you can 't
| very well complain, now can you?
|
| I mean, that's what leaders are supposed to do - direct
| the discussion. When the opposition says "They want to
| let men into women's changing rooms", then you say "No,
| we don't support that at all".
|
| I mean, voters find some things distasteful - you have to
| choose which of those things you are going to argue for,
| and which you are going to back down from.
|
| Diluting your message so that you mention a little bit of
| everything is just dumb politics, because _human
| attention is a limited resource!_
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| I made my position clear in other comments, so I'll leave
| it at that. I do not find your arguments persuasive.
| asmsecnd wrote:
| In the US, it was the left who decided to push gender
| identity into law and policy, with no regard to the
| adverse consequences of doing so. That the right decided
| to capitalize on this for political reasons is just them
| taking an opportunity that was basically handed to them
| on a plate.
|
| Interestingly it's a bit different in the UK. Both the
| main left and right parties had been promoting gender
| identity based policy for years, and it was only though
| the dedicated efforts of feminists who pointed out all
| the problems with this, and particularly the negative
| impacts on women and girls, that it recently started to
| be reversed.
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| I don't think you and I live in the same information
| universe, since I disagree with literally every thing
| you've said here. Unfortunately I don't have the energy
| to productively try to disabuse you of (what I believe
| are) delusions, misinformation and ignorance, so... have
| a nice day I guess.
| asmsecnd wrote:
| Perhaps we have received different information on this
| topic. I am curious why you disagree though, as I
| consider my perspective to based in verifiable fact.
|
| For example, in the UK, it was Theresa May's right-wing
| Conservative government who planned to reform the law to
| make it easier, and with fewer medical requirements, for
| people to acquire a Gender Recognition Certificate. They
| had a public consultation too. This move was supported by
| the left-wing Labour Party.
|
| And in recent years, legal action and advocacy by
| feminist groups has been a highly significant factor in
| policy changes around this area, most notably For Women
| Scotland who took their legal challenge all the way to
| the UK's Supreme Court, winning the case with a statutory
| reinterpretation of the Equality Act.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| The reality is that the US is divided on gender issues.
| Full stop.
|
| It is a distraction and a useful one for MAGA. Among the
| Democrats, we keep getting tripped up by it and nominate
| candidates who don't realize the political land mine that
| it is. I am for gender equality, for racial equality, for
| renewables, for nuclear energy. But please win the
| election by prioritizing talking about jobs, jobs, jobs,
| economic disopportunity, and naked corruption. After
| winning the election, then you can address gender issues
| along with the full slate of Democratic platform
| priorities.
| zardo wrote:
| How are you supposed to know which Democrat secretly
| supports trans rights?
| Sabinus wrote:
| Dems are supposed to be able to talk frankly about their
| beliefs without the left wing of the party destroying
| them. There shouldn't be political consequences from
| within the Dem coalition for saying "I don't think we
| should have trans people in professional women's sports".
| Since the Dems can't talk about the policies, the right
| wing gets to take up all the attention on them.
| aaAaaAai wrote:
| Some Democrats do. Kara Dansky of Women's Declaration
| International, for instance.
| breakyerself wrote:
| Kamala Harris started out with a surge of popularity.
| Talking about corporate price gouging and selecting Tim
| Walz as her running mate who had clear populist messaging.
|
| Then the strategists who think like you got in her ear.
| Told her to stop attacking corporations to protect
| donations. Had her campaign with Cheney and talk about
| shooting home invaders. Then of course she refused to take
| a strong stand on the genocide in Gaza.
|
| Her momentum faded and she lost. In the aftermath some
| braindead analysts tried to blame words like Latinx and
| transgender rights.
|
| She didn't campaign on that shit. She campaigned as
| Republican lite and it fucked her.
|
| The fascists aren't going to rewards you with good
| environmental policy just because you throw trans people
| under the bus. They'll just demand another sacrifice.
| Meanwhile gender affirming surgery on minors is so
| fleetingly rare that it basically only exists in right wing
| propaganda and here you are repeating it like it's a valid
| concern.
| davidw wrote:
| Well "Europeans on Twitter" are probably the kind of people
| who look at the owner of the site posting about a homeland
| for white people and that kind of thing and aren't bothered
| too much by it.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| It doesn't matter how blue you die your hair, we are going
| to need oil for transport fuels for at least _many_ years
| to come.
|
| Countries that can be oil independent definitely should do
| that.
| myrmidon wrote:
| > Countries that can be oil independent definitely should
| do that.
|
| This does not necessarily follow.
|
| Doubling down on becoming oil independent might have a
| massive price because the required investments into
| extraction and refining industry could also be spent on
| renewables.
|
| Furthermore, we already see renewables outcompeting
| fossils on price/kWh, so ending up in a really
| inefficient sunk-cost pit is pretty likely, with all the
| refinery investments not even paying back their cost
| because a conflict _now_ does _not_ guarantee that fossil
| prices /demand will _stay_ high.
| aaplok wrote:
| > It doesn't matter how blue you die your hair
|
| If your intention is honest engagement with people you
| disagree with, you should refrain from ad-hominem attacks
| like this. Work with their arguments, not with their
| tastes or appearances.
|
| If your intention is to ridicule them and convince
| yourself they are not worth discussing with, then ad-
| hominem is fine, but not engaging at all is better.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| >It doesn't matter how blue you die your hair
|
| What is the relevance of this statement?
| esperent wrote:
| I wish there was somewhere I could talk about world affairs
| and European affairs with reasonable people, the way I can
| talk about tech on HN. But anywhere I've tried - Twitter,
| r/europe or any smaller subs I've found are just filled with
| reactionaries trying to stir up hate for whatever reasons
| they have. There _are_ reasonable voices there, people who
| are capable of actual conversation, but they 're just drowned
| out. I used to comfort myself by thinking they must all be 14
| year olds, or Russian bots, or whatever, and some probably
| are, but now I'm convinced the large majority are just hate
| filled adults who've gotten stuck on Twitter, Facebook,
| reddit etc. and literally spend _all_ their time there
| basically shouting as if they were lunatics on a street
| corner.
|
| I might pass by but I wouldn't stand and listen to an angry
| man on a street corner, and I definitely wouldn't try and
| have a conversation nearby (or with) them. So why would I
| expect that to work on Twitter?
| guyomes wrote:
| In this regard, the subreddit r/NeutralPolitics is
| interesting: it aims at evidence-based discussions on
| political issues. Threads are somehow in-between HN and
| Wikipedia. It is definitely interesting to read, and at the
| same time, participating in a discussion is quite daunting.
| anovikov wrote:
| But why does US need any of that? It's a massive exporter of
| fossil fuels and will be much richer as a result (but yes just
| as _every_ other way of getting richer, it will also increase
| inequality).
| standeven wrote:
| Burning fossil fuels also raises the global temperature,
| reduces air quality, and people still have to pay more at the
| pump.
| anovikov wrote:
| But US mostly wins from global warming relatively, right? I
| mean, it's going to suffer less than others (except EU),
| for geographical reasons, thus winning. I don't think
| global warming is a concern for US at all (some places
| sure, Florida will be royally fucked, but not most places).
| graemep wrote:
| The big winners from global warming will be Russia, China
| and Canada - places that will become more habitable.
|
| Its not just Florida. There are multiple problems. Many
| can be mitigated, but I very much doubt they will be as
| its easy to put off.
| _alternator_ wrote:
| This seems like soft trolling. Global warming is
| canonically the opposite of a zero sum game. Everyone is
| losing.
| anovikov wrote:
| Everyone is suffering sure, but what matters is relative
| degree of it. Side that suffers less, wins against others
| and that's the only thing that matters.
|
| And no, in China global warming means worsening
| desertification, in Russia it means melting permafrost
| that covers 60% of the country, same in Canada. Europe
| and the US are uniquely positioned to suffer the least
| from it and many industries will win outright. For
| example, there will be year-round tourist season within
| continental EU: all summer on the Baltics and the North
| Sea and all winter in the Mediterranean; winemaking in
| Spain and southern France will suffer badly and in some
| places may become commercially non-viable, but will
| expand to great lot more territory in northern Germany,
| low countries, Poland, UK, thus enabling a lot richer
| wines due to great variety of soils.
| _alternator_ wrote:
| > Everyone is suffering sure, but what matters is
| relative degree of it.
|
| Is that what matters?
| defrost wrote:
| In the short to medium term, sure . . . again, left
| _unchecked_ gets bad for every human when tipping points
| are passed.
|
| Eg: When surface ice gets very low the trapped heat will
| go more torward heating water than melting ice.
|
| That's _very_ double plus bad (ask a high school physics
| teacher about the energy used to melt, say, a kilogram of
| ice .. then ask them by how many degrees C does that same
| energy raise the temp. of water).
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Don't forget all the states in the middle that are
| experiencing the worst drought in a millenium, with
| snowpack and river flows at record lows, all while each
| state is adding more people (and thus more water demand),
| and interstate river compacts expire, and years-long
| negotiations on a renewal have been fruitless.
| defrost wrote:
| "Oils ain't Oils" - old motor oil company slogan from the
| 1980s.
|
| What the US exports isn't "car ready" - most primary oil
| sources are heavily biased one way or the other (heavy,
| sweet, light, etc) and the useful end product is _blended_.
|
| It's not straightforward for the US to get high on it's own
| supply and even what it delivers to others is less useful to
| thse others when other non-US sources aren't readily
| available to blend in.
|
| Also ... using sequestered carbon has been increasing the
| insulation factor of our common atmosphere, left unchecked
| (ie. stopping the use of _fossil_ fuels) is a major problem
| for the coming century.
| _alternator_ wrote:
| The argument that high oil prices are good for America is one
| of the most ridiculous ideas being pushed right now. Yes, on
| a trade deficit front, it slightly reduces the net amount of
| money leaving. But we are also the world's largest consumer
| of oil, and it literally powers every part of our economy.
|
| Saying that America is better off with high gas prices is
| like saying Americans will eat more beef if the price of beef
| doubles because we make lots of beef. Cattle ranchers will be
| better off; everyone else eats more potatoes.
| anovikov wrote:
| Think of it this way: less trade deficit means more imports
| that come through without causing extra damage. It means
| more cheap products of all kinds for everyone.
|
| And yes this is exactly how petrostates work. I wonder why
| is it surprising. Sure their population also pays higher
| prices for gas at the pump when the oil goes up, but they
| massively win in every other way.
|
| It's simply a long, embedded stereotype of "high oil price
| = bad" because of traumatic experience of 1973 and 1979.
| It's different today. The higher the oil price, the better
| it is for America.
|
| Also again, US gas prices are by far the cheapest among
| every halfway developed countries. Everyone else will
| suffer more. So relatively again, US wins even here.
| dalyons wrote:
| It causes massive inflation of goods and food prices, as
| farming and supply chains are heavily dependent on fuel
| prices. How is runaway inflation "massively winning in
| every other way" for regular americans?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > US gas prices are by far the cheapest among every
| halfway developed countries
|
| Most of the retail pump price difference is self-
| inflicted, though. If those other countries wanted to
| suffer less in that regard, they know how.
| usefulcat wrote:
| The price of oil isn't just about the "cost of gas at the
| pump". It's about how much it costs to transport
| _anything_. There aren 't many products that don't need
| to be transported or that don't depend at least partially
| on something that does.
|
| So yeah, when the price of oil goes up, oil companies
| make more money, and prices go up for pretty much
| everyone.
| _alternator_ wrote:
| The difference between the US and a petrostate is that
| the US is rich because we use gas, not because we make
| gas. Put differently, petrostate economies rely upon on
| oil revenues; we rely on the actual product at every
| stage in our economy.
|
| There is a segment of our economy that does benefit from
| oil revenues, but the vast majority of our economic
| output involves oil consumption.
| noelsusman wrote:
| Being a net exporter of a global commodity is only relevant
| in an extremely acute crisis (e.g. WWIII).
|
| Plus one of the reasons why we export so much oil is because
| it's cheaper to import oil to a refinery in New Jersey from
| Saudi Arabia than to get it there from Texas due to some very
| stupid US laws.
| pif wrote:
| Hello, could you please elaborate about those laws?
| noelsusman wrote:
| The Jones Act requires that all goods transported by
| water between US ports be carried on ships that were
| built in the US, fly the US flag, and crewed by US
| citizens. That effectively makes it impossible to ship
| oil between US states at scale without a direct pipeline.
|
| Though to be clear I believe we would still be a net
| exporter without the Jones Act, it's just one of those
| weird things about the US oil industry.
| devilbunny wrote:
| Assuming you mean the Jones Act?
| weinzierl wrote:
| _" As someone who's been pushing for renewables for quite a
| while now it's dismaying that it's taken a war to accelerate
| this push, but I'm glad to see that it's happening at least."_
|
| It takes tremendous hardship and a lot of time to push people
| to renewables. Give them their cheap oil back and they are
| hooked on the needle again in no time. Historically we've been
| there, multiple times.
|
| Sorry for the cynicism. I too hope it is finally happening at
| least, and maybe it is at last.
| shevy-java wrote:
| > It's doubly dismaying that my own country (US) is still
| doubling down on fossil fuels despite everything.
|
| A few get rich. Project2025 (that is, their hardwing agenda is
| the cover up for theft).
|
| We need to monitor these guys and then take back what they took
| from all of us globally.
| graemep wrote:
| > renewables do have the advantage that once you have the
| infrastructure in place it keeps working without continuously
| importing fuel
|
| There are issues if the infrastructure is network accessible
| and is updatable. The consumer end of it (e.g. home solar) is
| often dependent on apps etc. and is very vulnerable. I hope
| (probably optimistically) that critical systems are air gapped.
|
| Its always been obvious to me that we should have a variety or
| energy sources for security and its complacent to think
| otherwise. Over-reliance on an unstable region makes it all the
| worse.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| The only thing that is dismaying you about this war is the fact
| that it caused people to push for more renewables?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| They didn't say 'only'. Unless there was an edit after your
| reply
| baq wrote:
| Nobody wants to sacrifice growth today for stability tomorrow
| and there are good reasons why this stance makes sense.
|
| That said I'm all for it, too bad the supply chain disruption
| that this mess will cause will make it twice as hard as it
| could've been.
| spacephysics wrote:
| Unfortunately much of China's perverse tactics (they've done
| this in a wide array of industries) is to steal patented tech
| and trade secrets from companies outside China, subsidize the
| manufacturing and development etc, then sell their product at
| an artificially low price which kills the original company and
| good faith competitors as they cannot compete with the
| artificially lower prices.
|
| Then once the dust settles they're the only company which can
| handle large order sizes required for supply chains to build
| downstream products, and the world becomes further reliant on
| them.
|
| Security concerns and national defense aside, a prime example
| pre-ban was Huawei layer 1 infrastructure products which far
| exceeded feature density, and cost effectiveness than
| competitors due to the subsidies. They've done similar tactics
| with solar panels.
|
| This doesn't imply China or their state sponsored companies
| never create novel tech, but there's a hugely perverse system
| whose purpose is to illegally undercut competition overseas
| with no real recourse from the victim countries outside of
| total company bans. And even then, people find a way around the
| bans and the damage is already done to the original companies.
|
| Solar panels:
| https://www.marketplace.org/story/2021/12/09/chinas-state-sp...
|
| Huawai: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/chinas-huawei-threat-
| us-na...
| evolighting wrote:
| subsidize ?
|
| no all that shit just not worth that much;
|
| The profit marginsof these industries are ridiculously high,
| to the point that if you're willing, you can manufacture many
| useful, high-quality products.
|
| only when China could build them, there are real "free"
| market
| hypeatei wrote:
| Ideas are cheap and execution is what matters. Any attempt to
| "own" an idea is an exercise in futility and a sign that you
| probably suck at execution. Sorry, but we should be
| encouraging competition and reducing barriers, not sitting
| here crying that the Chinese are running laps around us
| because of intellectual property "theft"
| cogman10 wrote:
| At this point, I guess I don't really care.
|
| The reason china was able to do this is because of the free
| trade movement that started with Reagan to undercut US
| unions. US companies outsourced all the manufacturing as much
| as possible and china capitalized on the market opportunity.
|
| Am I supposed to be mad that jobs shipped to china who steals
| a tech weren't shipped to Vietnam who hasn't stolen tech?
|
| China is hardly the only country that has used internal
| policies and loose intellectual copyrights to get ahead
| (Famously, the US did the same thing in the late 1800s,
| stealing factory designs from england). And part of the
| reason US companies still do business with them is because
| they are cheaper.
| javcasas wrote:
| And the US subsidizes corn and attacks other oil producers.
| And Korea puts tariffs to benefit their local technology
| industry.
|
| Welcome to the real world. Whoever isn't cheating is losing.
| Theodores wrote:
| Really? How did anywhere get started?
|
| Germany ripped off British engineering texts because they had
| no copyright laws there.
|
| America got started taking what was started elsewhere, the
| same can be said for any country except for Scotland.
|
| I think those lovely Chinese people would laugh at your
| sinophobic 'thinking'. Maybe stay off the corporate media and
| do your own research.
|
| Huawei are an amazing company, all of their kit is highly
| innovative, but too good for you and your slave masters.
| Hence the lies. In fact, if you want a computer that isn't
| 'NSA Inside', go with Huawei. You won't look back, although
| they won't sell you a PC with Nvidia in it or a phone with
| Google in it because of your government.
|
| Solar panels? Germany did the work on that, China bought the
| IP and did the production engineering. All is legit.
|
| Besides, that screen you are looking at, was that made in
| America? Nah, it is going to be China, outside chance, Korea.
| nixon_why69 wrote:
| > the same can be said for any country except for Scotland.
|
| Found the Scottish shill. Big whiskey won't rule the world
| forever, you know!
| bee_rider wrote:
| Resilience against geopolitical disruption has always been a
| nice characteristic of renewables (of course, centralizing the
| production in China is a mistake from that point of view, if
| for no other reason than the general danger of centralization).
| It is unfortunate though, if we needed an actual event to see
| this advantage.
| ta20240528 wrote:
| "The concern about a new dependency on China is real,"
|
| The dependency is latent, is only become a problem when you
| (USA) does something to dick with China's dependency on you.
|
| If you don't do that, no problems. The rest of us live just
| fine depending on things from China.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| Well, but in case you have already infra & ecosystem, you could
| then affort maybe to produce a little bit mor expensive in your
| own country, if supply from china will be under threat like oil
| today?
|
| I would rather have solar everywhere and the risk depending on
| china (and the risk of producing something over market price)
| than the current ongoing forever riskof fossil dependency,
| because solar manufacturing you could resolve in theory in
| every country (at some scale), while fossil production is
| limited to a handful with no chance for anyone else to do it?
| coldtea wrote:
| > _energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel
| dependence_
|
| That would be the stupidest takeaway
| lmc wrote:
| How so?
| bdangubic wrote:
| if my country has 0 dependence on fossils, how many fucks would
| I have given for whatever is happening or will be happening in
| the future in shithole places like the middle east?
| blitzar wrote:
| Won't someone think of the children, how are their schools
| going to get bombed if we dont do it?
| bdangubic wrote:
| Children in Sudan? Myanmar? Sahel/Nigeria? Ethiopia? Or we
| care about just specific children and others not so much?
| manyaoman wrote:
| Paradoxically it could also have the opposite effect if high
| energy prices lead governments to cut green energy plans.
| Sol- wrote:
| From what I've read, the immediate effect will likely be worse
| for CO2 emissions, because the alternative to (liquefied) gas is
| often coal power. Also, the various inputs that are needed for
| global manufacturing are also affected, so maybe even renewable
| tech gets more expensive.
|
| I'm not saying that the dependence on the middle east was good,
| but I think it's good to keep in mind that this was a pretty
| stable equilibrium even with the various questionable countries
| involved until the US initiated a global supply shock without a
| good reason.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| There are short term and long term effects. Overall these are
| good changes.
|
| There are a couple of points to make here. The lead time for
| new coal/gas plants is years. If it's not planned already, any
| newly planned plants are unlikely to come online this decade.
| The supply chains simply can't handle building more turbines
| and it takes years to fix that. Also, that investment is super
| risky in it self.
|
| Another point is that the cheapest and fastest way to add new
| capacity to grids is via renewables. That's why we see record
| breaking new capacity coming online on a regular basis.
|
| There is indeed a short term increase in emissions from
| electricity plants because the fastest way to bring more
| capacity online is to use existing underused plants. A lot of
| gas and coal plants are no longer running full time because
| they are too expensive to operate. But they haven't been
| decommissioned either. Some gas plants actually are used as
| peaker plants. Most older coal plants take too long to warm up
| for this. So, yes short term the expensive but quick way to
| provide extra power is via these plants. But of course, as soon
| as something more affordable comes online, these things go back
| to being utilized less. There are many tens/hundreds of GW of
| renewables and batteries being deployed in the next few years.
|
| Data centers add to all this pressure. That's long term a good
| thing because these too will want to long term reduce their
| OpEx by cutting as much dependence on gas/coal as possible.
|
| A final point to make is that despite all these increased
| emissions, there are also decreased emissions from
| electrification. Even if the power for an EV comes from an
| efficient gas/coal plant, it's actually better than the
| alternative of burning petrol in a combustion engine instead.
| Less emissions this way. Same for heat pumps. With a COP of
| 3-4, they outperform burning gas by 3-4x using electricity.
| Even if that electricity comes from a gas plant operating at
| 40-50% efficiency. Less gas gets burned.
|
| So these are all good effects even if the reason is a bit sad
| and unnecessary. This crisis is unnecessary. But I like that it
| is helping to kill fossil fuel companies faster. This long term
| erodes confidence in the market as a whole and drives decision
| makers to do exactly what the article suggests: cutting the
| dependency on fossil fuels as fast as possible. It's already
| resulting in measurable reductions in oil/gas imports in some
| countries.
| aa-jv wrote:
| I'm unpacking my electric motorbike[1] and its moped sister[2]
| from winter storage and preparing them both for a summer in a
| city in a nation which energy supply is mostly renewables.
|
| Of course, it took a lot of gasoline to get them here, but I sure
| as heck won't be using much gasoline to put them to solid use
| clocking up the kilometers, 100 at a time.
|
| Got a few deals on solar panels for the backyard that'll get me
| completely off the grid for the most part, and from then on it'll
| be maintenance mode and solar powered travel as priority number
| one ..
|
| [1] - https://www.blackteamotorbikes.com/
|
| [2] - https://unumotors.com/
| formvoltron wrote:
| lmao seriously this is how leaders lead?
|
| oh, surprise! blowing up oil infrastructure increases oil prices.
|
| shocking news.
|
| meanwhile.. didn't china start selling cars with sodium sulfur
| batteries?
| sharpshadow wrote:
| Really looks like the spark was there before so that Iran could
| get attacked at all.
| giantg2 wrote:
| While it could be good to shift to renewable for other reasons,
| it's naive to assume that nations won't be dependent on others
| for critical minerals and metals needed to make
| solar/wind/batteries/etc.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| They are, but unlike fossil fuels, those dependencies go down
| over time (modulo the utility growth that makes demand for
| everything go up, of course).
|
| If you buy fossil fuel from a country that may not be an ally
| forever, your demand remains constant (or goes up over time)
| because you are changing that fuel into a state that cannot be
| used again.
|
| If you buy, say, lithium, you put that in a battery and in the
| future, you can get more lithium from the ground but you can
| also grind up batteries and re-extract it when they fail.
| Battery ingredients are, generally, not consumable over even
| medium and long-term scale if you build out the recycling
| infrastructure to recapture those ingredients.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yes, the shocks aren't as immediate _if_ you have the
| infrastructure set up and you are out of the initial adoption
| phase. Even things like lithium and silver are limited
| resources, so getting more out of the ground will eventually
| face scarcity as energy demand has always increased over the
| long term.
| triceratops wrote:
| Lithium is one of the most abundant elements on earth.
|
| Newer battery chemistries don't use lithium.
|
| By the time we use enough energy to run out of all the
| elements we could make batteries with, we're likely to be
| at the "cheap asteroid mining" level of technological
| development.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Abundant doesn't mean unlimited, nor does it mean
| economical or environmentally friendly to access. The
| point is that most countries would need to import metals
| and minerals critical to renewable energy.
| triceratops wrote:
| Batteries aren't burned to produce energy. They can be
| recycled. They can use elements besides lithium.
|
| We're talking about a trickle of imports if recycling
| doesn't cover growing needs.
| giantg2 wrote:
| If you have growth in demand and population, recycling is
| unlikely to cover it.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The dependencies needed for the replacement of equipment having
| a lifetime of many decades are infinitely less dangerous than
| the dependencies for consumables like fuel.
|
| For critical minerals and metals it is easy to stockpile them
| to have a buffer sufficient for many years of infrastructure
| replacement.
|
| Such dependencies may remain a problem during a war, when the
| infrastructure could be destroyed, but in normal times such
| dependencies would not be sufficient to enable the kind of
| blackmailing that can be done with consumables, like food and
| fuel.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm not sure the stockpiling you mention will work the way
| you propose. We already stockpile oil, yet we still see price
| shocks. Stockpiling metals can still lead to price shocks due
| to reluctance to release them and the need to eventually
| replenish them.
|
| We also stockpile foods and medications, and that doesn't
| provide price stability.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Yes, but you are missing the critical bit.
|
| Food is a constant need, and you can't exist for long
| without it.
|
| Sure we need to increase battery sotrage, but in ~5 years
| time, it'll be maintainance, assuming the correct adoption
| rate. So yes we will still _need_ batteries, but we don't
| need a constant supply of new batteries to keep the lights
| on.
| giantg2 wrote:
| A 5 year full adoption rate is not even close to
| possible.
|
| Once you reach maintenance phase you still have to
| replace stuff, so just like food you will need a constant
| supply.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Right, but you realise that even if we manage to buy
| everything all at once, we are looking at _at least_ a 15
| year operating lifespan.
|
| Yes, there will need replacement, _but not all at once_
| and not the same volume
| pjmlp wrote:
| Easier said than done, during this week many German regions are
| on general strike, thus everyone just switched back to their
| cars, complaining about unions, their power in infrastructure and
| so on.
|
| Naturally most of those cars are combustion based, because it is
| still very expensive to buy a new EV, and even used ones are more
| expensive than new combustion cars, and there is the whole
| question of how damaged the battery will be anyway.
| ponector wrote:
| That's not true, you can get a cheap new EV, pricing for
| electric Dacia without subsidy starts from EUR16k. And used Zoe
| or i3 are really cheap.
| pjmlp wrote:
| That is still expensive versus traditional cars.
| ponector wrote:
| Is it? You can't even find a German car in the same price
| range.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Not everyone buys German cars, rather something that
| simplifies their daily lives, with a motor and some
| amenities.
|
| That looks like a bit Apple mentality applied to cars.
| uyzstvqs wrote:
| Europe and the US need to bring manufacturing of EVs, batteries,
| solar, and relevant components back locally. Use automation to
| make it more feasible. We need rooftop solar + regional SMRs for
| a cheap, stable energy supply.
|
| To do so, we need to adapt regulation & deregulate. This needs to
| happen now. If we continue on like this, we'll decelerate back to
| the stone age.
| shevy-java wrote:
| Honestly, those who attacked Iran should cover the global
| increase in energy costs for everyone else. Why do I have to pay
| more for the orange guy? Instead he benefits with his superrich
| buddies.
| phtrivier wrote:
| > China has, however, been relatively insulated from the crisis
| due to its ample emergency oil reserves and high rate of
| electrification, with EVs representing more than half of its
| domestic new car sales and its grid more than 50% powered by
| renewable energy sources. In the U.S., by comparison, EVs are
| less than 10% of the market, while renewable power is around a
| quarter of the nation's electricity generation.
|
| My favorite quote from "Studio 60 on the Sunset Street" (an
| antique show from the late 2000s) is from the CEO of a fictional
| media conglomerates, coming back from a trip to Macau with
| disbelief:
|
| "Tell you kids to learn Mandarin."
|
| The USA is either handing the future on a plate to the Chinese
| Empire ; or acting like a "chaos monkey" in an anti fragile
| system, giving just enough scares to the rest of the world to get
| their act together.
|
| Maybe climate change could not do that because of the long
| timescale and unpalpability of the issues.
|
| Maybe the first few oil shocks were not enough because you could
| hope for better days.
|
| Maybe market pressure was not enough because incumbents fossil
| fuel industries could always buy the right elections to set up
| the right incentives ; and also, people don't want to change.
|
| Maybe the perfect storm will nudge it ?
|
| That, or we'll just have to speak Mandarin. They do that in
| Firefly, after all..
| theo1996 wrote:
| Iran tried to ditch fossil fuel for atomic but cIA said no.
| swarnie wrote:
| Now you see, the only country to have used a nuclear weapon in
| anger also elected itself as world arbitrator of who gets
| energy and who doesn't, because reasons.
|
| Every country should be speed running nuclear tech as fast as
| possible if only to scare the freedom fighters away...
| geraneum wrote:
| Not to say that the three letter agency is not sinister, but
| I'm pretty sure the problem was enrichment not use. Good old
| days...!
| heyitsmedotjayb wrote:
| We should generate our own power on our own land with our own
| technology - one day it will seem like insanity that we ever
| outsourced our most precious resource to the other side of the
| world, and relied on international shipping/markets to deliver
| it. Solar is a miracle technology. Wind is very good. Hydro and
| nuclear can supply large base load. Our own oil can supply
| peakers. What are we doing in the middle east?
| maxglute wrote:
| Wonder if Chinese solar involution finally going to end, time to
| jack up prices, and crank factories to full utilization. PRC can
| make enough solar to replace global oil / lng and good parts of
| coal in ~10 years, assuming storage also scales proportionally
| soon.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Slightly different reasons, of course, but I imagine that right
| about now the regime in Cuba is wishing they had put more effort
| into solar. Being heavily reliant on oil when you do not produce
| it yourself is a vulnerable position to be in.
| zahirbmirza wrote:
| Fossil-fuel subsidies from governments totalled $7trn in 2022.
| Thats about 7% of global GDP. The world spends 4% of GDP on
| education. Source Monocle Magazine no.190 page 88.
|
| There is a lot to unpack here and also an obvious solution.
| diego_moita wrote:
| If past crisis are any indication this "push" won't last.
|
| We've had crisis with fossil fuels since OPEC's first big price
| increase in 1973 and the pattern is always the same: first the
| whole world realizes they need to find alternative sources of
| energy. Then, after a while, politicians go "drill, baby, drill".
|
| Oil is an addiction and most people don't drop addictions by
| their own.
| hliyan wrote:
| I heard somewhere that there is some sort of evangelical
| Christian sect in Korea that believes the current US president
| was sent by God. Not as a positive force, but as a force to end
| the global status quo (which I suppose they consider unjust). I
| find this fascinating because the US president's actions so far
| have: exposed decade-old myths about the rule-based international
| order, caused the EU to seek more self-reliance, caused former
| enemies in Asia to consider alliances and now accelerate the end
| to fossil fuel dependence. One could argue that the results of
| his actions are indistinguishable from that of a double agent's.
| roncesvalles wrote:
| I _still_ think Trump has been a net good upon the world.
|
| Trump's actions have actually jumpstarted economic reforms in
| several countries. For example, just last year Canada made
| serious moves towards "One Canadian Economy"[1] to rationalize
| interprovincial trade among other things.
|
| The developed world, but especially NATO countries, need to
| wean off America's teat for their own good.
|
| [1] https://www.canada.ca/en/one-canadian-
| economy/services/build...
| blondie9x wrote:
| We consume 101 million barrels of oil per day. The amount of oil
| humans consume per day has doubled since 1980. Is this the way we
| finally wake up to the urgency of addressing the climate crisis
| caused by burning fossil fuels?
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| How will this affect datacenters? Could AI become expensive?
| Gravityloss wrote:
| It feels so slow. I would like to have an electric car or e-bike.
| I live in a building that is part of a housing company that has
| many owners (most of them people living here). It is slow to
| decide and implement renovation, and the pipeline is basically
| full for a few years.
|
| We might get car charging infrastructure only a few years down
| the line. Maybe a bike shed for e-bike charging a year after
| that?
|
| What happened to those optimistic ideas where every lamp post had
| a charger? I would pay for that. I also see these small
| transformer huts on the streets. What if at least those had
| neighborhood high speed chargers, it shouldn't cost much since
| basically there's a good power source right there?
|
| There's just so much friction. I hope some enterpreneur here
| makes these things real!
| nolist_policy wrote:
| With e bikes you can charge the battery in your home.
| tencentshill wrote:
| Then we need regulation to make sure every ebike and scooter
| sold is safe to charge without exploding. No cheap batteries.
| tfourb wrote:
| Depending on the public charging infrastructure in your area,
| it is already quite feasible to own an electric car without
| your own wall box. Modern BEVs can charge basically to full
| within 20 minutes. If your supermarket has a public charger and
| your driving and shopping cycles are matching (or can be
| aligned depending on your daily driving distance), you can
| simply plug in while you shop for your groceries.
|
| Also, you can check if there is someone else on your street who
| has a charger and who might be willing to let you charge in
| exchange for a little surcharge on the electricity you consume.
| a3w wrote:
| Is it 1973? We could invest in solar instead of kings that might
| ship their energy to us in peace time (i.e. killings happens only
| within each states borders)?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-03-19 23:01 UTC)