Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/iran-war-energy-shock-sparks-global-push-reduce-fossil-fuel-dependence-2026-03-18/

by geox • 4 months ago

328 443 4 months ago

reuters.com

schnitzelstoat11• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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

schnitzelstoat11• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

Related the children book from Germany https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20221101-the-cloud-the-n...

hallway_monitor• 4 months ago

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.

pydry3• 4 months ago

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.

jmclnx• 4 months ago

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.

schnitzelstoat11• 4 months ago

Even France shut down the Superphénix. 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.

embedding-shape2• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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.

kuerbel3• 4 months ago

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...

pantalaimon• 4 months ago

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.

bryanrasmussen2• 4 months ago

in the election that is running in Denmark right now it looks like nuclear power is back on the table.

tfourb13• 4 months ago

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.

ViewTrick10027• 4 months ago

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-shape2• 4 months ago

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.

Chyzwar2• 4 months ago

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.

samuel2• 4 months ago

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.

ViewTrick10027• 4 months ago

Existing nuclear power is acceptably cheap. For France the longterm LCOE for running their fleet to EOL is €60 per MWh.

The problem is new built nuclear power which costs €180-240 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.

elil17• 4 months ago

Even if it didn't make sense to build new nuclear, that doesn't mean it makes sense to shut of existing nuclear.

yodelshady• 4 months ago

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.

modo_mario6• 4 months ago

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.

remarkEon• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

LCOE for 24/7 reliable solar electricity is a LOT higher than $60

NoLinkToMe3• 4 months ago

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.

But keeping nuclear open is an entirely different thing than building out more nuclear. OP was talking about the former, you about the latter.

Otherwise agreed on your point.

Zardoz84• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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.

schnitzelstoat11• 4 months ago

It was in 2022 and 2023: https://cerneasesores.es/real-decreto-ley-14-2022-obligacion...

somelamer567• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

Seems Europe also has the option of using Northern Africa as a solar energy hub as well. Is that a viable option?

nradov3• 4 months ago

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.

fy20• 4 months ago

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.

giantg27• 4 months ago

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_• 4 months ago

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.

outime3• 4 months ago

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.

gib4442• 4 months ago

Poor train service? (Recent accidents aside)

Any areas in particular?

the_gipsy• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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.

schnitzelstoat11• 4 months ago

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.

bluGill3• 4 months ago

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.

tialaramex2• 4 months ago

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.

sharemywin• 4 months ago

Wonder how much WFH could help. Seems like during covid demand went way down.

duskdozer2• 4 months ago

Heavens no! How could we ever afford to be more productive overall? Just think of the effect on corporate real estate prices.

schnitzelstoat11• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

Exactly, put AI in the office instead.

THansenite• 4 months ago

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.'

duskdozer2• 4 months ago

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.

whalesalad• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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/...

Qem3• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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

abustamam5• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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.

Mashimo3• 4 months ago

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?

pibaker• 4 months ago

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.

lm284695• 4 months ago

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.

cpursley5• 4 months ago

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.

sateesh• 4 months ago

Presume the reference to trunkless legs is to the Shelly's famous poem Ozymandias (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias)

markus_zhang8• 4 months ago

Well at least they will have much less money to meddle in Africa, I guess.

morkalork2• 4 months ago

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.

lelanthran6• 4 months ago

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 :-))

mkoubaa2• 4 months ago

Some of them will not exist at all in their current form by summer

jmstfv• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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.

triceratops5• 4 months ago

There were many sliding doors moments for action on climate change. The 2000 US presidential election was the first significant one.

yabones• 4 months ago

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_zhang8• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

You might need to pretend that you don’t need energy either!

markus_zhang8• 4 months ago

I’m fasting! No need for energy at all.

thedangler• 4 months ago

In a world where peoples home might be taken away because interest go up because oil prices is nuts.

nradov3• 4 months ago

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.

Mashimo3• 4 months ago

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.

lm284695• 4 months ago

The US about to discover you can't just blindly follow fanatics in religious wars without any consequences.

hiddencost• 4 months ago

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.

mkoubaa2• 4 months ago

I think the parent comment was referring to the same fanatics you are

morkalork2• 4 months ago

Also a gigantic Jerusalem cross tattoo.

22122• 4 months ago

the crusaders wanted the holy land to belong to christians, not to jews

megous2• 4 months ago

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.

manyaoman2• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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.

triceratops5• 4 months ago

in hindsight she likely would have been

It took you hindsight? I could've told you that in 2024 with regular sight.

megous2• 4 months ago

You don't have primaries to pick sensible candidates to begin with? In either party, of course.

ryukafalz• 4 months ago

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_zhang8• 4 months ago

I guess the oil industry is laughing their ass off nowadays. They can sell at such a premium. Inflation? YP.

toomuchtodo9• 4 months ago

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.

noelsusman3• 4 months ago

Oil companies love $90 oil, but much higher than that and you start to run into demand destruction issues in the medium term.

davedx• 4 months ago

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

watwut5• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

It feels like this collective insanity will never end

You’re referring to Twitter, right? ;)

b00ty4breakfast• 4 months ago

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.

devilbunny3• 4 months ago

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.

bpodgursky• 4 months ago

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

slashdev12• 4 months ago

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?

Arnt2• 4 months ago

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.

tac195• 4 months ago

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.

davidw• 4 months ago

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.

esperent2• 4 months ago

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?

dzhiurgis2• 4 months ago

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

NoLinkToMe3• 4 months ago

That's not so strange is it?

With respect to Groningen: 1. zero deaths reported ever 2. quakes in Groningen maxed out at 3.6 which is considered light. By comparison NL's worst earthquake wasn't in Groningen (North) but in the south of the country unrelated to the gas, a scale of 6. Again no people died. 3. the 450 billion m3 of gas left is worth 170 billion last month ('normal'), 345 billion at today's prices, and 1.6 trillion at 2022 peak prices. 4. Field used to supply 10% of EU gas, this shifted EU/Worldwide demand to Russian gas, helping them fund the cold-war against the EU and hot-war against EU's ally Ukraine.

Governments routinely put a price on a human life. The Dutch government puts a price of about 3-4m on a human life. i.e. if a policy measure costs 500m and is estimated to save 100 lives, it's deemed financially irresponsible because the 5m cost per life is more than the value set by the government. Whereas if a measure costs 100m (e.g. implementing an anti drunk-driving program) and it is estimated to save 500 lives, it's financially OK'd because the cost of 200k to prevent a death is less than the value of a life.

The estimates for the Groningen gas field are completely off. Even if you take another €50 billion out of the ground, experts don't expect an earthquake to kill any people. While on the contrary, if you don't, numerous people will die from alternatives (dirty coal and in russian war).

Should be move as fast as possible to renewables? Yes. But green advocates severely overestimate how fast we can do that. We have broken renewable records for 10 years in a row, yet we use about 80% of the fossil energy that we used 35 years ago. We didn't replace Groningen with renewables, we replaced it with Norwegian gas and US LNG imports, and Russia picked up the slack elsewhere because we dropped Dutch supply. So yes in the long-term renewables will make Groningen unnecessary, in the short-term we continue to use gas and keeping Groningen open longer seems to be supported by an objective analysis. Of course politics aren't just objective, they're emotional, which is why Groningen was closed, not because it was the best idea.

anovikov4• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

Burning fossil fuels also raises the global temperature, reduces air quality, and people still have to pay more at the pump.

defrost6• 4 months ago

"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_4• 4 months ago

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.

noelsusman3• 4 months ago

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.

weinzierl• 4 months ago

"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-java2• 4 months ago

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.

graemep3• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

The only thing that is dismaying you about this war is the fact that it caused people to push for more renewables?

paulryanrogers• 4 months ago

They didn't say 'only'. Unless there was an edit after your reply

baq• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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"

cogman104• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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.

Theodores2• 4 months ago

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.

bee_rider• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

"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• 4 months ago

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?

leonidasrup4• 4 months ago

Germany is very slowly starting to understand, exiting nuclear power and installing a lot of intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind power and solar power, does not make your country independent of fossil fuels.

China builds a lot of renewables, but they don't build them to replace fossil fuels, they build them in addition to fossil fuels. We should absolutely not follow this way.

ben_w2• 4 months ago

Germany has plenty of coal (and gas) plants for when the dunkelflaute happen: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s...

But even if it didn't, not only grid-scale but also large-residential-scale batteries+PV is cheaper in Germany than industrially priced nuclear, and even "small" batteries+PV are cheaper than residential electricity: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/...

But electrification of transport and heating is more critical at this point than the inevitable short-term changes to electricity: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

coldtea3• 4 months ago

energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence

That would be the stupidest takeaway

lmc• 4 months ago

How so?

bdangubic3• 4 months ago

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?

blitzar3• 4 months ago

Won't someone think of the children, how are their schools going to get bombed if we dont do it?

manyaoman2• 4 months ago

Paradoxically it could also have the opposite effect if high energy prices lead governments to cut green energy plans.

Sol-• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

Really looks like the spark was there before so that Iran could get attacked at all.

giantg27• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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.

giantg27• 4 months ago

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.

adrian_b5• 4 months ago

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.

giantg27• 4 months ago

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.

pjmlp3• 4 months ago

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.

ponector2• 4 months ago

That's not true, you can get a cheap new EV, pricing for electric Dacia without subsidy starts from €16k. And used Zoe or i3 are really cheap.

pjmlp3• 4 months ago

That is still expensive versus traditional cars.

uyzstvqs• 4 months ago

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-java2• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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 élections 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• 4 months ago

Iran tried to ditch fossil fuel for atomic but cIA said no.

swarnie• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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.

rootusrootus5• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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.

roncesvalles2• 4 months ago

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...

Spivak• 4 months ago

And then there's the theory that the man is also the biblical antichrist which I think fits the prophecy reasonably well. Revelations has some pretty specific details that match up which I find quite entertaining.

blondie9x• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

How will this affect datacenters? Could AI become expensive?

Gravityloss• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

With e bikes you can charge the battery in your home.

tencentshill• 4 months ago

Then we need regulation to make sure every ebike and scooter sold is safe to charge without exploding. No cheap batteries.

tfourb13• 4 months ago

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• 4 months ago

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)?

h4kunamata• 4 months ago

Nothing will happen!!

If countries worldwide had to have their reality checked due a WW3 to find solutions for the a fossil fuel alternative, better than pushing lithium everywhere with devasting consequences, tells you everything that is wrong in our society.

JumpCrisscross6• 4 months ago

"The world’s biggest energy consumer nations are now back at the drawing board: Europe last week unveiled new financial guarantees for atomic power after decades of closing nuclear plants. Other major importers are planning to source fuel from a broader array of suppliers to hedge their risk."

I'm not seeing it.

The European plan sounds like another goal to have a proposal in ten years [1]. And hedging imports of fossil fuels doesn't reduce dependence, just dependence on a particular source.

[1] https://www.nucnet.org/news/von-der-leyen-sets-out-eu-smr-st...

maybeereeeee• 4 months ago

Looking and biasing only via population numbers. It's pretty clear that to "save" the world you need most of asia and africa to be run on renewables. This shock will hopefully have better effects long term.

pfannkuchen• 4 months ago

Environmentalists are behind the war, follow the money!

Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence

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