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Iran Shock Jolts Asia and Europe to Speed Up Energy Transition

130 points by toomuchtodo

by decimalenough

2 subcomments

Oceania too: Australia installed 442 MW of residential solar and 2.5 GWh of residential batteries in the month of April alone. Both numbers are partly juiced by changes to a rebate program from May, but the overall trend remains explosive growth.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/households-still-going-big-on-so...

by programmertote

5 subcomments

I'm assuming that China, with its industrial power and leadership position to produce a bunch of green energy components (like solar panels), is well-positioned to benefit from this.

by newaccount670

5 subcomments

Hormuz being closed hurts Iran way more than it does the US. It's shocking that they're persisting on this strategy. That's the problem with authoritarians though: they'd rather rule over rubble than be an average citizen in a prosperous society.

by tim-tday

0 subcomment

I drive a Mercedes. My grandfather rode a camel. The oil has made us rich. But the oil riches will end. My grandchildren will ride camels.

by decimalenough

0 subcomment

https://archive.is/nA1UT (includes complimentary subscription in botnet)

by UncleOxidant

2 subcomments

Who knew that Trump was going to speedrun The Green New Deal?... just for every other country except the US.

by cm2187

1 subcomments

Right now the UK makes up the volatility of its heavy reliance on wind with LNG. So this isn't exactly a hedge against gas shortage.

by jmyeet

1 subcomments

Ok, I have to comment about the chart on oil prices that shows a massive rise from 2020 to 2022, which the article blames on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, even though that didn't happen until early 2022 and the spike began 2 years earlier. That's just jouranlistic misconduct. Let me tell you what actually happened because, for some reason, nobody actually talks about it. First, some context:
1. OPEC/OPEC+ meet every 3 months to adjust output based on expected demand to keep oil prices relatively stable. That is, they want to maintain a floor and a ceiling. Too low and they don't make enough money. Too high and it causes political instability and threatens oil-for-security guarantees that have existed since FDR agreed to such with King Faisal of Saudi Arabia in 1945;
2. Oil has different flavors based largley on how light or heavy the hydrocarbon blend is (called API Gravity) and the sulfur content. this is what Brent and West Texas Light Crude means. Generally, lighter crude is more valuable because it makes more valuable products like avgas and gasoline;
3. Oil is traded on both spot (physical) markets and future (paper) markets. A futures contract is a standardized contract for 1000 barrels of oil of a particular blend delivered or received (depending on which side you're on) on a given date. Generally, when we see oil prices in the news we are looking at futures prices. Historically short-dated futures prices and spot prices have been pretty similar. Spot prices are proprietary but this didn't matter. Now it does as that link has been broken [1]
3. When the world shut down in March 2020 due to the pandemic oil demand fell off a cliff and supplies backed up in production facilities. People weren't taking delivery and oil prices briefly went negative (technically, this was an "extreme contango" market);
4. Because of this, the Trump administration cajoled MBS to get OPEC to cut oil production [2][3][4]. This was a 2 year agreement that initially cut oil production by 9.7 million barrels per day ("Mbpd") going to to 6.3Mbpd ultimately. IMHO the administration panicked that US oil producers would go belly up. This represented ~10% of the world's crude oil supply;
5. In 2021 oil demand came roaring back. Prices went through the roof; and
6. Republicans blamed Biden. The Biden administration tried to get OPEC to increase production [5] and Biden never blamed OPEC or even Trump. Democrats took the "oil companies bad" approach.
This 2 year deal was completely unnecessary. OPEC would've cut production as necessary anyway. And it entirely matches the increase in oil and gas prices and inflation for this 2 year period and nobody ever mentions it.
Russia invading Ukraine in early 2022 was just the cherry on the cake.
Look at that chart. Where it's marked as "COVID-19" is March-April 2020. The deal begins in June 2020. It ended in June 2022, which is at the exact point of the big red bar to the right of the Russian invasion, after which oil prices dropped despite the fact that the war was still going on (and still is).
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/iran-war-has-sha...
[2]: https://www.reuters.com/article/economy/special-report-trump...
[3]: https://www.reuters.com/commentary/reuters-open-interest/tru...
[4]: https://www.reuters.com/article/business/opec-agrees-largest...
[5]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-call-opec-its-a...

by outside1234

1 subcomments

Trump is going to end up being the best thing that ever happened to EVs too.

by pstuart

2 subcomments

This is the only good thing to come out of this unnecessary war.

by shevy-java

0 subcomment

I am still pissed at Trump and the oligarch bros. They really need to pay for the costs they caused here. I also blame them from rising RAM prices. Why do we have to pay for any of that? We also need to get off of oil. I know this is not realistic for many reasons, but it is a weakness of many economies that they are so insanely dependent on a few countries with a lot of oil and gas. It basically gives other countries ways to blackmail.

by FrustratedMonky

6 subcomments

What if? Trump is playing 5.7-D chess. He knows his base is full of idiots. He bombs Iran to create a crisis that wakes up his base to "wut, oil, need oil".
This was only way to get them to use renewables and re-think that maybe electric vehicles are not just 'woke' but also can help 'national security'.
Create Crises, to swing economy to electric and renewables faster than EV subsidies ever could.

by yesbut

0 subcomment

silver linings

by firefoxd

8 subcomments

Remember, we didn't know how to pronounce hormuz until bombs started falling on people's head. The bombs and those who dropped them caused the problem. This isn't an energy issue.