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

reuters.com

91–100 of 474 posts

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

#91
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.

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

#92

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 plac…

[flagged]

Thoughtful comment.

Please read hn rules.

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

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

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.

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

#94
post #71
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar and wind are intermittent. Grid scale energy storage is not even a thing yet.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/big-battery-storage-map-of-austr...

That's not much. Projects listed there can't store energy for winter needs.

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

#95
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

It actually works pretty well, considering how much they do shoot down, but if there is enough incoming, some will get through.

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

#96

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.

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.

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.

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

#97

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 situat…

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

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.

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

#98
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 gene…

Yup, its interesting that a community supposedly of "engineers" are happy to claim expert knowledge of domains in which they have no experience.

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

#99
post #94
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/big-battery-storage-map-of-austr...

That's not much. Projects listed there can't store energy for winter needs.

Ahhhhhhh . . . it's Australia.

Winters here have more sunshine than UK summers.

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

#100
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It actually works pretty well, considering how much they do shoot down, but if there is enough incoming, some will get through.

> 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.

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