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

reuters.com

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

#101

Post by schnitzelstoat »

kuerbel wrote: post #58
schnitzelstoat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

... 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 con…

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 nucléaire, the Molotov cocktail attacks by the Fédération Anarchiste, the RPG attack by the Cellules Communistes Combattantes etc.

It was a highly political decision.

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

#102

Post by dncornholio »

tfourb wrote: post #32
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 resou…

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.

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

#103

Post by lukan »

lm28469 wrote: post #100
lukan wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#104

Post by chii »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #80
markus_zhang wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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-...…

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.

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

#105

Post by outime »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #2

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…

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.

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

#106

Post by adrian_b »

giantg2 wrote: post #77

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.

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.

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

#107

Post by uyzstvqs »

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.

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

#108

Post by yodelshady »

Chyzwar wrote: post #17
schnitzelstoat wrote: post #2

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…

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 K…

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.

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

#109

Post by davedx »

ryukafalz wrote: post #44

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…

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

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

#110

Post by anovikov »

ryukafalz wrote: post #44

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…

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).
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