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Iran Shock Jolts Asia and Europe to Speed Up Energy Transition

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31–40 of 124 posts

Re: Iran Shock Jolts Asia and Europe to Speed Up Energy Transition

#31
post #13

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.

The Chinese Politbureau is toasting themselves so hard, they're going to be drunk for the next decade. It's a perfect storm for China, they're leading in EVs, battery production, renewables. While the US is busy undermining itself from all directions: as a military superpower, cultural, political, economical. Europe is waking up slowly, but it is shackled by high internal energy prices, not enough labor, and low desi…

Is there still a Politbureau?

To me it seems it is a dictatorship with cult leadership again. Xi reminds me more of a modern version of Mao Zedong (without the focus on starving millions to death though). The main reason I see China having a dictator again is so that he can push ahead with his plans of invading Taiwan.

> Europe is waking up slowly

Where do you see that? I don't see it anywhere. They are sleeping.

Re: Iran Shock Jolts Asia and Europe to Speed Up Energy Transition

#32
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese Politbureau is toasting themselves so hard, they're going to be drunk for the next decade. It's a perfect storm for China, they're leading in EVs, battery production, renewables. While the US is busy undermining itself from all directions: as a military superpower, cultural, political, economical. Europe is waking up slowly, but it is shackled by high internal energy prices, not enough labor, and low desi…

Really? Europe looks primed to follow the US, just a few steps behind. They're electing their far right leaders and primed to start mass deportation, and are even ahead of us on cultural decline with respect to mass surveillance being used to actively police speech. What moves have they been making that you think indicate an upward trend? How are they going to recover from stagnation and demographic collapse?

Far left will continue to rule in Europe.

Re: Iran Shock Jolts Asia and Europe to Speed Up Energy Transition

#33
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese Politbureau is toasting themselves so hard, they're going to be drunk for the next decade. It's a perfect storm for China, they're leading in EVs, battery production, renewables. While the US is busy undermining itself from all directions: as a military superpower, cultural, political, economical. Europe is waking up slowly, but it is shackled by high internal energy prices, not enough labor, and low desi…

Really? Europe looks primed to follow the US, just a few steps behind. They're electing their far right leaders and primed to start mass deportation, and are even ahead of us on cultural decline with respect to mass surveillance being used to actively police speech. What moves have they been making that you think indicate an upward trend? How are they going to recover from stagnation and demographic collapse?

Mass deportation of who? The far right governments of most EU countries just play on basic fear tactics, none of them will ever do anything remotely close to your mass deportation fantasies. The most hardcore things they'll do is apply the laws which already exists regarding foreign people committing crimes and people illegally entering, and even that isn't given

Just look at the post brexit UK or Meloni's Italy...

Re: Iran Shock Jolts Asia and Europe to Speed Up Energy Transition

#35
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Europe looks primed to follow the US, just a few steps behind. They're electing their far right leaders and primed to start mass deportation, and are even ahead of us on cultural decline with respect to mass surveillance being used to actively police speech. What moves have they been making that you think indicate an upward trend? How are they going to recover from stagnation and demographic collapse?

> They're electing their far right leaders and primed to start mass deportation No amounts of deportations meaningfully affect the demographics. They can at most slow down the new immigration. For all his bluster, Trump deported barely more people than the long-term average in 2025. But more importantly, the "far right" in Europe is far less crazy than in the US, and they support re-establishing local industry. > pol…

> Europe has never had absolutely free speech like the US. It's by design.

They don't have it in the US either, they just love to flex it while not understanding how it's implemented in practice

Re: Iran Shock Jolts Asia and Europe to Speed Up Energy Transition

#36

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...

very jealous of how cheap AUS solar prices are. < $1 AUD per watt after rebate

Don't be jealous of our peak power price though: $0.56/kWh

(I have a battery though, so I rarely pay full tote - which is one of the reasons I got a battery)

Re: Iran Shock Jolts Asia and Europe to Speed Up Energy Transition

#37
post #19
post #10

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

I haven't checked the numbers, but wouldn't reducing the global oil supply have a direct and positive impact on carbon emissions?

Sure, but I'd wrap that up into the renewables box.

Re: Iran Shock Jolts Asia and Europe to Speed Up Energy Transition

#38
post #19
post #10

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

I haven't checked the numbers, but wouldn't reducing the global oil supply have a direct and positive impact on carbon emissions?

If a temporary disruption, we’d go back to business as usual as soon as the supply constraint abated. The scale and time duration oil flows will be disrupted has led to a “burn the ships” transition, because it is simply the more economically rationale path now. More rapid global energy transition means the forward carbon emissions curve gets bent down.

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Irans-Oil...

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Persian-Gulf-Oil-...

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/28/oil-inventory-exxon-strait-h...

Re: Iran Shock Jolts Asia and Europe to Speed Up Energy Transition

#39
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...

Re: Iran Shock Jolts Asia and Europe to Speed Up Energy Transition

#40
post #24
post #2

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.

I cannot stress enough how historically ignorant of a perspective this is. I don't know how you meant this, but Hormuz has been one of the most critical geopolitical choke points since 1979, and Iran has spent 45 years preparing to use it for leverage in exactly this situation. None of these facts should be a surprise to leaders of nations.

Well apparently over 95% of that 45 years of preparing has been obliterated, their currency is in free fall, 2M people have become unemployed over there in the last few months, and a handful of idiots are playing a game of chicken with global implications.

What a mess.

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