Iran war energy crisis is a renewable energy wake-up call

3/23/2026 at 12:19:11 AM

As a Portuguese I have a more nuanced view of these type of takes.

We invested _heavily_ and prematurely in renewable energies -- see my comment from a couple of years ago [0]. Since then, our energy prices were high for a while and now they're not much lower than the EU's average because all that investment needs to be amortized [1]. Two years ago, we ran a whole month on renewables [2]. Despite this, our increase in energy prices since the Iran war started has been dramatic and the price of everything has been going up significantly. I can't help but think about the ROI on all those renewables if they can't help make our lives easier at a time like this. I'd much rather we go nuclear.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37719568

[1]: https://eco.sapo.pt/2026/03/11/precos-da-eletricidade-e-gas-...

[2]: https://www.portugalglobal.pt/en/news/2024/april/renewable-e...

by vmsp

3/23/2026 at 12:23:29 AM

Portugal needs battery storage.

It’s the best bang for buck. Australia, one of the world leaders in grid connected battery storage and it’s a reason prices keep falling there. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/mar/19/power...

Can you imagine prices falling during an energy crisis, high inflation and datacenter build outs? Well it’s happening and pretty drastically in Australia.

by AnotherGoodName

3/23/2026 at 11:29:55 AM

Portuguese here. Of course we are still exposed to higher prices. Most of our car and truck fleet still runs on fossil. Notwithstanding all of the effort we made with renewable energy and barring the odd month where it reaches almost 100%, my typical invoice says that it is still just barely over 50% of the energy mix, so the other half will drive prices up. Moreover, we've had a ton of political pressure against building more dams, which would not only help increase our renewable mix, but would also help control the floods and prepare us for the droughts. Ironically, the pressure against dams has come from the left, which I've always felt to be lunacy. Finally, too many families still haven't transitioned from gas to electricity for water and home heating and, AFAIK, industry still relies a lot on gas for industrial energy (maybe, to your point, because electricity is still too expensive).

Having that said, I half agree with you concerning nuclear. I don't think we should have bet on nuclear as an alternative to renewable energy. In the long run, renewable energy will be more sustainable. For one, nuclear fuel is a limited resource, so we'll eventually run out of it. (Yes, kicking the can down the road sometimes is actually the best solution, but still). For another, since Portugal isn't uranium rich, we'd be trading one set of external dependencies for another. However, I am completely against the ideologically driven anti-nuclear political attitude that have and the fact that we've downright refused to accept any kind of nuclear energy projects whatsoever, regardless of whether those projects would be competing with renewable energy projects for investment. In fact I think that nuclear is the perfect companion to renewable energy, not a competitor. The more renewable energy we have, the less uranium we'd be importing, thus shrinking external dependency. Yet, at the same time, nuclear power plants would be a cheap, carbon-zero, solution to renewable energy's greatest problem, intermittency.

Just one final point. Unlike, for instance, Germany, with a large amount of territory with very low seismic risk, we would need to be very careful with where we'd build the plants. It would be complete recklessness to build a nuclear plant in Lisbon, for instance.

by ruicraveiro

3/23/2026 at 4:28:33 PM

Nuclear is significantly more expensive on average. It is in no way an either/or question, you could have both. With 35% of energy being renewables, the country is still very much reliant on global energy markets, and it should indeed be a wake up call. If it was 100% reliant on qatari gas, the situation would be significantly more dire.

From your older comment:

> Our CO2 emissions are like 0.15% of the total and our per-capita emissions are already lower than for ex. Germany. We basically have no industry. If we could wave a magic wand and completely stop our CO2 emissions it wouldn't move the needle on global warming at all.

Well, it would move the needle by 0.15%. Portugal has 0.11% of the global population by the way.

by arw0n

3/23/2026 at 1:02:32 AM

Does that comparison make sense? You're comparing investments into the national grid with energy prices set by international trade. Power is imported and exported all the time, and the lack of affordable fossil fuels abroad will put pressure on cheaper local prices.

I don't think going nuclear would've made a difference here. Someone is making a lot of money selling power locally for prices that only make sense in an international context. Whether that's done by wind farm operators or nuclear plants, the result will still be the same.

by jeroenhd

3/23/2026 at 5:26:32 AM

I was going to say that this is an unfortunate side-effect of how electricity is being priced in the market but I learned today that Iberian is not participating in the nordpool. Nordpool has this weird pricing model that pays every generator the price of the most expensive one that supplies the last watt of demand.

Regardless and despite this nordpool weirdness; with some rooftop & batteries I haven't been paying a cent for electricity outside of January so I don't need to care about prices in the market much at all.

I make a point to have my direct energy use be electric (e.g. for driving) so the recent jump in the pricing of molecules affects me relatively little. Unfortunately I don't have much say in indirect energy use (as used for food production) but I believe that people are rational and will figure they can do what I did sooner or later.

by nagisa

3/23/2026 at 8:02:03 AM

This is a completely normal way to price energy. It's called marginal pricing; price is set by the most expensive energy required to fill demand.

The idea is that on some schedule (e.g. each hour) you use the cheapest forms of energy you can to meet demand, but the final price is set by the most expensive one you had to use. This means that the cheaper forms of energy (i.e. renewables) make more money (which increase their profitability and can be reinvested). Obviously though we need better storage if we rely on renewables or we are almost always going to have to use fossil fuels at some point.

Whether there are better models, I will leave to people who know more than I do, but it is certainly a very common way to do this.

by MattPalmer1086

3/23/2026 at 11:04:58 AM

> Whether there are better models, I will leave to people who know more than I do, but it is certainly a very common way to do this.

It is fundamentally how the grid works. You can bring it down to a singular household or company level to see the raw incentives:

Why should a household or company with solar and storage buy expensive grid based electricity when their own installation delivers? They don't.

Why should this household or company not for example charge their battery on their battery when the price is low and sell/use it when the prices are higher?

Why should this household's or company's neighbors buy expensive grid electricity rather than the surplus of renewables and storage? They don't.

With the distributed electricity generation renewables enable monopolized grids no longer function. Because consumers have a choice and can vote with their wallet.

by ViewTrick1002

3/23/2026 at 7:56:05 AM

All energy markets that’s not monopolized or regulated run on marginal pricing.

It’s a fundamental fact of commodity trading.

Saudi Arabia produces oil at $12 per barrel. They sell it at the global marginal cost.

by ViewTrick1002

3/24/2026 at 3:23:50 AM

Probably a wise investment?

Why Portugal and Spain Dodge Europe’s Energy Price Shock: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Why-Portugal-and-...

by thelastgallon

3/23/2026 at 9:38:01 AM

Portugal is at the cheap end of EU prices. Of the ones lower several are just directly setting the price low by government fiat or subsidy.

Countries that have genuinely lower prices either built nuclear 40 years ago, or have great access to hydro they built 40 years ago or a bit of both.

Wanting to build nuclear now for cheap prices doesn't make any sense. It has the same high up front investment shape as renewables, except higher costs.

by ZeroGravitas

3/23/2026 at 10:31:14 AM

I know you dont to hear this, but theres just a hump to get over with this. Same with any investment. Youll be laughing 50 years down the line. Consider this a tree you might not get to sit under but will give shade to future generations

by samrus

3/23/2026 at 9:22:22 PM

Going nuclear in an earthquake zone is nuts.

by amai

3/23/2026 at 12:21:22 AM

> I'd much rather we go nuclear.

I think/hope you mean "I'd rather we adopt/use nuclear energy."

by gnabgib

3/23/2026 at 12:27:42 AM

I don't think anyone was at risk of misunderstanding their intent...

by mrsilencedogood

3/23/2026 at 2:32:32 AM

Some of the people at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue might willfully misunderstand.

by rickydroll

3/23/2026 at 8:32:42 AM

I don't see any harm in either. Europe understands the need for developing self defence.

by donkeybeer

3/22/2026 at 11:54:33 PM

See a wider perspective on how energy sources shape geopolitics: "The pivot" by Charlie Stross https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45621074.

And yes, solar energy is not only greener (less CO2, less PM2.5), but also frees us from dependency on other countries. The future can be less centralized.

Some countries (Russia included) will lose their bargaining chip. Other countries (USA included) will lose the incentive to 'democratize' the Middle East.

by stared

3/23/2026 at 12:13:26 AM

[dead]

by sieabahlpark

3/23/2026 at 2:12:12 AM

>but also frees us from dependency on other countries

It does not. It moves the dependency to the manufacturing source of the panels. That is China. No thanks.

Can we please just build more reactors? The insistence on solar is becoming a cargo cult (thanks, Elon Musk).

by remarkEon

3/23/2026 at 2:47:53 AM

China can't stop you from using solar panels you've already installed and you could manufacture new ones somewhere else.

Solar actually makes a lot of sense for a significant fraction of the grid. It's specifically excellent for electrifying transportation, because most cars are stationary at an office park during the majority of sunlight hours. Install chargers there and you solve the problem of people in apartments not having them at home and you don't have to worry about the intermittency because you're literally using it to charge batteries. Solar is cheaper at the cost of intermittency, so for the things where intermittency doesn't really matter it makes obvious sense.

When it sucks is when you need reliable power in winter at night. Which is what nuclear is good at. But then... you can use both, each one for the thing it's better at.

by AnthonyMouse

3/23/2026 at 3:00:20 AM

This is gas brain thinking.

Solar panels are not gas. You don't burn them to make energy.

There is no dependency on solar panel manufacturers. Once you install a panel it's going to make electricity for the next 25 years. At least. After that you can recycle it and use it another 25 years.

Reactors on the other hand require fuel that is consumed. Unless you can mine it yourself, you're just trading an oil dependency for a uranium dependency.

by triceratops

3/23/2026 at 3:38:23 AM

And this is two dimensional thinking.

PRC has spent the better part of the last two decades gobbling up the supply chains that feed into solar panel manufacturing. Suppose you and I, being experienced technologists and enterprising individuals, decided tomorrow that we were going to start a solar panel manufacturing company. Surely this will be a growing, potentially high margin business because demand will be high if we're electrifying everything because of the aforementioned energy crisis. We are going to run head first into a wall of raw materials supply that is controlled by ... China.

So my point is that if you want to flip the energy generation to "green" and solar on some aggressive timeline, you are going to be dependent on China to do so. There are very obvious geopolitical reasons for why this is a very dumb idea. One of the ways I gauge how serious someone is about moving energy generation in the United States to solar is if they are okay with opening up closed mines so we can produce the rare earths, here, that are needed to manufacture the panels themselves. If they're cool with that, great, let's get stared. If they aren't, then they're not serious and are bandwagoning.

by remarkEon

3/23/2026 at 3:43:39 AM

And I'm saying the US doesn't need to bother with rare earth mining as long as China is happy to export their panels. Buy as many as they sell. Build up a strategic panel reserve.

If they ever stop, use the reserve and gas plants to backstop. Spend the next 20 years developing domestic PV manufacturing capability, safe in the knowledge that your current panels are good for at least that long.

by triceratops

3/23/2026 at 3:47:25 AM

[flagged]

by remarkEon

3/23/2026 at 3:51:48 AM

I'm not sure you understand much if you can seriously write

> Surely [PV manufacturing] will be a growing, potentially high margin business because demand will be high

I'm not aware of it being a high margin business now for any Chinese company, and that's with their aforementioned advantages in labor and mining. This is a product whose price has fallen 99% in the past 2 decades. What margin?

If you still want to re-open rare earth mines in the US knowing the economics, and you can follow American environmental and labor standards, then be my guest. It doesn't strike me as a lucrative opportunity but what do I know.

by triceratops

3/23/2026 at 4:11:26 AM

Sounds like moving to PV for electricity generation is a risky option, since maybe margins won't be so high if they're made here in the US and the economics just don't work for manufacturing from scratch. Perhaps we should consider other options, like the magic rocks we can find in the woods that get really hot when you hold them close together. This way, we can simplify our supply chains and have a reliable supply of energy that doesn't rely on a hostile geopolitical rival, and doesn't require the costly transition of the grid that we'd need to do if we went all in on PV.

by remarkEon

3/23/2026 at 5:24:13 AM

> the magic rocks we can find in the woods

The hypocracy of calling them unserious moments ago.

by Tadpole9181

3/23/2026 at 6:38:08 AM

This is a euphemism meant to convey how fortunate we are that civilization has advanced to the point where splitting the atom can but used to generate electricity. I'm sorry that it went over your head.

by remarkEon

3/23/2026 at 5:53:50 PM

I encourage you - and anyone - to read the excellent book:

_The Making of the Atomic Bomb_ [1]

... and, in this case, to pay special attention to the multiple chapters describing in painful detail just what is involved in refining and extracting Uranium. As in, cubic acres of land mechanically and chemically processed to extract ounces of material ... which is then sent to enormous production facilities, at tremendous cost, only to begin the refinement process.

It is an incredibly long, dirty and energy intensive journey and I am not sure if the ledger of carbon expenses properly accounts for these steps.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bomb

by rsync

3/23/2026 at 7:16:47 PM

I have spent a lot of time in areas that have been impacted by uranium extraction, including wandering around the four corners area and discovering old uranium mines.

Combined with seeing how the extractive energy industry has treated old wells, where they do everything in their power to abandon them and put the burden of cleanup and mainteance of that remediation onto the public, I simply have no faith that nuclear power is "safe" as long as it's private industry doing the work.

by scarecrowbob

3/23/2026 at 11:07:27 AM

We should deliberately use a more expensive solution (nuclear) so that some people can make more money and that's somehow more "secure". You also haven't explained how electrification via nuclear won't need a "costly transition of the grid".

I'm not hearing much logic in anything you've said so far. I'm convinced you're ideologically opposed to PV and are debating in bad faith here.

by triceratops

3/23/2026 at 4:55:53 AM

Today's mainstream solar panels use abundant, widely available materials.

by jhanschoo

3/23/2026 at 5:10:03 AM

Feels like PV boosters these days are just completely and totally unaware of where these things actually come from and who controls the material supply chain.

by remarkEon

3/23/2026 at 5:17:05 AM

Your feelings are likely off - most people know that the materials used in solar panels are widely available across the globe and that China dominates the manufacturing process due to the US abdicating interest in manufacturing and renewables.

by defrost

3/23/2026 at 6:40:20 AM

You get why this is bad, right.

by remarkEon

3/23/2026 at 6:48:29 AM

.. and you get why this is less bad than Middle East fossil fuel dependancies right?

by defrost

3/23/2026 at 7:54:56 AM

Rare earths are not used to make solar panels.

by ZeroGravitas

3/23/2026 at 8:11:47 AM

Solid comment - although rare earths are used in a minor way in the full Solar PV solution via inverters and other components.

Straight up Solar Panel grid arrays sans that stuff, it's 2,800 kg copper and 3,900 kg Silicon per MW and not much else directly (aluminium for framing, glass protection, can be added).

( Although lots of new copper (oxide ore, the most common) requires lots of new sulphur and the world has just lost 3.8 million tonnes of annual sulphur production by product from Qatar refineries )

by defrost

3/23/2026 at 3:34:15 AM

There is a dependency considering these are evidently valid targets for missiles

by asdff

3/23/2026 at 3:35:53 AM

I don't know what you're referring to. Do you mind rephrasing?

by triceratops

3/23/2026 at 3:43:12 AM

Energy infrastructure has been targeted in the Iran-Israel-US conflict. Solar is just as liable as petroleum infrastructure has been. People think petroleum has some unique risk here. Really it is energy being targeted by military means. Doesn't matter how a nation or economy sources its energy, it will be a high value target.

Consider if the entire world was solar powered today. Iran targets solar plants in the gulf states instead. Gulf states target iran solar plants. Prices of panel materials surge just like oil prices surge today in response to the demand brought on to the supply chain. Maybe Iran wants to twist the knife, sends submarines to target solar supply chain networks directly either in shipping at sea or to be closer to shelling or missile striking mining or production facilities.

The world is all too easy to disrupt in the very same way it is being disrupted in terms of oil today, thanks to the asymmetries brought on by drone and missile warfare in this new era.

by asdff

3/23/2026 at 4:36:19 AM

> Solar is just as liable as petroleum infrastructure has been.

Oil and gas infrastructure is full of choke points like pipelines, port facilities, storage facilities and large, concentrated refineries that supply entire country's worth of fuel. There is no central choke point in a solar based grid.

> Iran targets solar plants in the gulf states instead.

A drone exploding in a solar plant will take out what, a couple hundred solar panels? The rest will keep working once you blow the dust off.

You set one oil storage tank on fire and it takes care of everything else in its vicinity.

Not to mention solar can be truly decentralized. You can just buy a solar panel, plug it in your outlet and start generating electricity. You can turn every house into a solar power plant if you want and an enemy will have to bomb every house to get them offline.

> Maybe Iran wants to twist the knife, sends submarines to target solar supply chain networks directly either in shipping at sea or to be closer to shelling or missile striking mining or production facilities.

Iran will totally just go to war against china to prevent more solar panels from being made, yeah.

by pibaker

3/23/2026 at 4:52:20 AM

>There is no central choke point in a solar based grid.

The distribution becomes the target, not the generation. I agree with most of the other things you're saying, about how I can generate a small amount of electricity on my own if I buy a PV system. That's irrelevant, however.

by remarkEon

3/23/2026 at 5:42:57 AM

Destroy oil supply and there is a crisis in 12h. Destroy solar supply and there's a crisis in... 20 years? It'd actually be much sooner but the point is that it's much less urgent that oil.

by gazpacho

3/23/2026 at 5:05:15 PM

Destroy solar supply chain and then your main solar generating plants and there is a crisis that day as well.

by asdff

3/23/2026 at 7:32:15 PM

Sure but certainly you understand that's far more complex to do than taking out a single oil refinery next to your country that affects the whole work and is the only reason a country like Iran has any power at all?

by wookmaster

3/23/2026 at 3:49:22 AM

As terrible as the human cost would be if Iran and the other Gulf states were to target each others' solar plants, it would be contained to tha region. India, and China, and America, and Africa, and Europe's PV would continue to generate electricity. Compared to what we have now, where a war in one part of the world makes energy expensive everywhere else.

Not to mention: PV generation is way more distributed than drilling oil and gas. Commercial PV generation facilities are smaller and more spread out. And even if the enemy bombs them all in a war, you can disconnect your rooftop solar panels from the grid and keep your house going. Do you have an oil well and refinery in your backyard?

I'll repeat it again: you don't burn solar panels to make energy. We need growing numbers of panels today because we're going solar. If the world were already at 100% solar then we wouldn't need nearly as much manufacturing or mining. We'd mostly just recycle old panels.

This is unlike fossil fuels. If you burn gas you will always need new gas. Forever.

by triceratops

3/23/2026 at 5:01:34 PM

>Do you have an oil well and refinery in your backyard?

Well, in the context of the US, we certainly do. And yet, our prices go up, because of course they would. In every domestic produced industry prices would go up if global supply were diminished. This is just how a globalized economy works. People assume a degree of economic isolation with solar that just isn't realistic with how the economy is structured today. It might have been realistic 100 years ago but today it is not.

by asdff

3/23/2026 at 9:40:03 PM

I meant in your literal backyard.

And you bring up an excellent point with the globalized economy. Solar plants being bombed in a faraway country's war won't drive up the cost of your electricity because (most of the time) your electricity can't be exported. But oil can. If oil becomes expensive outside America, it becomes expensive within America. Even if America has its own oil.

by triceratops

3/24/2026 at 4:15:26 AM

No. Solar bought mostly from a foreign power only gives you a dependence for continuing to expand solar or (much less so) maintaining the solar already in your country over the 15-30 years it gradually breaks down / gets less efficient. Once you're at peak solar youre not that bad off even if embargoed. Meanwhile since oil highly inelastic, even relatively small portions of your supply being disrupted at any point means an almost instaneous increase in the price to do almost anything industrial or commercial in your country, as is shown by the current Hormuz crisis

by KylerAce

3/23/2026 at 5:19:13 AM

It seems to me what you're arguing is that the government should incentivize the industry to produce solar panels domestically - as a strategic resource. Then you are both free from China and oil producing nations; and you get to create some domestic jobs in manufacturing.

> But China also owns the supply.

Well then, damn, we better get started making deals today?

Your plan to do absolutely nothing and continue losing forever with increasingly no way out seems utterly rediculous.

by Tadpole9181

3/23/2026 at 12:21:46 AM

And how will renewables like solar and wind wirk with Class 8 trucks, shipping, aviation or process heat or as feedstock? How have they worked in Germany, which has shut down her nuclear plants and Russian hydrocarbons?

Please - tell us.

by OneDonOne

3/23/2026 at 12:33:50 AM

I'm gonna be the annoying guy who points out the obvious thats being repeated again and again for the last 50 years...

For transport, trains! Trains of different sizes, shapes and designs, solve most of the transport issues. The fact that western countries are behind on this doesnt mean it's too late to start.

For heat, better insulation and heat pumps do wonders!

For feedstock maybe feeding animals is simply bot the way we should move forward.

And I say all this as a person who drives a gas car 70 miles every day, lives in an old house with bad insulation and eat meat several times a week

by Valgrim

3/23/2026 at 12:47:25 AM

By feedstock, I mean the hydrocarbons that are required for the bulk chemicals, fertilizers, plastics, rubbers, detergents, pharmaceuticals etc. that we take for granted.

And you still need trucks for last mile haulage.

by OneDonOne

3/23/2026 at 3:07:23 AM

Class 8 trucks are solved. Volvo, Freightliner and Tesla all make electric semis. They're not a large percentage of the installed base yet but there is nothing that needs to be invented, only adopted, and the latter will pick up as the battery costs continue to decline.

Chemical feedstocks are only a small percentage of the petroleum market. The large majority is fuel. If you stop burning it there is plenty of supply and you're not worried about whether you can get any from Iran.

by AnthonyMouse

3/23/2026 at 6:22:23 AM

Not only are electric trucks are unprofitable, it means you switch your dependency from Middle-Eastern fossil fuels to Chinese rare earths. At least we can make biofuels from sugarcane

by OneDonOne

3/23/2026 at 3:11:23 PM

Electric trucks already have a lower TCO than diesel trucks. LFP batteries don't even contain rare earths.

by AnthonyMouse

3/23/2026 at 7:39:11 AM

You can also process rare earth concentrates on your own soil, there's no need to offshore that to China and Malaysia other than "No waste ponds in my Backyard".

by defrost

3/23/2026 at 7:32:33 AM

You don’t burn your batteries though. You build them once and then use them for 20 years. They will just keep working when the next war erupts on the other side of the planet.

by TheTxT

3/23/2026 at 12:27:45 AM

> Please - tell us.

No need of sarcasm here. Or going the route of a false dichotomy.

Again, not all dependencies can be eliminated. But it is better to have less dependencies.

Closing nuclear plants in Germany was a disaster, and here we agree.

by stared

3/23/2026 at 12:50:30 AM

One of those dependencies w.r.t large solar panel buildouts, will be charcoal. [0] And lots of it.

[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335083312_Why_do_we...

by OneDonOne

3/23/2026 at 3:04:20 AM

Solar panels are recyclable. Once you have enough for your needs you can stop burning charcoal.

You can never stop burning oil if all you use is oil.

Also I wasn't aware you could extract oil, gas, and coal with no environmental impact. I must have just dreamed the words Deepwater Horizon.

by triceratops

3/23/2026 at 12:49:43 AM

> Class 8 trucks

Half of the "heavy duty vehicles" (which I believe is roughly similar to the classification you are using) sold in China in December were electric. Between rapidly improving batteries and maturing technology for swapping batteries as a refuelling strategy electrification of trucks is the obvious and inevitable future. They are simply cheaper to operate.

by gpm

3/23/2026 at 12:59:19 AM

Good for the Chinese. The rest of us do not have the upfront capital to purchase these trucks. And there is still the matter of fertilizer, concrete, bulk chemicals etc. And solar panels. There is a very good reason why solar psnel factories (like JinkoSolar run off coal or hydro and not solar power.

by OneDonOne

3/23/2026 at 2:33:36 AM

That's one of the wonderful things about automotive infrastructure. You can make gradual incremental changes and slowly improve the entire system. It may not be fast enough or cheap enough, but you can still make it happen.

by rickydroll

3/23/2026 at 1:27:15 AM

> The rest of us do not have the upfront capital to purchase these trucks.

We can afford what we can do. We don't need to do what we can afford. If we wanted to build and deploy electric trucks enmasse like China then we could do it, regardless of upfront capital.

by jemmyw

3/23/2026 at 7:04:08 PM

Right the US lacks capital for tech investment..

by coffeebeqn

3/23/2026 at 8:58:03 PM

not sure lacks is the correct word...

by wookmaster

3/23/2026 at 9:39:06 PM

> The rest of us do not have the upfront capital to purchase these trucks.

Isn't this the purpose of a loan? You have a truck with a higher purchase price that adds ~$2000/month to your loan payment but then you save ~$3000/month in diesel.

And you're saving a lot more than that in diesel when it's $5/gallon.

by AnthonyMouse

3/23/2026 at 4:17:17 AM

> The rest of us do not have the upfront capital to purchase these trucks.

You don't need any upfront capital. Do it when the trucks become due for refurbishment a truck. Then it's almost a no-brainier, as its cheaper convert it to an EV: https://www.januselectric.com.au/

by rstuart4133

3/23/2026 at 1:06:20 AM

>They are simply cheaper to operate.

We don't know that. Beijing might have been investing in them as insurance against its not being able to get enough diesel fuel to run an all-diesel fleet of trucks, so countries that are self-sufficient in oil shouldn't just blindly imitate Beijing's move.

by hollerith

3/23/2026 at 1:10:06 AM

We know that because we know how much they cost, how much they cost to operate, and the same for diesel trucks. The technology here isn't a bunch of state secrets.

by gpm

3/23/2026 at 1:29:46 AM

Here you're just repeating the assertion I called into question ("they are simply cheaper to operate") -- or more precisely you are implying it. Does your not repeating it outright mean you mean to slowly distance yourself from it?

If you have evidence that there is a fleet of electric trucks anywhere (big enough to make a dent in China's transport needs) whose actual total cost proved to be less than a fleet of diesels doing the same work would have cost, then share it. If all you have to offer is words to the effect that "an examination of the relevant technologies by any competent analyst will of course find that the battery-powered fleet would be cheaper", then I repeat my assertion.

by hollerith

3/23/2026 at 1:41:48 AM

I was not in fact repeating the prior assertions. I was explaining why we know they are cheaper to operate. Because we know the costs of both them and the alternative. No fancy deductions needed where we're arguing "well electricity is cheaper than diesel but we don't know how much they use" or something.

I am certainly not backing down from the claim that "they are simply cheaper to operate". That is an absolutely trivial claim that is entirely obvious to anyone even remotely familiar with numbers in this space.

I would note I was discussing trucks that swap batteries - and thus the "paying drivers to wait around while trucks recharge" step doesn't exist. I'll also note all the other costs you are listing are capital costs not operational ones. Broadly speaking for most uses we appear to have crossed the threshold where the total cost of ownership is lower for most tasks, but for some niches (like "ice road shipping") I doubt the buildout is worth it (yet).

by gpm

3/23/2026 at 1:55:28 AM

To attach some rough numbers, TCO of PRC electric truck (which cost 2x diesel) went from paying for itself in 4-5 years at $60 barrels to 2 years at $100. Diesel increase to $150, it pays for itself in 1 year.

by maxglute

3/23/2026 at 1:49:25 AM

OK, then can you name one deployed fleet of trucks anywhere that uses swappable batteries?

According to an unreliable source that gives fast answers to my questions, U.S. freight companies spent approximately $32 billion to $36 billion on new diesel Class 8 trucks in 2025.

Now are we to believe that these companies and their investors are foolish? That they didn't do calculations and consult experts before spending this money?

Are we to assign more weight to comments here on HN assuring us that electric trucks are cheaper in total cost of ownership than diesel trucks? -- comments that cost the writers nothing but a few minutes of time?

Countries dependent on the Persian Gulf's remaining open to international shipping trade shouldn't just blindly copy U.S. freight companies here: for those countries, any extra cost for an electric fleet might be worth the peace of mind of knowing they will always be able to deliver food, medicine and other essentials to their populations. France for example takes all aspects of its national security seriously and relies almost completely on imports for any fossil fuels it uses. In response it is electrifying as much of its economy as practical (and continuing to invest heavily in nuclear electricity production and renewables).

by hollerith

3/23/2026 at 1:56:44 AM

The 23 Janus trucks hauling cement in Australia - they're likely doing a few more by now.

That's been going on for three years now, so they'd have some data.

Addendum: Found battery change footage from a year past- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj9pdB9cYVQ

Rio Tinto (runs fleets of 100 tonne+ haul paks at many global sites) is running EV heavies in China and Australia with an eye to expand that usage:

* https://australianminingreview.com.au/news/rio-drives-electr...

* https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251204183951/en/BHP...

Mobile electric shovels for loading haul paks straight off the blasted shelf have been a thing for 50+ years now: https://www.komatsu.com.au/equipment/electric-rope-shovels

by defrost

3/23/2026 at 2:08:10 AM

Many major close loop operations, i.e. mines, heavy industrial clusters, ports where trucks stay on location with ~100% utilization rates have been electric for a few years now, trial started in ~2020. Started with something like 10 pilot cities, now standardized around CATL #75 pack and been mass rollout last few years, there are literally 1,000s of fleets running on battery swap now. Goal is something like 80% of highway freight done by swap stations by 2030.

>Now are we to believe that these companies and their investors are foolish? That they didn't do calculations and consult experts before spending this money?

Or you know smart investors/planners making peace with stupid US energy policy the precludes freight electrification which is vastly more economical if there was state capacity to deploy it economically.

by maxglute

3/23/2026 at 12:54:13 PM

That's good news. Thanks for the reply (all 3 repliers).

by hollerith

3/23/2026 at 1:55:04 AM

CATL via it's subsidiary QIJI is one example... with well over a thousand operational stations swapping batteries.

Considering your persistent rude tone and denial of basic facts that you could simply google this is probably the last time I'll respond to you.

Edit: PS. Real nice expanding your comment from one line to four paragraphs after I responded.

by gpm

3/23/2026 at 3:18:39 AM

> maturing technology for swapping batteries as a refuelling strategy

This seems like a non-problem to begin with. There are electric semis with a 500 mile range, which at 60 MPH is over 8 hours of driving, i.e. the legal maximum in most places. The same trucks can also add 300 miles of range in 30 minutes, which adds five hours of driving in the time it takes for a typical lunch break. Why do you even need to swap the batteries?

by AnthonyMouse

3/23/2026 at 3:02:20 AM

If electricity is cheap enough you can synthesize hydrocarbons. For aviation, and shipping, and even trucking if EVs and trains can't do it.

by triceratops

3/23/2026 at 9:06:36 AM

Well hopefully.

People have noticed that the weird social media bot accounts that are usually posting in the UK about Muslim immigrants have all suddenly shifted to talking about drilling for more oil in the north sea.

This is a bad idea for multiple reasons, but clearly someone wants you to think that is the solution rather than wind, solar, batteries, evs and heat pumps.

They've partially succeeded each time we've gone through this kind of fossil energy crisis, and they'll likely partially succeed this time.

I'd guess the propaganda is slightly harder to make in the 70% of countries where they import fossil fuels and the political/media landscape isn't so broken that they can pretend otherwise to dig themselves deeper into a hole.

by ZeroGravitas

3/22/2026 at 11:09:49 PM

I don't understand how we're still using fossil fuels. I thought the only thing that would save us from the scourge is if renewables were cheaper, but even with solar being cheaper than everything else, we're still deploying fossil fuels.

Is it because of the interests of fossil fuel companies and their lobbying, or am I missing some economic factor?

by stavros

3/23/2026 at 12:10:15 AM

We're not really adding much more fossil fuel capacity. 88% of new capacity under construction in the US is renewable. Of the fossil fuel capacity that is being added, it's overwhelmingly coal-to-gas conversions and peaker plants that help to deal with the variability in renewable generation.

It will take a long time before the fossil fuel capacity we've already built gets phased out, and of course certain developing nations are still adding dirtier fuel sources, but renewables getting cheap is working.

by jjk166

3/23/2026 at 12:11:57 AM

Ahh, interesting, I didn't realize the current mix is because of legacy plants, but I guess it makes sense that it wouldn't all be phased out immediately.

by stavros

3/23/2026 at 1:34:08 AM

>> certain developing nations are still adding dirtier fuel sources

I'd look at this from a more nuanced viewpoint of certain nations still adding sovereign fuel sources.

Read: India / China and coal

by ethbr1

3/23/2026 at 3:08:16 AM

In 2024 88% of China's new electricity generation also came from solar and wind. https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis/country/chn

India is further behind but improving rapidly. Its entire grid is still on track to be 42% renewable by 2030. The US is 42% today and expected to be 58% by the same time.

Developing countries use the cheapest source of energy, period. Today that's solar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47308960

by triceratops

3/24/2026 at 7:38:25 AM

I only count 56% from the link you gave, and that includes all renewables. Where did you get that 88%?

by M95D

3/22/2026 at 11:14:36 PM

Ultimately, the answer is fuel density. So, for long distance untethered travel, like planes. Beyond that, it's plastics production and chemical manufacturing.

We can switch to hydrogen for lots of stuff that requires carrying your fuel on your back, but some things get tougher because the density is just not the same as a hydrocarbon.

These are all surmountable (biodiesel, carbon capture->fuel cycles, bioreactors, etc), but they take time and money.

In the end, what will push us to get there are economic shocks. We're getting there, it's just painful.

by null_ptr1

3/22/2026 at 11:34:26 PM

No, that's fine, I get it that fossil fuels have incomparable density, but we're using them massively for stuff where density isn't that important. Anything inside a city, from transportation to homes to factories are already powered by electricity (or can be, e.g. cars), we're just inexplicably still using fossil fuels to create that electricity.

The US grid is still 57% coal and gas.

by stavros

3/23/2026 at 12:11:30 AM

Slightly tangential, we bought a 2014 Nissan Leaf about 18 months ago, against howls of protest from parents-in-laws and brother- and sister-in-laws with all the regular electric car FUD you hear (can't drive interstate on a single tank, can't tow a trailer, will explode and burn your house down).

For our use-case, 95% of our trips are to the shops, to various kids sports, to school, to the bus/train station, visiting (local) family, and all are very short trips easily within the relatively short range of the Leaf: ~100km. We still have our existing cars, they just get used less in favour of the cheapest option for the job at hand.

Even with our son being newly able to drive independently (so essentially needing to have three cars, rather than two, on the go at any one time), over the 18 months of owning the Leaf we've saved about 25% of the purchase price of the Leaf in spending less on petrol (including the electricity cost to charge the Leaf - which gets charged using the solar panels during the day, but more commonly using cheaper grid electricity non-peak overnight - yes, likely primarily off fossil fuels but from what I've read is more energy efficient than using petrol to power the car).

My point being, analogous to the "right answer" being to only using energy-dense fuels when necessary, we use the cheaper electric vehicle option when applicable, and only burn the expensive stuff when the better option is unavailable.

P.S. Looking at buying a newer EV with longer range, so there are additional and more flexible "better options", plus coming up to having a daughter who is also able to drive unaccompanied (four cars? :grimacing face:)

by BLKNSLVR

3/23/2026 at 12:15:39 AM

I really don't understand how people offer "but that ten-hour trip I take once a year will be 40 minutes longer!" as criticism and completely ignore "my EV TCO will be half of an ICE".

Humans really do not like change, the problems you have now are swept under the rug but tiny new problems are made into massive, insurmountable ones.

by stavros

3/23/2026 at 12:35:46 AM

I will offer you a realistic answer - the uncertainty and need for planning are the killers.

An EV dropped my transportation fuel bills by 90% but even i will admit that an EV is a hassle. On any trip that exceeds the range of the car, we must identify EV chargers, then determine whether they are working and only then can we start counting the additional minutes.

In the winter, seeing the range of you car drop by 26% and not knowing where the next working charger is, is the #1 reason why we still have two cars. If i could eliminate one with access to better transit, it would be the EV, not the combustion car.

by eldaisfish

3/23/2026 at 1:02:44 AM

Legit question (and one that I need to answer for myself as well):

Would it be cheaper to keep the EV and rent a car for when you need to do longer trips? (also taking into account the additional hassle of renting a petrol/diesel car)

Only speaking for myself, I'd seriously consider renting a (combustion) car for an interstate driving holiday if it's a rare occurrence, like once a year or once every two years. It will become an exercise in accounting[0].

My silly-ish analogy is: I don't own a plane because I fly rarely enough that it's not worth buying a plane to allow me to fly wherever, whenever I want.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQPIdZvoV4g&t=137

by BLKNSLVR

3/23/2026 at 1:40:19 AM

Chevy Volt. Perfect car. I can consistently squeeze about 60 miles electric city driving, and 400+ on a trip. Soooo disappointed GM canceled the program. No one ever understood how great this car was…

by ZebrasEat

3/23/2026 at 2:44:51 AM

The problem with the Volt is that it's a nerd's car, and they don't have enough political clout inside GM to have kept it going.

by fragmede

3/23/2026 at 2:35:45 AM

the short answer is that it depends.

I did the maths on my situation and it did not work out. It is currently cheaper to pay the $120 / month or so on insurance and maintenance for the second car as opposed to renting a car for the once a month that we actually use the second car.

The trouble is that renting a car is expensive and public transit is an even bigger hassle.

by eldaisfish

3/23/2026 at 12:53:21 AM

Sure, but this is just a temporary infrastructure issue that will be solved thoroughly as EVs become more popular. If you take long trips often, maybe it's not for you, but I personally only take trips longer than 200km or so once a year, if that, so I absolutely adore my EV and would never go back to ICE.

by stavros

3/23/2026 at 2:37:12 AM

that is beside the point.

The reality is that operating an EV is a hassle unless you can deal with the hassle or have sufficient privilege (e.g. live in a detached home) to be able to offset some of the hassle.

by eldaisfish

3/23/2026 at 2:49:35 AM

And an ICE isn't a hassle just because you've gotten used to it? They're loud, they smell bad, their torque is terrible and uneven, they're inefficient, they have tons of moving parts that are liable to break and are hard to service, and they're expensive and susceptible to fuel price hikes, like now.

How that gets turned into "yeah but EVs can't drive for 500km on one charge, so they're a hassle", I don't know.

by stavros

3/23/2026 at 12:31:26 AM

> Humans really do not like change

This is definitely part of it. My personal opinion is that 'mechanical intelligence' is so intertwined with, cough, masculinity that EVs are a threat to these kinds of men at the very core of their being. There's so much 'identity' that people associate with the car they drive, the noise it makes, that they can take it apart and put it back together again despite its complexity.

The simplicity of the electric motor and the minimal servicing required of an electric car is potentially anathema to (toxic) masculinity. As is enforcing 'stopping driving for a rest and (literal) recharge'.

It's a super old school way of thinking, but aren't we in the midst of seeing exactly that bubbling up to the surface as far more entrenched in society than we thought it could be?

(May be overthinking this a bit, but the illogic from otherwise logical family members around EVs really twisted my mind into knots that I had to spend the time undoing)

> tiny new problems are made into massive, insurmountable ones

This is just cope. Clutching at the thinnest branches because that's the only thing on offer. It's the rationalisation of all of what I've mentioned above.

by BLKNSLVR

3/23/2026 at 1:43:34 AM

> that they can take it apart and put it back together again despite its complexity.

It's definitely not this, since that hasn't been true since ~2010 CAFE standards required ECUs + their array of feeder sensors, all usually factory-locked.

by ethbr1

3/23/2026 at 1:49:03 AM

Also, counter to my own argument is that EVs can still be hacked with (although less 'mechanically') as per recent article and HN discussion:

http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/ev/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47342185

by BLKNSLVR

3/23/2026 at 12:11:02 AM

In Australia the answer is political lobbying, without a doubt.

We had an emissions trading scheme[0] in 2012 meant to help in a transition to clean energy sources that was aggressively lobbied against by Australia's largest polluters and lasted only 2 years before being repealed by the incoming government by labeling it a "tax" that citizens would pay for. This led to a decade of policy stagnation[1] where we could've been transitioning away from fossil fuels.

So while energy density is definitely a factor, political lobbying is absolutely a factor.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Pollution_Reduction_Sch...

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/0a453f5c-e859-4300-9355-46822c451...

by chrysoprace

3/23/2026 at 12:34:05 AM

> by labeling it a "tax" that citizens would pay for.

Are the quotes here implying there wasn't a cost imposed on the public to artificially speed up a transition to green energy? Might as well be honest about it and say it's a "temporary sacrifice for the greater good" or something. Otherwise it's just another form of political spin.

by dmix

3/23/2026 at 1:04:18 AM

The government of the day did not and never used the word "tax". They essentially turned pollution into a commodity, which could be traded between companies who wanted to pollute more and rewarded companies who transitioned to clean energy. See the primary Wikipedia article on emissions trading schemes[0] for more information.

The political opposition continuously spun it as a "tax", in an attempt to stir outrage and win the next election, which they succeeded in[1]. The incoming government was and still is largely funded by fossil fuel companies, so they repealed the scheme.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_emission_trading

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Australian_federal_electi...

by chrysoprace

3/23/2026 at 12:44:56 AM

It was an enforcement of paying a (small) portion of the externalities as a result of the use of fossil fuels.

The "tax" was to be paid by the largest polluters, hence their lobbying against it. It wasn't something the citizens had to pay for unless the largest polluters decided to raise their prices as a result of this "tax".

Asking polluters to decrease their profits, as it becomes increasingly obvious that their profits are based on making life worse for the entire planet for the future, I think, is not too grand an ask. "That's how it has always been" is not a reason not to act to improve "how it could be".

by BLKNSLVR

3/23/2026 at 12:55:33 AM

Those schemes always seemed to me like a whole lot of lipstick and pretty packaging on something that could just be pitched with more honesty, and without creating a maze of extra corporate accounting costs and loopholes. Just raise a tax to pay for investment in green energy that will eventually compete on price and be self-sustaining, while also providing lots of environmental benefits and potentially increase industrial competition with China.

The only reason a politician would come up with a complex carbon scheme like that is if they knew a tax would be unpopular with the public. Which mostly translates to a lack of good communication or a disregard for the public's intelligence.

by dmix

3/23/2026 at 2:27:04 AM

> The only reason a politician would come up with a complex carbon scheme like that is if they knew a tax would be unpopular with the public.

And the way the events unfolded show that indeed, a tax would be unpopular with the public.

by two_handfuls

3/22/2026 at 11:25:45 PM

Fuel density wouldn't be such an impactful attribute if the US military and geopolitical situation and strategy were different.

Fuel density is logistically important and the US geographical position means that density is more important to the US than other nations. In other words, if we forecast that we'll be fighting foreign wars, fuel transport is an logistical problem that optimises for density.

by kelseyfrog

3/22/2026 at 11:32:59 PM

Fuel density matters to things like cars and semi-trucks. Right now you can’t build an electric version that can fully refuel in minutes. That makes fast, long-range travel impractical in an electric vehicle.

by kayodelycaon

3/23/2026 at 12:14:44 AM

https://insideevs.com/news/758625/byd-megawatt-charging-demo...

"It's called Megawatt charging because it delivers 1,000 kilowatts of electrical power at 1,000 volts, which is twice as powerful as the fastest chargers we have here in the United States."

by galago

3/23/2026 at 12:16:22 AM

Actually a few other HN threads have just discussed the latest Chinese electric cars that refuel in 5 minutes for a 250 miles range and which have a 500 miles range when fully charged.

That makes fast, long-range travel quite practical in an electric vehicle.

While this model greatly improves the charging speed, other electric cars introduced this year use sodium-ion batteries, which are heavier than lithium-ion batteries, but they have the advantage that in cold climates they do not lose either capacity or charging speed down to temperatures as low as minus 40 Celsius degrees, removing other limitation of electric cars.

So hydrocarbon fuels are likely to remain non-replaceable only in aircraft and spacecraft, where weight really matters.

However, hydrocarbon fuels can be synthesized from water and carbon dioxide, passing through syngas, by using solar energy, just not at a price competitive with fossil fuel.

by adrian_b

3/22/2026 at 11:45:04 PM

Me searching for the electric tanks. ¯ \ _ ༼ •́ ͜ ʖ •̀ ༽ _ / ¯

Edit: I found them :D

by kelseyfrog

3/23/2026 at 12:30:41 AM

I do not know if any such tanks are in production, but there where experimental electric tanks, just not with batteries, but with turbogenerators.

by adrian_b

3/23/2026 at 12:44:57 AM

Great question! Turns out there are. The U.S. Military's Abrams Tank Is Going Hybrid [1]. I'm sure we'll get some comments saying why it's a terrible idea[2].

1. https://insideevs.com/news/784805/abrams-m1e3-hybrid-tank-vi...

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47484044

by kelseyfrog

3/23/2026 at 12:02:21 AM

They didn’t make it past the drones.

by kayodelycaon

3/22/2026 at 11:53:43 PM

and I wonder which blown up tank would pollute the environment more

by ThatMedicIsASpy

3/23/2026 at 3:10:21 AM

If you're worried about the environment don't get into wars. If you're in a war, worry about winning.

Wars of the future will make heavy use of drones. They don't run on hydrocarbons.

by triceratops

3/23/2026 at 12:00:34 AM

I don't really think that's really high up on military priorities list. But happy to be proven wrong on that.

by kelseyfrog

3/23/2026 at 12:10:33 AM

tanks must represent like 0.001% of fuel consumption lol Road uses like cars, trucks and buses is 47% of all oil, and clearly an enormous fraction of that can be converted to use electricity instead

by make3

3/23/2026 at 12:20:45 AM

Aviation is a few percent of global emissions. All aviation.

It’s probably the hardest thing to replace but if we can’t we will be okay.

Long haul trucking and shipping and remote site power are probably the next hardest things, and maybe coal for metallurgy, but these are also small compared to emissions from electricity generation and routine car transit. The big sources can be completely converted.

by api

3/23/2026 at 5:17:49 PM

I suspect even if all oil will be gone, it will be possible to maintain some solar -> synthetic fuel chain for aviation on large scale.

by andriy_koval

3/24/2026 at 11:14:27 AM

You could probably fill a 737 with biodiesel today and fly it. A jet will run on anything combustible within the right ignition temperature, density, and viscosity ranges and diesel is not far from kerosene aka jet fuel.

I mean, you could probably almost run a jet turbine on bacon grease if you kept it warm to keep it from solidifying. Some military stuff is intentionally made to be as “flex fuel” as possible in case you are cut off from official supply lines and have to do something like gas up a plane with road diesel of unknown quality.

You wouldn’t just do things like that with a million dollar plane since it might be bad for the engine but if the engine were tuned for it it’d be fine.

by api

3/23/2026 at 12:57:50 AM

[dead]

by GorbachevyChase

3/23/2026 at 12:19:24 AM

> I don't understand how we're still using fossil fuels.

These fit an energy niche that can't be replaced with any one thing. China is just now investing in an electric military, for instance. Shipping will remain difficult to electrify entirely (which is surmountable, but certainly not in production). Coal and natural gas plants provide on-demand power that is not straightforward to guarantee with renewable sources. And there are many (likely almost all) grids that are simply not up to the task of transmitting energy that used to be transmitted by physically moving fossil fuels. Air flight has no renewable alternative as of today—though, I suppose we technically do have renewable forms of jet fuel, it's extremely expensive.

& of course we will need byproducts for the forseeable future for fertilizer, materials, chip production, etc etc.

It'll take a couple generations. Of course we should be paying poor countries to not use fossil fuels, but instead we're trying to force switching back to fossil fuels ourselves for no explicable reason (as an american obv).

by throwaway27448

3/22/2026 at 11:36:22 PM

Time, production capacity, and materials. I’ve seen 1yr lead times on electric equipment to install charging stations. Copper supply issues with a huge rollout.

$150/barrel, much higher prices everywhere, less fertilizer, and less oil available could spur a faster turnover.

by instagib

3/23/2026 at 3:36:17 AM

I'm building a house (in Europe) and lead times on things are ridiculous now.

I ordered some plumbing parts from a well known German manufacturer in February and am still waiting, the retailer can't give me an exact date yet.

Same thing happened a few months ago when I tried to order a network switch, after a month and a half I cancelled the order.

I've just ordered appliances, that I won't need for a few months, just because I don't know how long they will actually take, and maybe on a month the price will have shot up.

by fy20

3/22/2026 at 11:36:58 PM

Fingers crossed.

by stavros

3/23/2026 at 12:26:05 PM

> I don't understand how we're still using fossil fuels.

Because it's in the corporate interests of many multi-billion dollar companies that lobby politicians

by bean469

3/22/2026 at 11:50:35 PM

Because the upside (with barely single digit margins if it exists) is mostly China and no one else being able to compete at that scale.

Something like skin in the game. US (low), EU(moderate), China (high), Global South (high with caveats to leapfrog but financing crunch always there)

Renewables need front loaded funding compared to Oil & Gas which are the incumbents that make them sticky.

Otherwise is a lot of US consumers were rational and only price minded they would've run TCO calculators on EV vs ICE for day to day use even without subsidies

by newyankee

3/22/2026 at 11:28:20 PM

Renewables require power storage. Batteries are large, heavy, expensive, and the power dense ones have absolutely horrendous failure modes.

There are other storage options, but they require even more space than batteries.

Oil and gasoline require very little space, have easy to handle failure modes, and aren’t that expensive to operate. Not expensive enough to justify changing nationwide logistics and support.

It’s also far cheaper to keep using fossil fuels for a year than build out entirely new infrastructure.

by kayodelycaon

3/23/2026 at 12:20:10 AM

I'm not sure the failure modes are too significantly different. I think it's likely you may consider them 'easy to handle' is because there's been years to learn how to handle these failure modes (which is a positive, but for reasons not inherent to the power source itself).

It's always far cheaper to keep status quo X than move to new thing Y. Until it isn't. Especially if you don't take into account externalities. Increased instances of flooding, cyclones, and wildfires gets pretty expensive pretty quickly. Losing ground to competitors can be fatally expensive in the long term.

Such things require the ability and will to think and prepare long-term, and it feels as if humanity has been migrating in the opposite direction since the 70's.

by BLKNSLVR

3/23/2026 at 1:09:08 AM

Oil doesn’t make self-oxidizing metal fires. You can easily put out an oil or gas fire with water and it will stay out once cooled off. You have to just let lithium batteries burn and even if you get them extinguished, there’s no where to store, transport, or recycle them safely because they reignite without warning at any temperature.

Yes, there are mitigations, but that doesn’t change how fundamentally dangerous they are. Gas tanks do not spontaneously ignite if punctured. Gas is easily cleaned up. Batteries become permanently unsafe and can catastrophically fail at any time with no warning.

by kayodelycaon

3/22/2026 at 11:18:15 PM

My hope is that it’s bureaucratic inertia. There really is little excuse. Especially with super high voltage power lines becoming more affordable.

by cjbgkagh

3/22/2026 at 11:21:03 PM

I mean, the US was deploying significantly more renewable energy projects during the last administration than ever before, but the corrupt trump administration stopped many of them immediately after reentering office.

The bureaucracy was moving the right direction - towards renewables - until the conservatives in this country deliberately changed strategy to emphasize fossil fuels again.

You can draw your own conclusions about motive, but this isn’t an accident.

by solid_fuel

3/22/2026 at 11:43:12 PM

I wasn’t even thinking about the US but consider this administration an interlude. I’m hearing other countries they’re putting the breaks on Chinese solar in an effort to build indigenous production capacity which is incredibly stupid. At least solar scales down so individuals can circumvent and get their own.

by cjbgkagh

3/23/2026 at 12:26:03 AM

I am curious what the drawbacks are for building indigenous photovoltaic production?

by DoctorOetker

3/23/2026 at 1:32:02 AM

Cost, especially if bootstrapping as your more expensive electricity is used to make your still more expensive panels. If you are going to onshore production it would be far cheaper to bootstrap on Chinese panels.

by cjbgkagh

3/23/2026 at 10:56:49 AM

I'm not sure its such a bad thing for the climate though: its not like the Chinese photovoltaics will sit in a warehouse gathering dust, they would probably be sold in other nations, too poor to afford Western domestic production, at least initially. I don't see a reason why Western photovoltaics couldn't be made at the same price or even cheaper than Chinese ones eventually. Automation eventually nullifies differential wage labor and environmental safety costs compared to China.

by DoctorOetker

3/23/2026 at 12:09:33 PM

It’s economics of scale, no one really has the money to bootstrap to get to scale now that China is already in the market at scale, not even wealthy western countries, so in effect requiring indigenous production is just a way to put the breaks on solar adoption in general. When governments have to subsidize with taxpayer money that money trends to go to donor happy companies that understand the way they make money is through political donations not efficient production. There is no real incentive to be competitive but plenty of incentive to pretend that they’ll be competitive. Any company that actually tries to be competitive will be ‘out competed’ by companies focusing on getting more government grants. The bad push out the good. There is a whole gravy train for facilitating this. Which is one of the reasons I call our current era the ‘looting stage of collapse’. People are biased to believe it will return to normal and it would be in someone’s interest to save our sinking ship, but the problem is there is still much more money to be made in looting, and it’s really hard to stop things that make so much money.

The west does not yet understand just how much was lost through financialization of our economies and the loss of our manufacturing industries, we are no longer competitive and cannot remain competitive long term. Not only can we not take on solar production but we can’t even maintain vehicle manufacturing in Germany. The US is about to lose its edge in military manufacturing and in many ways already has. We still maintain an edge in aerospace and software but we’re likely to eventually lose that battle as well.

by cjbgkagh

3/23/2026 at 1:00:47 PM

I think there are plenty of opportunities to get to scale. Solar panel technologies evolve. Some Western company might scale up solar panels with say quantum-cutting phosphors, there is plenty of room for growth and scale up for panels with higher efficiencies.

by DoctorOetker

3/23/2026 at 3:17:58 PM

On a wing and a prayer. Still hoping for a wunderwaffen to come along and fix everything. Why can’t we retain our relative advantages in technology we’ve already lost. Like a politician claiming they’re going to start to focus on growth, why are they just staring now, why not earlier, why did no-one else have this seemingly self evident idea…

Also ignores how captured government funding is, I was offered many millions in research grants so long as I kicked back 80% to the big 4 firm that administered the scheme. Their pitch, sure they get 80% but I still get 20% of free money. I think people really underestimate how much corruption has rotted out the west and how much of our perceived wealth is lie I am highly confident I will outlive.

by cjbgkagh

3/23/2026 at 5:06:52 PM

May I ask what country this was in?

Corruption is of course deplorable, but a tiny quantum of solace is that it also allows adversaries to underestimate a nation state or block: when push comes to shove, a controlled level of corruption can be suspended and suddenly true productivity is observable...

by DoctorOetker

3/23/2026 at 7:58:01 PM

An non-US anglosphere country. Our adversaries do not underestimate us, 'we' are over estimating ourselves. Corruption necessarily impairs the feedback loop of information so the participants lose the ability to properly understand their interests in a way that leads to counter productive actions even in the well intentioned.

There is the anti-fragility idea that when something is attacked it becomes stronger - the attack creates a true signal for information which is now capable of aligning internal interests. The problem is if the adversary is intelligent and avoids attacking for this very reason. This is what I believe China is doing, they keep threatening to attack to promote the various grifters, without actually attacking which would inspire effective collaboration. It was a trap and we are firmly caught in it and I know of no way out of it.

by cjbgkagh

3/22/2026 at 11:14:40 PM

They are growing all over the world at a phenomenal rate, but I think it just takes some amount of time. They have only been the cheapest option for a few years now.

And in the U.S., Republicans have done everything they can to hamstring the transition and destroy the billions of dollars invested by automakers into EVs prior to 2025. But even that can only postpone the transition.

by idontwantthis

3/22/2026 at 11:40:27 PM

Also they’re only the cheapest at the point of generation, you then need to transfer that energy where it’s needed, and when it’s needed (storage). Also manufacturing capacity for renewables infrastructure, vehicles, batteries, etc, etc, is constrained. And then there are products that can’t be substituted by renewables such as plastics, fertiliser, etc. So many factors. It can’t happen too soon, but it will take many decades.

by simonh

3/23/2026 at 12:15:21 AM

Renewables are heavily subsidized. Fossil fuels are heavily lobbied for. The result is inertia.

by airstrike

3/22/2026 at 11:40:08 PM

Demand from data centers isn’t helping anything.

by cdrnsf

3/22/2026 at 11:41:33 PM

Demand for electricity is irrelevant, it's the supply we have to solve.

by stavros

3/23/2026 at 1:11:25 AM

How so? Spinning up or keeping online fossil fuel plants to power text extruding machines hardly aligns with the goal of switching to renewable energy.

by cdrnsf

3/23/2026 at 1:19:53 AM

The solution seems simple, though: Just don't do that.

"We shouldn't want to use the energy in that way" doesn't really seem like anything.

by stavros

3/22/2026 at 11:56:11 PM

In the UK, wind is super volatile and isn't viable without LNG. You can have two weeks without wind several times a year. So more wind means more LNG.

by cm2187

3/22/2026 at 11:51:24 PM

> I don't understand how we're still using fossil fuels.

Global politics.

Switching to renewables is seen as capitulation to China because of their lead in tech in this area, especially when you consider that renewables generally introduce battery dependence.

They don't even try to hide this anymore. Watch US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick at the WEF:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY0t0h1gXzk

Explicitly stated: Don't be subservient to China.

Not vocalized, but the obvious alternative: Instead be subservient to the USA and various allied Persian Gulf (and hijacked Latin American) countries who will keep pushing the petrol alternative until it literally runs dry, even if they have to do it at gunpoint.

by georgemcbay

3/22/2026 at 11:37:41 PM

So the problem is that we have a bunch of people making pronouncements about things they don't understand.

I would encourage anyone to look into what fossil fuels are actually used for because energy is only part of it. Some energy is for fuel (eg ships, planes) for which we currently have no substitute. A big chunk is electricity generation but there are so many other non-energy uses of fossil fuels eg fertilizers, construction, roads, plastics and other industrial uses.

China has undergone a decades long project to get to the point where they are the world leader (and almost sole supplier) of renewable energy tech. The plunging cost of solar happened because of China. This is a national project for them and no other country that I can think of has the willpower, organization and commitment for the deacdes-long quest to wean oneself off of fossil fuels.

Just between the rollout of EVs and power generation, you need a massive amount of infrastructure associated with it. Upgraded power lines, chargers, etc. Plus all the vehicles. Plus all the materials for solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, etc. Those supply chains are completely dominated by China.

Just look at the LA to SF HSR project. This will likely take 20+ years and cost $100-200B, if it ever even happens. 20 years ago, China had a single HSR line in Shanghai to the airport. Now it has a 30,000+ mile network that carries 4M+ passengers a day and I've seen estimates that the entire network cost less than $1T. California HSR is 10-20% of that budget. For one line.

They reformed every level of government for this project. There is no expensive and corrupt procurement process for every city, every region, every line. They use the same rolling stock everywhere. Permitting for building the tracks and stations is streamlined. They make their own trains.

My point with this example is twofold:

1. EVs and electricity are only a fraction of the fossil fuel picture; and

2. Weaning ourselves off of that is a decades-long project in countries that have no track record or political will to pull that off.

by jmyeet

3/23/2026 at 12:17:57 AM

Non-energy uses of fossil fuels are not problematic from the point of greenhouse emissions.

If we stop burning fossil fuels and get energy from renewable sources, the remaining hydrocarbons will probably be used for plastics, chemicals and so on. If they aren't burnt this is fine.

It also probably makes more sense to use fossil fuels for applications where density is critical such as aviation, offset with carbon capture, rather than to leave oil in the ground and synthesize jet fuel using renewable energy.

by nswango

3/22/2026 at 11:51:30 PM

Cars and electriciy are the overwhelming majority of all fossil fuel use. Let’s just focusing on tranistioning them first, and we’ll be in so much of a better place. The rest can wait

by dalyons

3/22/2026 at 11:43:43 PM

I'm pretty sure that natural gas is a significant component of plastic manufacture.

Plastic ain't going anywhere, anytime soon (although many people wish it would).

by ChrisMarshallNY

3/22/2026 at 11:20:37 PM

It's 100% economic corruption and populist/fascists forcing it down everyone's throat through extreme manipulation. yes...

We might always need some for various materials and industrial process, but wasting it on ground transportation is beyond absurd at this point.

by RRRA

3/23/2026 at 1:00:08 AM

> am I missing some economic factor?

That's the big mystery. We're told wind+solar are super cheap. Cheaper than everything. Cheap, cheap, cheap. You'd think, renewables being so cheap, it would rapidly displace all the expensive stuff.

But it does not. All sources of energy grow simultaneously, despite the plentiful anecdotes about limited regional shifts in specific markets.

So that creates doubt about the "cheap" claims. Such doubts, however, aren't generally welcome, and it's best to keep these thoughts to yourself, should they emerge. Carefully asking questions, as you've done, is the least damaging approach to coping with this apparent contradiction. I don't recommend ascribing it to nefarious conspiracies: that creates poor mental habits that don't end well.

In the meantime, there are concepts such as LCOE+ that deal with the real economics of energy supply and demand that can inform you on the matter. You'll want to be careful here, however. You'll encounter ideas that don't align well with preferred narratives and, if you're not careful with such knowledge, you might inadvertently peg yourself as being aligned with counter-narrative forces. And that's never good for kudos.

by topspin

3/23/2026 at 1:21:55 AM

> All sources of energy grow simultaneously, despite the plentiful anecdotes about limited regional shifts in specific markets.

Do you have a source for that? What I can find points to the opposite:

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67005

And globally:

https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/breakdown-of-...

by stavros

3/23/2026 at 2:37:51 AM

Your first source is electricity in the US. The second limited to electricity.

Electricity is only a subset of the matter. The energy issues created by the most recent Iran drama, for example, are mostly about oil: not a primary electricity generation fuel.

Here is a broader view. Global consumption, not limited to electricity. Everything, with the exception of biomass which has merely leveled off (for now,) is growing:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio...

by topspin

3/22/2026 at 11:55:42 PM

The real issue was calling them fossil fuels.

by anonyggs

3/22/2026 at 11:07:35 PM

I would argue a nuclear one as well. Energy independence and abundance should rely on a number of sources of energy.

by oldnetguy

3/23/2026 at 12:16:08 AM

The Chinese already have a 125e Small Modular PWR that would be excellent for small islands like those of the Caribbean. It is the Linglong-1 [0]. I believe the first one cost 800 million dollars. It will be interesting to see the price reductions as it goes into serial ptoduction.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-start-commerci...

by OneDonOne

3/23/2026 at 12:07:10 AM

Nuclear is near dead if the new geothermal tech from fracking works out.

by blackjack_

3/22/2026 at 11:53:09 PM

20 years from now and billions of dollars over budget? Or by variety do you mean wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro?

by Zigurd

3/23/2026 at 12:17:43 AM

In the West you mean? The Asians seemto have this particular industrial aspect somewhat under control.

by OneDonOne

3/23/2026 at 1:43:41 AM

The French thought they had it somewhat under control until they found out that they had way under budgeted decommissioning costs.

by Zigurd

3/23/2026 at 1:31:43 AM

How much impact do petrochemicals have on renewables? e.g. Ethylene used for plastics, propylene, butadiene for synthetic rubber and aromatics like benzene. Do renewables still exist at the same volume and cost without petrochemicals or when their costs sky-rocket during a war?

How many here have stocked up on solar panels, charge controllers, wire, terminal blocks, high current fuses, home grid batteries, inverters and such? The only thing I am missing is solar panels. Currently I charge my batteries with a generator when commercial power is out. I backed out on a solar panel deal for a bunch of dumb reasons. I run my computer and network equipment on inverters 100% of the time to clean up commercial power and deal with the rare brown outs from tension breakers reclosers during high wind events.

by Bender

3/23/2026 at 7:28:16 PM

Totally agree, although an issue that's not talked about enough is that this isn't simply an energy crisis, but a logistics crisis for other products from the region (helium, fertilizers, rare minerals, etc) and to the region that affect other sectors of our global economy highly.

Also another issue that's not being talked about at all is the impact the war will have in displacing a population of 90 million people. For reference, Syria only had 20 million people and the impact was quite big, although we're still far from reaching that point for now.

by lemoncookiechip

3/23/2026 at 7:22:23 AM

In a perfect world we're solar/wind/nuclear/whatever powered, and every city/town has their iwn battery grid. Grids can take/give from each other, and they're COMMUNITY OWNED (!)

Sadly elec. companies are not a fan of this

by ramon156

3/23/2026 at 3:39:11 AM

I think no matter what your energy source it is liable to be precision struck back to the stone age in this era within days by a motivated group. People need to come to terms with this new reality. I fear too many people think we are still fighting like last centuries wars.

by asdff

3/23/2026 at 1:19:43 PM

In the US context, it is much harder for distant enemies to target energy supply chains that are entirely located on domestic soil, like, say, most renewables.

by jhanschoo

3/23/2026 at 4:54:50 PM

Well no one is targeting US petro installations either. But again, supply chain disruption elsewhere will raise global prices just like it does with our domestic petro prices.

by asdff

3/23/2026 at 4:04:16 AM

Let’s say that’s true. Now what? We obviously can’t stop energy production, so what’s the best source? It seems obvious to me that the most resilient form of energy production is billions (trillions?) of dirt cheap solar panels across the globe. Sure you can take some out, but it’s hard to take out enough to matter, and your bombs are way more expensive than the panels they’re taking out.

What’s more resilient than solar?

by senordevnyc

3/23/2026 at 4:57:24 PM

Nothing is in the western context. Resilient is developing Africa where people already know how to live without regular electricity. Or the US in 1926.

Kind of interesting how electrifying the countryside has lead to such an unintended and ever present Achilles tendon for western nations. In the future we might go to war to protect AC units in Phoenix.

by asdff

3/23/2026 at 7:52:19 PM

This could be applied to any modern infrastructure, or even agriculture itself. So your position is that all of modernity is inherently not resilient? I don't really agree, but more to the point, it seems pointless in the extreme to even bother discussing it. Maybe the only way to be "resilient" as a species is to return to hunter gatherer societies, but basically no one wants that. Including all those people in "developing Africa".

by senordevnyc

3/22/2026 at 11:09:08 PM

More a decentralized energy wake-up call. Though in practice that's probably the same thing.

by amelius

3/22/2026 at 11:36:09 PM

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47437516 Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence (reuters.com)

~3 days prior, 447+ commments

by neogodless

3/22/2026 at 11:21:26 PM

Yeah, remember how the energy crises in the 70s served as a wake-up call and made us switch to renewable energy? Me neither. In fact, AIUI, the main consequence was the significant increase of the global oil extraction.

by Joker_vD

3/23/2026 at 12:40:15 AM

The technologies we’re adopting now were significantly developed by post 70s research funding. The cars people drive are massively more efficient, the houses we live in, and the appliances we buy for the same reason.

by acdha

3/23/2026 at 7:22:27 PM

They did spur engineering effort to develop ICEs such that regular passenger cars in the USA could do better than 10 mpg.

It was something at least. Now we have a lot of people who choose to drive far less efficient behemoths than the much more efficient ICE (or hybrid) passenger cars currently available.

by herewulf

3/23/2026 at 2:19:50 AM

The energy crisis in the 70s you reference coincided with a pathological and suicidal environmental movement that killed any chance for the United States to transition to nuclear power, like France did. If we had done that, or if Nixon hadn't resigned and his energy project had passed, the geopolitical situation would be remarkably different. The USSR would've probably collapsed sooner, and the center of gravity for global energy production would not be in the most volatile region on the planet today.

by remarkEon

3/22/2026 at 11:48:13 PM

Honestly the tech wasn’t there yet then. It sure is now.

by dyauspitr

3/23/2026 at 12:09:01 AM

> First they’ll take our gasoline cars then our guns!!!

Courtesy of Fox News.

by le-mark

3/23/2026 at 1:02:38 AM

right now the main real renewable is solar, solar , is almost controlled by china, another country to start the war quite soon :) sure.

the wake up call for EU , US , and rest of the west that is not happening, that national interest is a real thing. Not a fiction.

by maxdo

3/22/2026 at 11:40:06 PM

The Iran War crisis is a billionaire alignment problem wakeup call, too.

by gnarlouse

3/22/2026 at 11:30:01 PM

If there is ever a war with China, that will be a fossil fuel wake-up call, at least she it comes to solar panels and batteries.

by christophilus

3/22/2026 at 11:50:30 PM

What up call for whom? The USA is a net fossil fuel exporter. China is still heavily dependent on fossil fuel imports (as well as fertilizer produced from natural gas) and those imports would be interdicted in any major conflict. Of course the Chinese leadership is well aware of that vulnerability and taking steps to mitigate it.

by nradov

3/23/2026 at 12:45:20 AM

The U.S. exports fossil, yes, but we import a huge amount as well because many of our refineries aren’t setup to process light sweet crude and it’s also often cheaper to buy oil, refine, and use it on the coast than it is to move it across the country from somewhere in the Dakotas.

If we had a war with China, it’d go much worse given their much greater resources and knowledge of how to hit those import routes for maximum impact.

by acdha

3/23/2026 at 2:20:49 AM

China has virtually zero conventional capability to interdict those sea lines of communication. Their navy and air force doesn't have the range, logistics, or foreign bases necessary to accomplish that mission. They're building fast so the situation may change in a few years but not today.

by nradov

3/23/2026 at 5:55:46 PM

They’re not going head to head in a naval battle (yet) but oil tankers aren’t hardened targets and they wouldn’t need to be in American airspace to attack ships leaving Saudi Arabi or Iraq bound for California. All you’d need would be one drone attack to shut commercial shipping down for ages since crews and owners aren’t going to jump to become military targets. I’m certain that, like like the U.S. military planners, the Chinese military has a team updating plans based on which Iranian tactics get results. If nothing else, one way to start a move on Taiwan would be some kind of diversion pulling U.S. resources away escorting shipping.

(That’s ignoring the larger economic impact of all of the other shipping which originates in China)

by acdha

3/22/2026 at 11:41:17 PM

Renewable energy just has bad marketing. Instead of just emphasizing their environmental benefits, everyone forgot that they’re also a stop gap for any issues with other sources of energy. China gets it. It’s the same reason why EVs are so important: they give us energy source flexibility. An EV can run on anything that creates electricity which includes coal, nuclear, natural gas, oil, in addition to renewables

by chaostheory

3/22/2026 at 11:57:48 PM

Also solar and wind are much more often on time and on budget.

by Zigurd

3/23/2026 at 12:03:50 AM

Everyone should look at what's happening in Australia. Australia has 50% more solar per capita than China and utterly dwarfs the USA and Europe on a per capita basis. Because of this Australians have consistently falling power prices.

Think about that. Falling power prices during high inflation with an energy crisis at a time when datacenters are being built out everywhere. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-19/power-prices-fall-but...

You'll note on that link in 1 year prices have gone from $87 to $50. Pretty much all attributable to the massive grid connected battery installations and renewable rollouts which had minimal subsidies. They were merely encouraged by policy which created a shorter time for grid price changes and arbitration allowing high response batteries to drive grid efficiencies. https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/top-20-countries-by-ba...

It's straightforward economics at this point. Want cheaper prices? Demand what Australia has.

by AnotherGoodName

3/23/2026 at 5:18:16 AM

Not just falling energy prices. Australians are about to get free electricity for 3 hours a day.

by testing22321

3/22/2026 at 11:15:11 PM

I keep thinking this war will both be written down as one of the Trump administration worst mistakes while also being the catalyst for a clean(er) energy revolution. We can.. do it all, but there has been a lack of will and incentive. These incentives are strong.

by luxurytent

3/22/2026 at 11:20:14 PM

On the up side, perhaps this disaster will make it clear that WWIII won’t be a cakewalk and we can avoid an even more disastrous war with China.

by cjbgkagh

3/22/2026 at 11:51:31 PM

during the beginning of the last Iraq war, I was at a social event and somehow ended up saying that 'at least this is been so obviously foolish that it should cause us to really think twice about doing anything like it again', and someone 20 years my senior turned to me from another conversation and said 'we said the same thing about Vietnam'

by convolvatron

3/22/2026 at 11:59:19 PM

People get complacent thinking the system just keeps working no matter what, and not that a lot of effort from talented people goes in to to keeping it working. So they vote in a total moron and discover the good times aren't innate.

by SchemaLoad

3/23/2026 at 12:04:45 AM

I guess someone right after the Great War / the war to end all wars could be forgiven for thinking people wouldn’t be trying that again anytime soon.

What I would consider different this time is that I think the US is in the looting stages of collapse and will be unable to credibly fight such a war even if a minority wanted to.

I have a bit of a conspiracy theory about Trump starting the Iran war as a grift to get $200B appropriated only to abandon the region and have the money disappear.

by cjbgkagh

3/23/2026 at 12:00:45 AM

I am speaking from a position of total ignorance, so this is probably a dumb take, but I don't see why rich nations[1] don't simply subsidize mass nuclear energy production as state policy. The two main issues with nuclear are unit cost (solvable if you build dozens/hundreds in serial production) and financing (a reactor with a 30 year payback period is much more viable with 3.5% sovereign financing compared to 8% private bonds). France did it 50 years ago with more primitive reactor designs. China is currently doing it somewhat halfheartedly. I bet if the U.S. committed to $2 trillion to one standardized design and heavily used eminent domain, America would have knocked electricity costs down by half within a decade.

[1] Honestly probably only really viable in China and the U.S. plus maybe South Korea; nuclear is unpopular in Japan after Fukushima, and I doubt the E.U. would be able to coordinate everything. Everyone else is probably too poor outside of petrostates, which have the whole petro thing going on.

by sb057

3/23/2026 at 12:12:51 AM

> I don't see why rich nations[1] don't simply subsidize mass nuclear energy production as state policy

> Honestly probably only really viable in China and the U.S. plus maybe South Korea

Because it costs a lot of money.

For example, India quietly (by HN and Reddit standards) passed a nuclear energy megabill in December which has a TAM of $214 Billion [0]. French (EDF), American (Westinghouse, Holtec, GE Vernova Hitachi), Russian (Rosatom), and Korean (Hyundai) JVs with Indian Public (NPTC, BHEL) and Private (Tata, L&T, Jindal Group) players are now able to build and distribute nuclear energy without dealing with an older SOE and can subsidize the buildout [1] using Green Bonds, which gives them access to around $56 Billion in capital [2] with an added .

These players will also be eligible for India's $2.5 Billion SMR subsidy [3]. This also helps India's $160 Billion data center buildout [4] which is being subsidized by the Indian government [5], and piggybacks on India's $205 Billion infrastructure buildout [6].

Other countries can do that as well, but if they are fine spending tens to hundreds of billions of dollars - that's where the blocker arises, but most of the players with this technology are now backlogged with orders from this buildout in India and other existing and in-progress buildouts.

> outside of petrostates, which have the whole petro thing going on

The UAE [7] is participating in financing India's nuclear buildout as part of their defense pact.

[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-08/india-see...

[1] - https://powermin.gov.in/sites/default/files/Seeking_comments...

[2] - https://www.climatebonds.net/news-events/press-room/press-re...

[3] - https://www.trade.gov/market-intelligence/india-energy-small...

[4] - https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2227953&re...

[5] - https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/01/india-offers-zero-taxes-th...

[6] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-06-12/india-...

[7] - https://www.business-standard.com/india-news/india-uae-annou...

by alephnerd

3/23/2026 at 12:42:03 AM

The U.S. spends $500 billion a year on electricity[1]. $2 trillion dollars worth of bonds to lower the price per kWh is modest, especially given that it would enable new tax revenue from manufacturing and chemical production, where electricity is usually the highest input cost, even in China.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=62945

by sb057

3/23/2026 at 12:43:44 AM

> The U.S. spends $500 billion a year on electricity

But the American energy industry has negative net margins [0], which makes buildouts difficult without significant state support as the American energy industry is operating at a loss after operations cost are included.

> $2 trillion dollars worth of bonds to lower the price per kWh is modest

Land and Liability.

The upfront cost to build is significantly higher in the US because land is privately owned. On the other hand, India's federal and state governments are subsidizing land purchases for nuclear reactors as part of the SHANTI Act. The only other large economy doing something similar is China.

Furthermore, liability has remained a major issue in the US. India [1] and China [2] both gave nuclear operators a broad liability shield which externalizes the cost of a nuclear accident, especially for SMRs as they cap out in the $30-50 million range in India and China.

If the US can provide a similar liability shield beyond what is already on the books, buildout would be much faster, but this is politically untenable as can be seen with the data center buildout. Imagine the attack ads - "Trump"/"Newsom"/"Vance"/"Pritzker" are poisoning innocent Americans while in the pocket of Wall Street and BigTech. A growing number of Americans view any kind of infrastructure buildout as a subsidy for rich people, almost as if there was an ongoing social media campaign for years that has solidified this sentiment amongst Americans [3].

The big capital players at this point in this space are the US, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Russia, and France. All the other 6 (even Russia) have blocked Chinese access to initiatives and subsidizes for domestic nuclear buildouts, and Russia is also blocked from 4 of them.

That said, the US has quietly started similar initatives as well, like the $80 Billion SMR buildout [4] but HN will never give Trump a win.

[0] - https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile...

[1] - https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publication...

[2] - https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/ubccommun...

[3] - https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/dra...

[4] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/westinghouse-megadea...

by alephnerd

3/23/2026 at 1:52:51 AM

>which makes buildouts difficult without significant state support

Which is why I said to subsidize it as state policy in the original comment.

>cost to build is significantly higher in the US because land is privately owned

Which is why I said there should be liberal use of eminent domain in the original comment.

by sb057

3/23/2026 at 1:54:20 AM

> Which is why I said to subsidize it as state policy in the original comment

And as I pointed out, it's almost impossible because of the political implications

> there should be liberal use of eminent domain

Eminent domain is de facto impossible in the US in 2026 and would take decades of litigation for a project the size of an SMR.

---

Even the current megaproject the Trump admin initiated will come on the chopping block this election cycle.

Hell, look at ProPublica [0], UC Berkeley Law's [1], and former Democrat political appointees [2] opposition despite this being almost the exact same as similar initiatives we worked on during the Biden admin.

Once the Republicans are out of office, they'll go on the same attack like they did with the IRA.

We have a far-right [3] and a far-left [4] media ecosystem that are backed and subsidized by our enemies who mutually attempt to undermine such initiatives.

[0] - https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-nuclear-power-nrc-s...

[1] - https://legal-planet.org/2026/02/02/new-trump-nuclear-reacto...

[2] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/trumps-big-nuclear-r...

[3] - https://www.isdglobal.org/media-mentions/the-role-of-tucker-...

[4] - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/world/europe/neville-roy-...

by alephnerd

3/22/2026 at 11:21:31 PM

Ukraine was too...

by boxed

3/22/2026 at 11:26:15 PM

This war will likely go down as the dumbest geopolitical move in US history (so far, at least). And I don't think it's even close. I cannot overstate the significance of it. I think historians will mark this as at least the symbolic end of American Empire. And I don't say that lightly. It will redefine the geopolitical landscape for the rest of the century.

If we're talking about renewables, one has to talk about China [1]:

> In 2024 alone, China installed 360 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar capacity. That’s more than half of global additions that year, and it brings total installed capacity to 1.4 terawatts (TW) – that’s roughly a third of the entire world’s 4.5 TW

And in 2025 [2]:

> Clean-energy sectors contributed a record 15.4tn yuan ($2.1tn) in 2025, some 11.4% of China’s gross domestic product (GDP) – comparable to the economies of Brazil or Canada.

and

> In 2025, China achieved another new record of wind and solar capacity additions. The country installed a total of 315GW solar and 119GW wind capacity, adding more solar and two times as much wind as the rest of the world combined.

China has decided long ago that this was of national security interest and it has become a national project to move to renewable energy in a way that I don't think any other country is capable of and on a scale that's hard to conceptualize.

Europe and the US have shown themselves to be completely incapable of planning long term and acting in national interest with regards for fossil fuels. There's no poliitical will. Both are captured by the interests of enriching the billionaire class in the short term. When it all goes to shit, which it will, they'll all leave and/or the rest of us will pay for this lack of foresight.

[1]: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/12/china-adding-more-re...

[2]: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-clean-energy-drove-more...

by jmyeet

3/22/2026 at 11:32:33 PM

At some point we're going to have to have a conversation about the destructive toxicity of conservatism. There's been no bigger brake on progress of all kinds, and the ends have always been corrupt, self-serving, and small-minded.

by TheOtherHobbes

3/22/2026 at 11:57:23 PM

The Chinese system is hyper conservative, essentially fascist, it’s not actually socialist in any way, shape or form. It’s also hyper capitalist, with minimal regulation or consumer rights. The top levels of the ‘communist’ party is now packed with billionaires. What regulation there is, is mostly aimed at maintaining party control and prestige.

Both unchecked conservatism and unchecked socialism are toxic. Unchecked anything is toxic. That’s human nature, yet (to simplify massively) we still need both conservative and socialist elements in a balanced society.

by simonh

3/22/2026 at 11:51:18 PM

Just looking at the US, one can certainly point fingers at conservatism (rightly so) but I think that's missing the forest for the trees. Why? Because the so-called opposition party, the Democratic Party, is complicit is everything that's happened to get us to this point.

The problem isn't conservatism per se. It's neoliberalism (IMHO). Even more broadly, it's capitalism. There's a meme in this space that basically goes something like "when you learn about capitalism, you become either a communist or a liar".

I read something recently about how people fetishize the 1950s, particularly on the political right. A big part of what made that possible was exploitation. Obviously we had a permanent underclass since segregation was still alive and well. A lot of these "middle class" families had "help" or "a girl". But another form of exploitation was oil. We were basically stealing oil from the Middle East for pennies on the dollar.

And then Iran came out and said "maybe we don't want you to steal our oil", we couped their government, we installed our own puppet government, we continued stealing oil and this all ultimately lead to the 1970s oil crisis and the Iranian Revolution. And here we are.

Back to the US political landscape, just look at the "opposition" to this war. It's either nonexistent or it's process-based ("Congress should've approved it"), not substantive. No mainstream political force is saying what we should be saying, which is that our Middle East policy is a crime, the sanctions on Iran were and are a crime and that continued exploitation of this region is unsustainable.

by jmyeet

3/23/2026 at 12:33:22 AM

The Iran war hasn't even been the dumbest geopolitical move in the past year.

The US torpedoed its system of alliances which it has spent decades building and maintaining. It through the global economy and its own into turmoil repeatedly in an attempt to extort its friends as much as its adversaries. It betrayed Ukraine for the sake of Russia. It threatened military action against its allies to conquer territory. It rejected the concept of international law which underpinned its position as global hegemon.

Honestly the Iran war isn't even that bad. While it displays the absolute absence of forethought that this administration applied to the situation, that's at least something America can get back with new leadership. The previous blunders which laid bare the unreliability of the US as a partner on the other hand have done irreparable harm.

by jjk166

3/23/2026 at 1:10:12 AM

USA is not even content with attacking one country at a time.

Now there is also the blockade of Cuba that intercepts their imports of oil and has created serious problems there with food and services. This cannot be considered as anything else as an act of war, even if a war is not declared.

Besides the blockade, USA has also threatened with an attack. With the harm done indiscriminately to most Cuban citizens by the blockade, it is even harder for USA to pretend that they are the good guys, while they use their might to attack without any justification a country too weak to present any kind of danger for USA.

by adrian_b

3/23/2026 at 1:16:56 AM

You're only saying that because this is only 3 weeks old. Things are going to get a lot worse. If this ended tomorrow, the direct impact will be felt for years before we go back to "normal". And the geopolitical changes are going to be seismic.

First, it's been exposed that the US cannot defend Israel despite spending $1 trillion a year on "defense", billions if not trillions on missile defence and the presence of multiple carrier groups in the region. This alone rewrites regional geopolitics in the coming decades.

Second, the US has exerted influence on the region with a security guarantee that's like NATO on steroids. It's a protection racket (like NATO). We give despotic regimes weapons and we dictate policy, get bases in the region and get the use of terriotiral waters and airspace for whatever we want, basically. But by starting this war of choice, we've shown that there's no security guarantee at all for the Gulf states.

Now, these states will continue to align with the US for purely selfish reasons. For example, Saudi Arabia will do so to maintain the House of Saud, the royal family's control of the country. Many Saudis would prefer this not to be the case but were Saudi Arabia to break from the US, the regime would inevitably fall (IMHO). So they can't abandon the US. But this will only go so far as some of these regimes may fall anyway in a prolonged conflict (eg Bahrain).

Third, the military options here are dire. Militarily, the Strait cannot be reopened. The only military options are retreat or escalation. Trump has threatened to blow up power plants. If he does that, Iran will blow up desalination plants. Or the pipeline that supplies 30-40% of Israel's energy (from Azerbijan through Turkey). The escalation ladder inevitably leads to the use of nuclear weapons by Israel and/or the US, which is untenable.

Fourth, we haven't even begun to feel the impacts yet. Yes, gas prices are higher. That's only the beginning. Utility and food prices are going to spike. Higher diesel costs mean higher transportation. Higher bunkers costs will hit shipping costs. We're likely to see a repeat of 2021-2022 era inflation, if not worse.

If the Strait opened tomorrow, most of those things are already baked in for the next few years.

Fifth, countries are undergoing a sort of "energy nationalism". China, for eample, has stockpiled huge amounts of oil and stopped exported refined petroleum products. Other countries have done similar. This is going to have an outsized impact on countries completely dependent on energy imports, which includes most of Asia.

Sixth, the downstream effects go well beyond secondary products like fertilizer. For example, helium and other materials for chipmaking in Taiwan.

Lastly, this has massively strengthened Russia's position. You will likely see the lifting of sanctions and conceding of territory in Ukraine as an almost -inevitable consequence of an oil supply shock, particularly as LNG prices go up and we hit a heating crisis in Europe.

You are correct that the US has been destroying alliances but it's this war of choice that's going to make that really bite. Iran negotiated in good faith to end the 12 day war, which only ended because of missile interceptor shortages, a problem that's going to take years to address.

This time around Iran has had no choice but to make the consequences of a war of aggression so dire that the US and Israel never think about doing this again.

Also, North Korea demonstrated that the only way to get the US to leave you alone is to have nuclear weapons. The previous Ayatollah had a fatwa against nuclear weapons. Well, the US and Israel killed that guy in his house with his family. Iran now really has no choice but to develop nuclear weapons to guarantee their security. And I can't blame them.

by jmyeet

3/23/2026 at 6:38:54 PM

With all do respect, it is you who is jumping to conclusions because this is only 3 weeks old.

> First, it's been exposed that the US cannot defend Israel despite spending $1 trillion a year on "defense", billions if not trillions on missile defence and the presence of multiple carrier groups in the region.

The US never has and has no reason to claim that it would or could stop all missile attacks on Israel from Iran. The US has long claimed that it's interceptors have a better than 50% interception rate against ballistic missiles. This has been shown to be if anything a dramatically conservative estimate in recent conflicts. But the math of interception has always been obvious - if you throw more missiles at a missile defense system than it has interceptors, some will get through. For years the main grievance the US has had with Iran has been its massive stockpile of long range missiles and, more recently, drones. That's the whole reason the nuclear agreement reached under Obama was not considered good enough by the subsequent administration (domestic politics aside).

Israel knew when it launched the war that it was going to get hit back. They are certainly not unhappy with the US' conduct of the war.

> Second, the US has exerted influence on the region with a security guarantee that's like NATO on steroids. It's a protection racket (like NATO). We give despotic regimes weapons and we dictate policy, get bases in the region and get the use of terriotiral waters and airspace for whatever we want, basically. But by starting this war of choice, we've shown that there's no security guarantee at all for the Gulf states.

This conflict most certainly does not mean that the security guarantee doesn't exist. The gulf states didn't start a war and find their ally reluctant to come to their aid. They instead found that they didn't have the option to sit out a war if the coalition they have been a part of for years goes to war. They may be rightfully very upset about a lack of communication and coordination before the conflict broke out, but this is again an issue with the current administration, not their long term strategy of alignment with the US.

> Now, these states will continue to align with the US for purely selfish reasons.

That's not a change to the status quo.

> Third, the military options here are dire. Militarily, the Strait cannot be reopened. The only military options are retreat or escalation. Trump has threatened to blow up power plants. If he does that, Iran will blow up desalination plants. Or the pipeline that supplies 30-40% of Israel's energy (from Azerbijan through Turkey). The escalation ladder inevitably leads to the use of nuclear weapons by Israel and/or the US, which is untenable.

That's a rather absurd line of reasoning. While not easy, militarily reopening the strait is very much still a possibility. Even if it remains closed for a period of time, that doesn't really hurt the US directly. Iran does not have the means to escalate to nuclear war, and the US has no motive.

> Fourth, we haven't even begun to feel the impacts yet. Yes, gas prices are higher. That's only the beginning. Utility and food prices are going to spike. Higher diesel costs mean higher transportation. Higher bunkers costs will hit shipping costs. We're likely to see a repeat of 2021-2022 era inflation, if not worse.

Sure if the war goes on for an extended period of time it will be bad for the economy, but this is a temporary pain. Once the war ends, oil prices will go back down. The previous blunders have done irreparable harm that will be felt for decades.

> If the Strait opened tomorrow, most of those things are already baked in for the next few years.

Nothing has been baked in for years. 100% of the concern right now is speculation that the strait might be closed for an extended period of time.

> Fifth, countries are undergoing a sort of "energy nationalism". China, for eample, has stockpiled huge amounts of oil and stopped exported refined petroleum products. Other countries have done similar. This is going to have an outsized impact on countries completely dependent on energy imports, which includes most of Asia.

This is not a change to the status quo.

> Lastly, this has massively strengthened Russia's position. You will likely see the lifting of sanctions and conceding of territory in Ukraine as an almost -inevitable consequence of an oil supply shock, particularly as LNG prices go up and we hit a heating crisis in Europe.

The adminsitration already massively strengthened Russia's position, putting pressure on Ukraine to concede territory and reducing pressure with regards to sanctions. While stepping further in that direction is a further blunder, the previous was far more catastrophic. They already set the house ablaze, this is just pouring gas on the flames.

> Also, North Korea demonstrated that the only way to get the US to leave you alone is to have nuclear weapons.

This is not a change to the status quo.

by jjk166

3/22/2026 at 11:57:10 PM

I like to give Australia as the better example. Way ahead of everyone else on a per capita basis (50% more GW of solar installed per capita than China).

If the big powers of the world had any competence a country with 0.5% of the worlds population would not be 3rd in total of grid connected battery storage and 8th in solar (note in total, not per capita). https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/top-20-countries-by-ba... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country for links.

Because of what Australia has done consumer power prices keep falling, even with the Iran war and datacenter build outs https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-19/power-prices-fall-but...

It's all based on governance led by research (in particular the CSIRO, the Australian government's politically isolated research department) where the CSIRO wrote a peer reviewed report mathematically demonstrating the cheapest way to improve grid reliability and lower prices. This indicated various ways to encourage solar and battery build outs. The Australian senate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Senate) which is made up of many many parties due to preferential voting passed laws enabling this and here we are.

I think that it's true that China's beating the USA in government competence but they are far far from the ideal. In fact China looks really bad compared to any competant government of the world. It just looks good compared to the USA.

by AnotherGoodName

3/22/2026 at 11:57:11 PM

Perhaps so. And yet a couple decades ago when the war against Iraq turned into a quagmire, many political pundits also marked that as the end of the American Empire. And yet today the USA remains the sole globally dominant superpower. Our time will end eventually but we should be skeptical of any predictions on timing.

by nradov

3/23/2026 at 12:02:21 AM

You seem to have missed since then the massive transformation of China.

by SchemaLoad

3/23/2026 at 2:22:28 AM

Nah, I haven't missed anything. China has accomplished amazing things but they still have virtually zero capability to project power beyond the first island chain. Maybe in a few years that will change but not today.

by nradov

3/23/2026 at 12:09:01 AM

Empires don't die overnight, generally. Empires die slowly, violently.

We spent an estimated $8 trillion on so-called "War on Terror". The Taliban were in charge of Afghanistan before we started. They're in charge now. For $8T. 1% of that would end homelessness. 1% of that annually would be free college. I would mention universal healthcare but that would actually save money vs what we now spend so I'm not sure how you count that.

The kind of transformation China has seen in recent decades is what you're talking about with $8 trillion.

A despite the 20 year quagmire that was Iraq and Afghanistan, IMHO this war on Iran is an even bigger geopolitical clown show and will be more consequential to the end of American Empire.

by jmyeet

3/23/2026 at 3:07:32 AM

Yes, the GWOT was mostly a waste of lives and money. And yet despite that handicap the USA continued to power ahead. Our productivity, innovation, and geography have allowed us to remain dominant. Meanwhile most other countries have failed to adopt policies that would make them more competitive.

by nradov

3/23/2026 at 12:15:11 AM

For the common man, this is all true. For the people “running the show” it was probably money well spent. The “War on Terror” brought not just erosion but full-on assault on people’s rights and privacy. It is perfectly acceptable by just about every American to have their junks touched and toothpaste confiscated to board the airplane to fly 80 miles from say DC to Richmond. Everyone is tame now, accepting whatever this new reality is that everyone lives in. There is military on the streets of DC, masked agents running around the country and myriad of other bullshits our grandparents would be rolling in their graves if they knew…

by bdangubic

3/22/2026 at 11:14:34 PM

It’s not just about energy, but also industrial (think neon, helium) and agricultural inputs (nitrogen, urea). Even if energy was solved, there’s not really replacements for these. Well, regenerative agriculture but not sure that will feed as many people.

by cpursley

3/22/2026 at 11:20:37 PM

The nitrogen comes from the air - we're perfectly capable of capturing it using renewables.

It's probably one of the last things to be created that way because it's one of the places where methane is used more efficiently than burning it... But fundamentally there's no issue here except energy availability and a short term supply shock.

by gpm

3/22/2026 at 11:49:47 PM

The nitrogen in generated fertiliser comes from the air, it’s the hydrogen in the process that comes from natural gas.

You can theoretically get it from water instead, but the energy cost is something like 3-4 times as high. It may be feasible at some point.

by simonh

3/22/2026 at 11:20:01 PM

Also, you can't make plastics out of wind power or out of solar, you still need the "petro-" that's part of the petrochemical industry.

by paganel

3/22/2026 at 11:28:57 PM

You can use solar to convert CO2 into syngas and do a Fischer-Tropsch synthesis followed by polymerization to get plastics.

by cluckindan

3/22/2026 at 11:37:04 PM

This is false, you can make many plastics without fossil sources (pla, bio-pet, bio-abs, etc). The only challenge is cost and scale - it's cheaper and easier to use existing processes.

by zihotki

3/23/2026 at 7:13:03 AM

> challenge is cos

So you can’t.

by paganel

3/23/2026 at 12:07:47 AM

But making plastics using renewable energy and fossil hydrocarbons for feedstock does not exacerbate the greenhouse effect, unless you burn them when you've finished with them.

Arguably plastics are a stable, cheap and useful carbon sink and if climate is the overriding ecological priority we should be making as many as we can and recycling as few as possible.

by nswango

3/22/2026 at 11:30:30 PM

You can make plastics out of cellulose, which is available from plant sources or organic (algae) bioreactors.

It would take a while to retool the plastics industry to use organic sources, but it's not at all impossible.

by TheOtherHobbes

3/23/2026 at 7:14:15 AM

Is there enough cellulose available to keep Temu fully stocked? Now and in the near future. And aren’t you going to get agricultural land out of the equation in order to have space for that cellulose-planting industry? And in so doing increasing the price of basic food.

by paganel

3/23/2026 at 12:17:26 AM

Using renewables means you're burning up less of your plastic feedstocks.

by jjk166

3/23/2026 at 12:02:08 AM

Plastic packaging can be substituted. Engineered plastics are a tiny fraction of petroleum.

by Zigurd

3/23/2026 at 7:14:43 AM

It’s not about packaging, Temu/Shein are not selling packaging.

by paganel

3/23/2026 at 12:27:33 AM

Modern civilization requires semiconductors, concrete, asphalt, fertilizer, and plastics to function. Never mind aviation and marine fuel to function. All of these require hydrocarbons. As long as that is the case, renewable power will continue to be a niche.

by OneDonOne

3/23/2026 at 12:36:29 AM

It’s really not niche anymore. It’s the dominant form of new electrical power generation and has been for a few years.

https://www.publicpower.org/system/files/documents/Americas-...

by torpfactory

3/23/2026 at 12:58:11 AM

Fossil hydrocarbons are not really needed.

Even during WWII Germany had to synthesize much of its hydrocarbon fuel.

Also after the war there has been large-scale production of synthetic hydrocarbons, but eventually this was abandoned due to the low price of fossil oil.

It is possible to synthesize hydrocarbons from syngas, which can be made from carbon dioxide and water, with solar energy. If the carbon dioxide is extracted from air, that requires much more energy than when a concentrated source of CO2 is available, but with essentially free solar energy it would still be feasible.

Obviously, this will not be done as long as cheaper fossil hydrocarbons are offered. However the use of fossil hydrocarbons for plastic, asphalt or other applications that do not release CO2 is not harmful.

by adrian_b

3/23/2026 at 1:18:11 AM

> Even during WWII Germany had to synthesize much of its hydrocarbon fuel.

Germany [0], as well as Apartheid South Africa (SASOL), and now China, synthesized that fuel from coal. Which is itself a fossil fuel.

[0] https://warhistory.org/@msw/article/synthetic-production-of-...

> Obviously, this will not be done as long as cheaper fossil hydrocarbons are offered. However the use of fossil hydrocarbons for plastic, asphalt or other applications that do not release CO2 is not harmful.

The issue with any fuel/feedstock production is not just the financial cost but the amount of energy returned on the energy invested. A modern civilization (like Japan) requires 10:1. Synfuels made using the method you described are 1:1 - they provide as much energy as it takes to make them.

by OneDonOne

3/23/2026 at 1:35:44 AM

Coal was the cheapest source of concentrated carbon monoxide, which is why it was used.

The same technology can be used with carbon monoxide made by reducing the carbon dioxide from air. This requires more energy, but when that is provided by solar energy, this is no longer a problem.

If the energy used to make synfuel is solar, it is an external input and it does not matter much which is the ratio between it and the energy stored in synfuel, except that it determines the profitability of a plant during the first years of operation, as it determines the ratio between the quantity of fuel produced in an interval of time and the installed power of solar panels.

While this ratio determines the time in which the initial investment can be recovered, it matters little for the ongoing expenses required for production, which will vary very little when the ratio varies in a large range, so it has little influence on the production cost after the assets are depreciated.

by adrian_b

3/23/2026 at 2:14:30 AM

Solar power is not infinite. Abd as long as you are using the same amount of energy/power to obtain the energy you wsnt to use, the pyshical limits of the size of the solar plant, time it takes to produce said energy, and other factors, makes said meyjod economically unviable.

Which is why we aren't doing already.

by OneDonOne

3/23/2026 at 4:36:11 AM

That makes no sense.

First, fossil fuels currently are used to generate about 60% of the world's electricity. Nearly all of that could be replaced with renewables plus batteries.

Second, only around 20% of fossil fuel used for transportation is used in aviation or marine transportation. Most of the remaining 80% could be replaced by electric vehicles.

Overall something like 75% of what fossil fuels are extracted for could be replaced with renewables, leaving marine and aviation transportation and things that are not using them for their combustion chemistry.

by tzs

3/23/2026 at 6:06:22 AM

The overbuilding that is required for stable electricity from the sun or wind makes that a non-starter. It is no wonder that when Germany tried this, they deindustrializrd, with some of the world's highest electricity prices. That should be a lesson to anyone who believes in renewables. Never mind the various issues that would occur with charging EVs during the night/overcast/non-breezy cconditions

by OneDonOne

3/23/2026 at 4:38:15 AM

[dead]

by levy0323