alt.hn

6/4/2026 at 8:19:07 PM

Iran Shock Jolts Asia and Europe to Speed Up Energy Transition

 https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-energy-transition-iran-war/

by toomuchtodo

6/4/2026 at 9:27:50 PM

Oceania too: Australia installed 442 MW of residential solar and 2.5 GWh of residential batteries in the month of April alone. Both numbers are partly juiced by changes to a rebate program from May, but the overall trend remains explosive growth.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/households-still-going-big-on-so...

by decimalenough

6/4/2026 at 11:43:09 PM

Yep, India installed 4 GWh of solar in just the month of April as well.

by dyauspitr

6/5/2026 at 6:18:17 AM

Solar installation capacity is measured in watts, not watt-hours. So the unit you should he using here is GW, not GWh.

Pushes glasses up nose well actually, we should use GWp, but that's not really a unit and good ol' watts should suffice.

by beAbU

6/5/2026 at 6:53:37 AM

Yeah, you know actually, I know this because I have an EV. I guess I just looked at what the GP posted and posted the same unit.

by dyauspitr

6/5/2026 at 4:27:35 PM

For batteries, GWh is the correct unit though (storage). Just not for panels/generators/etc.

by mpwoz

6/5/2026 at 4:55:16 PM

Really the correct unit is Joules, but try convincing anyone of that.

by vizzier

6/5/2026 at 6:32:09 PM

Watt-hours and joules are the same thing, and you are indeed technically correct, but you'll get funny looks if you ask to buy an 18MJ BESS for your home...

by beAbU

6/4/2026 at 10:06:15 PM

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

by jorblumesea

6/4/2026 at 10:26:19 PM

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

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

by BLKNSLVR

6/4/2026 at 11:39:23 PM

Not jealous but that’s no worse than much of California (assuming those were USD you quoted, not AUD).

by greendave

6/5/2026 at 1:17:29 AM

That's AUD, so maybe California's a (fair) bit worse then. I always thought the US had pretty darn cheap power.

Looks like California's maximum peak rate is US$0.74/kWh (without including the baseline credit), which is equivalent to AUD$1.04/kWh

Yeahnah, I don't know what I'm complaining about then.

Get solar panels, get batteries!

by BLKNSLVR

6/5/2026 at 12:33:04 AM

I'd have assumed it was AUD, and even then it's high. I pay 0.28/kWh AUD in Sydney. That'd be 0.2/kWh USD.

by Andaith

6/5/2026 at 3:22:52 PM

wow, that's really high. average price for the us is maybe $0.25 kwh adjusted for AUD

by jorblumesea

6/4/2026 at 10:30:15 PM

We pay like 30 cents in USD per kw.

by nashashmi

6/4/2026 at 10:43:05 PM

Average price is $0.19 in the US.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU000072610

by WillPostForFood

6/4/2026 at 11:04:46 PM

Which is pretty much what Australian average price is. Average Australian domestic tariff is around AUD 0.30/kwh which is USD 0.21/kwh.

None of this touches on standing charges, I don't know how that works in the USA, in Australia for an average household it runs at AUD 1.00/day to AUD 1.50/day (USD 0.70/day to USD 1.00/day). For an average household the standing charge is going to add 15 to 20% to the tariff.

by glaucon

6/4/2026 at 11:12:46 PM

I'm assuming that standing charges are like meter fees here. I've paid as low as $0.25/day and as high as $1.25/day depending on where I lived. There's not much uniformity.

by Loughla

6/4/2026 at 11:18:27 PM

You're confusing the price of electricity with the price of solar panels and/or installation, which is what parent comment intended.

by throwaway27727

6/4/2026 at 11:43:49 PM

Depends on where you are in the US. I pay 11 cents during peak and 7 cents during off hours.

by dyauspitr

6/4/2026 at 9:28:44 PM

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

by programmertote

6/4/2026 at 9:31:25 PM

That's a bit of an understatement. Essentially all residential scale solar panels and batteries are now built in China.

by decimalenough

6/4/2026 at 10:08:49 PM

So is it bad that governments don't allow the processes and manufacturing to take place in their own countries, allowing independence and market dynamics and economies of scale to result in yet another order of magnitude cost reduction in solar? Or is it good that China doesn't do ecological protections, worker protections, or the things that western countries do, so we get to profit from the exploitation and pollution of their people and land?

It'd sure be awesome if regulations and regulators in Western countries weren't stupid. This whole game is just insane.

Let's just pawn it of on China, arbitrage the regulatory and human rights differential, and pretend the value is the same as if it's locally manufactured. Then we pocket the difference! Number go up!

by observationist

6/4/2026 at 10:36:04 PM

Economists have this thing called "comparative advantage".

E.g. the US specialises in software; China in PV and batteries; EU in industrial equipment; the Middle East, oil; Australia IIRC is minerals; each trades what they're optimised for in exchange for what the others are optimised for, and are better off for it.

This works only so long as nobody is dominating a strategic sector, something that everyone needs but they are such a major player they get to set the prices. Monopolistic behaviour, but from a nation that cannot be sued for it rather than a corporation which can be ordered broken up.

Unfortunately, OPEC was already a thing even before Hormuz, the MAGA tariffs are confused and seem to be trying to make the US into an autarky but also keeping trade open so it can be taxed, and China seems to want to be dependent on nobody else while also keeping everyone else dependent on them, which currently leaves the EU and similar currently holding this particular hot potato and goodness only knows in which direction and on what schedule we'll yeet it elsewhere.

by ben_w

6/5/2026 at 12:43:23 AM

>China in PV and batteries; EU in industrial equipment; the Middle East, oil; Australia IIRC is minerals

What about Africa and the rest of Asia? Surely they merit mention more than Australia?

Also, Australia's number one export are Hollywood actors.

by gozucito

6/5/2026 at 7:20:29 AM

> What about Africa and the rest of Asia? Surely they merit mention more than Australia?

This isn't a term paper, I'm just giving illustrations from a handful of places to demonstrate how comparative advantage works.

And sure, other Asian nations are significant (India: Petroleum; Japan: Cars; South Korea: Integrated circuits; Taiwan's defence policy is making TSMC too important to be allowed to be invaded).

But Africa? No. The continent's exports are mostly dominated by South Africa, which is about one third of Australia's; even in aggregate, the entire continent's exports are only at about the level of Canada's.

> Also, Australia's number one export are Hollywood actors.

Australia's three largest exports are iron ore, coal, and education: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exports_of_Australia

by ben_w

6/5/2026 at 1:40:32 AM

I think your impression of China is outdated by about a decade

by feb012025

6/4/2026 at 10:29:47 PM

Trump cancelled a ton of green energy initiatives, why are we blaming the same regulators you imply are a good thing by pointing out that China "doesn't do ecological protections"?

by analognoise

6/4/2026 at 10:00:47 PM

Indeed, China exported 68GW of solar PV in March 2026, double the prior month and 14GW more than total solar PV capacity installed in Spain.

Chinese solar exports double in a month to hit record high amid energy crisis - https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/chinese-solar-export... - April 23rd, 2026

by toomuchtodo

6/4/2026 at 10:07:28 PM

I’m confused a bit, the premise they produce essentially all solar panels got an “indeed” with article-based assertions that exports doubled in one month, and it’s 14 GW more than the total amount installed in Spain ever, both very impressive. :)

Is there anything there about Chinese share?

I had the understanding they produce the vast vast majority as well, but that seems belied by exports doubling near instantaneously with demand? That made me wonder if there’s a lower cost floor producer(s) with, say, 10-20% of production that quickly got booked

by refulgentis

6/4/2026 at 10:10:52 PM

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

My comment points out that, yes, China is wildly benefiting from this. They have 80%+ of the global solar PV market. They also have a deflationary macro environment encouraging persistent exports, along with 1/3rd of global manufacturing capacity.

TLDR China has enough manufacturing capacity slack to support scaling exports at this scale immediately.

(tangentially, they have the capacity to build 20M EVs per year, roughly 1/4th of annual global demand for light vehicles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48379805)

China’s Solar PV Export Explorer - https://ember-energy.org/data/chinas-solar-pv-export-explore... (“The latest solar PV export data from the world’s largest exporter, China, by country or region of destination. Data updated on a monthly basis.”)

> The IEA has stated that China’s solar photovoltaic exports account for 80% of the global market. While there is a wide variety of products that make up the solar supply chain, panels, cells and wafers make up the majority of exports by trade value, and can be expressed in GW terms. Ember tracks these products to give a clearer picture of the global solar supply chain.

https://www.iea.org/reports/solar-pv-global-supply-chains/ex...

> China has invested over USD 50 billion in new PV supply capacity – ten times more than Europe − and created more than 300 000 manufacturing jobs across the solar PV value chain since 2011. Today, China’s share in all the manufacturing stages of solar panels (such as polysilicon, ingots, wafers, cells and modules) exceeds 80%. This is more than double China’s share of global PV demand. In addition, the country is home to the world’s 10 top suppliers of solar PV manufacturing equipment. China has been instrumental in bringing down costs worldwide for solar PV, with multiple benefits for clean energy transitions. At the same time, the level of geographical concentration in global supply chains also creates potential challenges that governments need to address.

by toomuchtodo

6/4/2026 at 9:52:37 PM

The Chinese Politbureau is toasting themselves so hard, they're going to be drunk for the next decade.

It's a perfect storm for China, they're leading in EVs, battery production, renewables. While the US is busy undermining itself from all directions: as a military superpower, cultural, political, economical.

Europe is waking up slowly, but it is shackled by high internal energy prices, not enough labor, and low desire for innovation.

by cyberax

6/4/2026 at 11:06:42 PM

The MAGAchurian candidate.

by jimbokun

6/4/2026 at 10:22:24 PM

Is there still a Politbureau?

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

> Europe is waking up slowly

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

by shevy-java

6/4/2026 at 9:58:27 PM

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

by idle_zealot

6/4/2026 at 10:41:47 PM

Europe seems to be backtracking on some of their far-right flirtations after seeing the idiocracy in the US. Orban was voted out in Hungary after decades in power. Meloni in Italy is often described as far right but her party also strongly supports the EU, NATO and Ukraine.

by hn_throwaway_99

6/4/2026 at 11:38:15 PM

France is quite likely to put the far-right in power next year, don't get your hopes up. I wish it wouldn't happen but a lot of people seem like they will not vote in a runoff between a far-right candidate and a left-wing (too left for the regular right) or right-wing (too right-wing for the left) candidate. It's absurd but not much one can do about it...

by Krssst

6/4/2026 at 10:24:18 PM

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

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

by toasty228

6/4/2026 at 10:35:32 PM

This is what people said about Trump and the Republicans. Of course they wouldn’t do mass deportation. It’s all just rhetoric.

by manphone

6/4/2026 at 10:51:48 PM

When someone tells you who they are believe them.

by conception

6/4/2026 at 10:49:55 PM

Trump, at the end of the day, deported about as many people as Obama. He just made a huge song and dance about it. (And blew the military budget of Saudi Arabia while doing it to boot.)

by JumpCrisscross

6/4/2026 at 10:07:13 PM

> They're electing their far right leaders and primed to start mass deportation

No amounts of deportations meaningfully affect the demographics. They can at most slow down the new immigration. For all his bluster, Trump deported barely more people than the long-term average in 2025.

But more importantly, the "far right" in Europe is far less crazy than in the US, and they support re-establishing local industry.

> police speech

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

by cyberax

6/4/2026 at 10:26:08 PM

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

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

by toasty228

6/4/2026 at 10:24:18 PM

Far left will continue to rule in Europe.

by slaw

6/4/2026 at 10:46:42 PM

I can't think of any European government that is far left? I am not familiar with all of them of course, so happy to be proven wrong.

by cinntaile

6/5/2026 at 12:18:06 AM

I can't think of any European party that is far right and have any chance in elections.

by slaw

6/5/2026 at 6:13:30 AM

I see, thanks for confirming that you're just an ignorant troll. Your post history confirmed that once more. It does make me curious. Where do you drink your Kool-Aid that gives you these "opinions"?

by cinntaile

6/4/2026 at 11:44:48 PM

They make like 95% of the solar cells.

by dyauspitr

6/4/2026 at 10:20:22 PM

Well, they act clever. The more important question is why other countries are not as clever. I am getting tired of the "democracies are the better model", which I would agree with, but then China just pushes through with bulldozer sinomarxism turned mega-capitalism. And that's working. So what the heck are those democracies doing other than failing really hard right now?

by shevy-java

6/4/2026 at 11:24:05 PM

I don't think a democracy is necessarily a recipe for utmost economic success, it's more about having the ability to replace the leadership if they are failing the people. Without that, it's only a matter of time until you're stuck with a leader who's terrible, even if you currently have a good one.

I think many democracies have been struggling though, to find a good leader, lots of democracies been replacing their leaders over and over in recent times. That's definitely something to worry about, why aren't good leaders applying to be on the ballot or being voted in?

by didibus

6/4/2026 at 10:39:42 PM

Democracy works when the population is educated and rational. Its easier to get votes via populism that give short term benefit to certain groups but long term hurts education and makes people irrational.

Many Democracies have learnt that politics cannot be trusted in certain fields due to this reason many governments ensure interest rates are not controlled by politicians such as the Federal Reserve. Perhaps we should treat education as something that cannot be trusted by politicians and controlled by an impartial independent organization.

by pizzly

6/5/2026 at 3:10:52 AM

They have a benevolent dictatorship. 99% of dictatorships are utter and total disasters so the world is right to be wary. Pretty much all post monarchy political studies are about how to prevent the concentration of power because it usually goes horribly wrong. But yes, if you actually find a benevolent dictator it is the best form of government. You can’t really beat one decision maker that is immune to consequences.

by dyauspitr

6/5/2026 at 3:48:57 AM

[dead]

by cindyllm

6/4/2026 at 11:01:53 PM

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

by newaccount670

6/4/2026 at 11:45:44 PM

Maybe as a percentage of their economy, but not in absolute dollars.

Iran’s doing orders of magnitude more absolute economic damage to the west and its allies than vice versa.

Even the drone strikes followed this math: The patriots were intercepting drones that cost 1% as much as the interceptor.

As far as I can tell, Iran has won every tactical and strategic engagement so far in this war.

by hedora

6/5/2026 at 9:10:57 AM

Of course, the percentage is all that matters. If you damage yourself 10% per month, you're dead in a year. And if you do in absolute value 10x the damage to another party but that's only 1% for them ... they're not dead, you are. And the problem gets solved.

Which is more or less what's happening here.

by spwa4

6/4/2026 at 11:07:10 PM

It's not about the US vs Iran.

It's Iran turning the strait into a wedge between US and the rest of their previous partners. The US has enough oil for themselves, but the hurt is felt everywhere else. And the cause of that hurt points in one direction (the US)

by LarsKrimi

6/5/2026 at 9:19:33 AM

The argument that the US is the 'cause' of the hurt ignores the fact that Iran is essentially taking the global economy hostage to achieve a political goal. By blocking the strait, Iran isn't targeting the US ... as you noted, the US is energy independent. They are targeting the developing nations and allies of the West. To blame the US for the pain caused by an Iranian blockade is to ignore the agency of the actor actually causing the harm. You cannot blame the victim of a provocation for the destructive methods the assholes chooses to use. Oh, and Iran is committing a warcrime doing this. For months, constantly.

This is pure terrorist tactics, taking innocents hostage in the hope that makes the police go away.

What we need, sorry, is another round of sniper shots, making it clear to the IRGC what the correct response is to hostage taking.

by spwa4

6/5/2026 at 1:33:06 PM

Would you say that blocking the strait is more unacceptable than bombing the US and killing the President and most high-ranking government officials? Just trying to establish a scale on what's acceptable in terms of war crimes, international law and such.

by cbolton

6/5/2026 at 2:05:39 PM

I don't think reasonable people are going to defend the Iranian government on moral grounds. The president is fine, btw. It was the "supreme leader" that got killed, and he is known to have ordered the extermination of 600,000 Syrian muslims. Hell, he ordered the extermination of thousands of dissidents over the past years AND the execution of tens of thousands of protestors in his last weeks.

So ... this guy and his cronies that got killed. They had it coming.

by spwa4

6/5/2026 at 3:20:14 PM

I'm not defending what the Iranian government did to their people. I suppose I am defending their reaction (closing the strait) to the assassination of their head of state and other government officials.

The reaction was predictable and very much understandable from a human psychology perspective. So in my mind the responsibility for the strait being closed rests mostly with the US.

> The president is fine, btw. It was the "supreme leader" that got killed

In Iran the supreme leader is the head of state. In the US it's the president.

> he is known to have ordered the extermination of 600,000 Syrian muslims

Do you mean the Syrian civil war? According to Wikipedia it's 650,000 deaths on all sides together (more than half being combatants). I'm not sure it's fair to attribute all these deaths to Iran. By the way these numbers are similar to those of the Iraq War of GWB.

by cbolton

6/6/2026 at 10:25:37 AM

> I'm not defending what the Iranian government did to their people. I suppose I am defending their reaction (closing the strait) to the assassination of their head of state and other government officials.

First, the Iranian state was (and is) collapsing. In other words: even though Trump changed the timing of their closing of the strait (not by much), he did not cause it. Iran's government has no choice but to continue the war. Which is another way of saying: the west has no choice but to destroy them. This is just a bunch of little kids arguing: "that's hard! you do it".

Iran is, by the way, not just closing the strait. They are holding Lebanon hostage. They are trying to hold Syria hostage. They are holding the Bab El-Mandeb strait hostage. They are holding (and executing) people as hostages. They are looking to hold internet cables and satellites hostage. They are only limited by their capabilities, which are increasing. Obviously, ignoring the Iran problem will not work even in the medium term.

Plus I hate it when people defend the indefensible, such as Iran's government. Besides, you care about 1 thing: that the oil price rose a bit. As I said, unless the US left the middle east, conflict with Iran was and is unavoidable. US presence was always going to lead to conflict with Iran, only the timing was in question. Iran holding the strait hostage was unavoidable, and the oil price rise was unavoidable.

So what will you do when the inevitable happens? The problem Iran has with Israel, aside from Iran being murderous racists, is that, as the supreme leader has put it, "it is a US military base in the middle east". In other words: Iran's problem with Israel is that Israel prevents Iran from holding Europe hostage (notice that Iran's rockets can obviously reach Israel ... and they're continuing to extend the range, why is that, you think? They are looking to target Europe with nukes). This will mean other countries will have no choice but to do the same. Indonesia, China, they must attack and take control of the Malacca strait if the US retreats. They must conquer oil sources.

You do realize that if a country like Iran acquires ICBMs, nuclear war is the next step, right? That is also what Trump is trying to prevent (in fact that's what the US created the UN for all the way back in 1945, when all that existed of Donald Trump was his father looking very interested at his mother)

In other words, what you're advocating for, US retreat, will not cause a local conflict in the middle east. Let's just call it what it is: you are advocating for is WW3, a nuclear WW3. You're calling in doubt it will be WW3, because it's so much easier and cheaper to let a German dictator run rampant (sorry, I mean Iranian) than it is to deal with the problem ...

And yes, I'm very sorry how inconvenient it is that the rest of the world does not just let you live in peace.

by spwa4

6/4/2026 at 11:05:01 PM

Its probably all reflex at this point. The USA killed almost all the top leadership early on in the war, leading to a sub-optimal leadership transition with the feeling that the country didn't have much left to lose. I'm not sure what the US leadership was thinking, maybe they really bought the "the people will overthrow the government and not hate the US if we just do a few strategic assassinations" spiel?

by seanmcdirmid

6/4/2026 at 11:27:26 PM

As a citizen of the US I feel the same about Trump tearing everything apart so he can rule unimpeded.

by guelo

6/4/2026 at 11:26:06 PM

[dead]

by NomDePlum

6/5/2026 at 7:11:36 PM

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

by tim-tday

6/4/2026 at 10:25:22 PM

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

by UncleOxidant

6/4/2026 at 11:09:17 PM

It's hilarious (or would be if it didn't involve killing people), the same dullards who wanted to "drill, baby, drill" have accelerated the move to renewables in a way they would have struggled to do if they were the most greeny administration ever seen.

by glaucon

6/4/2026 at 11:23:23 PM

It's not all sunshine and rainbows. Countries are turning to coal as well. There aren't natural chokepoints for coal distribution like the Straight of Hormuz.

by ASinclair

6/4/2026 at 10:39:20 PM

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

by cm2187

6/4/2026 at 10:49:39 PM

Ember Energy: British power prices are increasingly independent from gas - https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/british-power-price... - May 13th, 2026

* 15% of British power generation is already de-linked from the gas power price. This is from 10 GW of operational renewable capacity currently covered by the price-setting Contracts for Difference scheme.

* A third (36%) of power generation in Britain will be priced independently of gas by 2030, according to forecasts of generation from the Contracts for Difference scheme. Up to 36 GW of competitively-priced new wind and solar is under development by 2032 through the scheme.

* Hours where gas was below 20% of Britain’s electricity mix averaged £60/MWh in 2025, compared to £130/MWh in hours where gas made up more than 50% of the mix.

* The gas share of power generation fell to a second record monthly low in a row in Britain in April 2026. The gas share in both March (27%) and April (19%) was the lowest per month in over a decade. In March, wind supplied a monthly record 42% of all power generation.

(As more wind, solar, batteries, and transmission are deployed in the UK, fossil gas power share will continue to decline until pushed out of the generation mix)

by toomuchtodo

6/5/2026 at 3:07:19 AM

Looking at peak wind isn't particularly helpful I'm afraid. The problem is what happens when there is no wind, like in early May (https://gridwatch.co.uk/). Having more wind capacity isn't helping. Batteries are for smoothing minutes/hours not days. Solar obviously only a few hours a day and weak at this latitude.

by cm2187

6/5/2026 at 4:17:03 AM

Modern solar work nicely in UK in May-August when wind is weakest due to long hours and cooler weather. However one needs more expensive panels that also work on a cloudy days.

Then in UK somebody calculated that a house needs 1MWh battery to last over winter using only solar panels that a typical suburb house can install. In 5-10 years that would cost 40K USD making it rather realistic to have. This ignore availability of industrial-scale wind which is the strongest in winter.

by fpoling

6/4/2026 at 10:28:32 PM

Ok, I have to comment about the chart on oil prices that shows a massive rise from 2020 to 2022, which the article blames on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, even though that didn't happen until early 2022 and the spike began 2 years earlier. That's just jouranlistic misconduct. Let me tell you what actually happened because, for some reason, nobody actually talks about it. First, some context:

1. OPEC/OPEC+ meet every 3 months to adjust output based on expected demand to keep oil prices relatively stable. That is, they want to maintain a floor and a ceiling. Too low and they don't make enough money. Too high and it causes political instability and threatens oil-for-security guarantees that have existed since FDR agreed to such with King Faisal of Saudi Arabia in 1945;

2. Oil has different flavors based largley on how light or heavy the hydrocarbon blend is (called API Gravity) and the sulfur content. this is what Brent and West Texas Light Crude means. Generally, lighter crude is more valuable because it makes more valuable products like avgas and gasoline;

3. Oil is traded on both spot (physical) markets and future (paper) markets. A futures contract is a standardized contract for 1000 barrels of oil of a particular blend delivered or received (depending on which side you're on) on a given date. Generally, when we see oil prices in the news we are looking at futures prices. Historically short-dated futures prices and spot prices have been pretty similar. Spot prices are proprietary but this didn't matter. Now it does as that link has been broken [1]

3. When the world shut down in March 2020 due to the pandemic oil demand fell off a cliff and supplies backed up in production facilities. People weren't taking delivery and oil prices briefly went negative (technically, this was an "extreme contango" market);

4. Because of this, the Trump administration cajoled MBS to get OPEC to cut oil production [2][3][4]. This was a 2 year agreement that initially cut oil production by 9.7 million barrels per day ("Mbpd") going to to 6.3Mbpd ultimately. IMHO the administration panicked that US oil producers would go belly up. This represented ~10% of the world's crude oil supply;

5. In 2021 oil demand came roaring back. Prices went through the roof; and

6. Republicans blamed Biden. The Biden administration tried to get OPEC to increase production [5] and Biden never blamed OPEC or even Trump. Democrats took the "oil companies bad" approach.

This 2 year deal was completely unnecessary. OPEC would've cut production as necessary anyway. And it entirely matches the increase in oil and gas prices and inflation for this 2 year period and nobody ever mentions it.

Russia invading Ukraine in early 2022 was just the cherry on the cake.

Look at that chart. Where it's marked as "COVID-19" is March-April 2020. The deal begins in June 2020. It ended in June 2022, which is at the exact point of the big red bar to the right of the Russian invasion, after which oil prices dropped despite the fact that the war was still going on (and still is).

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/iran-war-has-sha...

[2]: https://www.reuters.com/article/economy/special-report-trump...

[3]: https://www.reuters.com/commentary/reuters-open-interest/tru...

[4]: https://www.reuters.com/article/business/opec-agrees-largest...

[5]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-call-opec-its-a...

by jmyeet

6/4/2026 at 11:51:18 PM

I’ll just add that from 2016-2020, Trump perpetuated a zero interest rate policy despite the economy booming.

Macroeconomics 101 says this will cause inflation on a few year delay, which is what happened, and Biden was also blamed for that.

by hedora

6/5/2026 at 12:23:24 AM

ZIRP (also, Quantitative Easing or QE) was the policy since 2008. Rates actually rose in the first Trump admin [1] so this isn't quite as causative as you suggest. Other things did happen that contributed to the inflation shock of 2020. This goes back to the Obama admin too, specifically:

1. After the OPEC oil shock of 1973, the US banned crude oil exports (in 1974 I believe);

2. In the early 2010s, hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") was invented, which created the US oil boom in the Permian Basin (from west Texas up to the Dakotas). Almost all oil wells in the last 10-15 years have been fracked. This was a massive capex outlay by oil companies at the time. This is important;

3. Obama, facing a hostile Congress in 2015, wanted solar and wind subsidies so he made a deal with Congress that included lifting the 1974 crude oil export ban. Oil production quickly went up and ever since we've been exporting ~3Mbpd of crude oil, which is essentially excess demand, and this is how the US became the largest single oil producer in the world;

4. OPEC but really Saudi Arabia in particular crashed the oil market in 2015-2016. There are two competing theories on why they did this. A lot of people think it was to kill the frackers. I don't think this makes sense. It was years after fracking came about. I think it was to punisht he US for becoming a crude oil exporter. And it worked. Roughly half of oil producers and services companies went bust [2];

5. When oil prices are low, producers will generally suspend production until prices increase because they're selling at a loss. They'll layoff staff and come back when prices improve. So this is self-correcting. But oil companies had to keep selling because of their massive debt;

6. Because of (5), oil inventories exploded and when Trump took office in 2017, oil experts believed that oil prices would remain low because of persistently high crue oil inventories [3];

7. Trump pulled out from the JCPOA in 2018. To counter expected Iranian sanctions, Trump got OPEC to increase production [4];

8. In October 2018, Saudi agents, allegedly on the orders from MBS, killed Saudi citizen and US permanent resident Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi embassy in Istanbul. I actually believe this is relevant to what happened subsequently; and

9. In November 2018, Trump granted 8 waivers to Iranian oil exporters to continue exporting [5]. This crashed the oil markets [6] and basically screwed over OPEC. But I think MBS had to eat it because of the Khashoggi fallout.

So come 2020, it is my belief that when Donald "Art of the Deal" Trump got MBS to cut oil production and then MBS later refused to increase production (to both Trump and Biden), it was payback for 2018.

So I don't think there's any causation between ZIRP and the inflation shock. It was a combination of two things: the oil price shock and the pandemic became the perfect environment for companies to raise prices, something many believed they'd get punished for prior. This is the era when dynamic pricing really took off.

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-oil-producers-pac...

[2]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS

[3]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=29532

[4]: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/22/opec-ministers-strike-deal-o...

[5]: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/02/trump-will-grant-8-waivers-t...

[6]: https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/the-great-oil-crash-of-...

by jmyeet

6/5/2026 at 7:38:50 PM

In addition to what jmyeet said, Trump doesn't control the interest rate policy. The Fed does. Despite his attempts to change it, Fed independence is still a thing, and definitely was still a thing in 2016-2020.

by AnimalMuppet

6/4/2026 at 10:40:58 PM

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

by outside1234

6/4/2026 at 11:10:09 PM

He _says_ he doesn't like renewables but secretly he loves them ;-)

by glaucon

6/4/2026 at 9:35:08 PM

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

by pstuart

6/4/2026 at 10:06:01 PM

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

by hx8

6/4/2026 at 10:31:33 PM

It is a bittersweet victory. Petroleum demand is going to be forever destroyed -if you were on the fence about scaling renewables, all doubt has been eliminated. Energy dependence is a strategic nightmare, with a proven solution available for the taking. Solar, batteries, EVs, whatever you can install, as quickly as possible. There are already regional stories where solar-friendly Spain is seeing lower price changes than Italy because the renewables are lessening the impact of the closure.

However, if you were financially struggling before this happened, you are in for a world of hurt. Food, fuel, fertilizers, and dozens of downstream refined products are going to see large price increases for months to years.

by 0cf8612b2e1e

6/4/2026 at 10:42:18 PM

I wonder how much has been offset by all the bombings and oil dependent countries having to fall back to coal until they can switch to solar or another oil supplier (if they can afford to do either at all).

by hgoel

6/4/2026 at 10:46:06 PM

That really depends. Oil and gas could just as easily get replaced by coal in a not-very-different alternative world.

by marcosdumay

6/6/2026 at 5:38:20 PM

Sure, and the Trump admin is trying to do just that.

But the economics of renewables itself (let alone the environmental impact), are compelling: utility solar is cheaper than anything else (without storage), and while battery costs take it significantly higher, those prices are plummeting and by 2030 will likely be cheap enough so that pure solar + battery beats everything else.

by pstuart

6/4/2026 at 10:28:22 PM

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

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

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

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

by toomuchtodo

6/4/2026 at 10:27:04 PM

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

by pstuart

6/4/2026 at 9:53:15 PM

Well there is the real possibility that this is going to cause a Blue Wave, which will at least slow down some of the more insane actions.

by 0cf8612b2e1e

6/4/2026 at 10:00:20 PM

Yeah, that would be wonderful too, but I didn't want to engage the downvoters (like you apparently did). This is a forum for discussing "hacking", not for political tribalism (not addressed to you but to them). SMDH.

by pstuart

6/4/2026 at 10:06:59 PM

Here we only discuss how cool tech the Torment Nexus has inside it. Not who is building it and why.

by karmakurtisaani

6/4/2026 at 10:19:04 PM

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

by shevy-java

6/4/2026 at 9:42:30 PM

What if? Trump is playing 5.7-D chess. He knows his base is full of idiots. He bombs Iran to create a crisis that wakes up his base to "wut, oil, need oil".

This was only way to get them to use renewables and re-think that maybe electric vehicles are not just 'woke' but also can help 'national security'.

Create Crises, to swing economy to electric and renewables faster than EV subsidies ever could.

by FrustratedMonky

6/4/2026 at 10:34:26 PM

Have you heard him talk?

He can't even stay consistent in 1D.

by BLKNSLVR

6/4/2026 at 10:32:39 PM

Why would you attribute to genius what is more likely explained by idiocy?

by electrondood

6/4/2026 at 10:40:37 PM

What if he's is just an evil Chauncey Gardiner?

by SigmundA

6/4/2026 at 10:49:13 PM

that's way too high brow of a reference for this crowd.

by riffic

6/4/2026 at 10:08:30 PM

I mean, what if he's not?

by dbt00

6/4/2026 at 9:59:08 PM

... is this a common sentiment?

by actionfromafar

6/5/2026 at 12:50:33 PM

I am surprised by the downvotes.

Am I being downvoted by Trump Fans? For making fun.

or

Am I being downvoted by Trump haters because even a satirically positive view of him, is too positive. Don't even make fun, if the fun is showing him in too positive a light?

by FrustratedMonky

6/5/2026 at 7:07:19 PM

At least in America, most people do not like nuanced takes on issues / people, even if you are being playful.

I'm afraid you need to go fit inside one of the echo chambers and conform to a given narrative good sir.

by warmedcookie

6/4/2026 at 10:17:07 PM

silver linings

by yesbut

6/4/2026 at 9:26:34 PM

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

by firefoxd

6/4/2026 at 10:07:59 PM

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

by dbt00

6/4/2026 at 10:29:35 PM

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

What a mess.

by irishcoffee

6/4/2026 at 10:59:08 PM

> their currency is in free fall, 2M people have become unemployed over there in the last few months, and a handful of idiots are playing a game of chicken with global implications

U.S. PPI is in the double digits as is MoM CPI. And while Republicans are seeing losses in polling, the IRGC is consolidating power. Both Iran and America are bleeding. But it seems clear that it’s in the IRGC’s interest to draw this one out for goodies. That’s why Tehran escalating while Trump desperately tries and fails to run home.

by JumpCrisscross

6/4/2026 at 10:44:18 PM

I mean, their planning has been very effective. It's a decentralized strategy that plays to their strengths; it doesn't take a lot to hold the strait closed, and they can pressure everyone in the region very easily by attacking infrastructure (oil, but also desalinization plants).

Their planning is so good it's turned this into the largest strategic embarrassment in the last... 80 years?

by analognoise

6/4/2026 at 11:44:19 PM

Conversely, Tehran is losing almost half a billion dollars a day. Nobody wins this stupid thing.

by irishcoffee

6/4/2026 at 11:59:30 PM

Their military is at something like 66% the missile/drone capacity it was at when the war started, and the US is what? Out of patriots?

They also now know they will beat the US in an all out conflict, which was unthinkable before this war started.

The main loss seems to be that with the Iranian / US supply lines into Ukraine slowing down, Ukraine has been able to build a domestic military drone complex that’s arguably more advanced than Iran’s.

by hedora

6/4/2026 at 9:31:19 PM

> This isn't an energy issue.

Renewables don't have the same level of external dependence on a constant flow of instantaneously used fuel. So while I do agree with you, it is an energy issue regardless of your politics.

by vizzier

6/4/2026 at 10:29:39 PM

It's dropping that one last straw on the camel's back which caused the problem. This isn't an overburdened camel issue.

by jjk166

6/4/2026 at 9:45:48 PM

> we didn't know how to pronounce hormuz until bombs started falling

I mean that might be true for you, but its been on the radar over here for a number of years. (it was also a key risk with Iran identified by a number of key intelligence think tanks. especially around the time of the anti-nuclear treaty negotiations)

But to your point, youre right its not an energy issue, its an energy and materials issue. There are lots of pre-cursor chemicals and products that come out of that region that the modern world needs to function.

The more pressing issue is the fertiliser price spike: https://ycharts.com/indicators/fertilizers_index_world_bank which has yet to fully mateirlaise.

You'll note that spike corolate with lots of civil unrest

by KaiserPro

6/4/2026 at 9:31:58 PM

Hormuz was in the news quite a bit in the past decade, if you followed the region at least a bit. Anyway electric cars will have some boom now.

by kakacik

6/4/2026 at 11:37:26 PM

I’ve seen this “we didn’t know how to pronounce Hormuz” line being repeated across the internet the last few days. Is it perhaps a new right aligned talking point meant to backtrack some of the “Trump is so incompetent” lines the left has been throwing out by making it seemn like EVERYONE was surprised by the events of the war?

It would be neat if there was some tracking of these kinds of political catch phrases sources and timelines, maybe that exists already.

by daheza

6/4/2026 at 9:34:52 PM

Well, the Trump-Netanyahu axis turned it from "We're going to have an inhospitable planet within the next century" problem to a "We need an affordable alternative source of energy right now" problem...

by netsharc