Mastodawn

The POTUS' war on Iran is already bringing rationing of fuel and major disruptions in many countries, and it's going to get a lot worse soon as the final shipments that made it thru the Strait start to arrive this week, the NYT reports. I admire (but do not share) this story's optimism of the potential for the Iran war to hasten more global adoption of renewables.

"Sri Lanka and Myanmar are rationing fuel. The Philippines has instituted four-day workweeks to conserve gasoline and electricity. Bangladesh briefly closed its universities to reserve power for homes and businesses. Across India, families and restaurants are cooking over wood fires for want of gas. Airlines are canceling flights."

"As painful as the first phase of the energy crisis set off by the war with Iran has been, what comes next will be worse. This week, the final deliveries of oil and liquefied natural gas to Asia that passed through the Strait of Hormuz before it was closed are expected to arrive. The last tanker shipments to Europe should land by mid-April. After that, many countries’ reserves of gasoline, diesel, liquid petroleum gas and natural gas will dwindle. The price of oil could soar as high as $200 a barrel if the war drags on."

Meanwhile, China -- which leads the world in battery technology production -- stands to massively gain from all this oil shock.

"As the Philippines declared a national energy emergency on March 24, car shoppers in Manila were crowding into showrooms of the Chinese carmaker BYD and purchasing E.V.s ."

Of course, here in the US we've largely said that we're just gonna keep making gas guzzlers and forget about all those pledges we made to invest in electric vehicles. Consumers in the US would be flocking to those BYD cars too if import duties didn't make them prohibitively expensive. Most of the big car makers in the US are hopelessly focused on people who don't bat an eyelash spending $60,000 (base price) for a new car or truck.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/opinion/oil-crisis-iran-electric-solar.html

Opinion | Remember the Oil Shocks of the ’70s? This Is Going to Be Worse. Much Worse.

Higher oil prices and limited supply will accelerate a turn toward cleaner technologies, especially in Asia and Europe.

The New York Times

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commander555 1d ago

@briankrebs Uranium is more common in the earth's crust than tin, and thorium is three times more plentiful than that. 10 5 gigawatt nuclear power plants could power all of california.

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Dima Pasechnik 🇺🇦 🇳🇱1d ago

@commander555 @briankrebs it's much cheaper, easier on the environment (ever been to former nuclear power sites?) to start properly using wind power (for instance, Denmark gets 60% of its electricity needs from wind power).
I don't see why, say, Lake Michigan is not covered with wind turbines (well, other than the lack of political will).

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commander555 1d ago

@dimpase @briankrebs Sometimes the wind doesn't blow. The way I see it, wind and solar are horrible for the environment because solar panels leak arsenic and cadmium into the ground water if not properly recycled and wind turbines kill birds. That said, I think that for residential and commercial building, running your own private electric grid with a solar panels, a private wind turbine, a flywheel battery and maybe a natural gas generator if those fail ought to be a protected right that planning commissions and homeowners associations ought to respect. Again, for grid level energy production, uranium is more common than tin and nuclear power results in the fewest number of human deaths per trillion kilowatt hours and doesn't produce greenhouse gasses, which is everything environmental activists want, which is why they hate nuclear. As I said, 10 5 gigawatt mega triga reactors could power all of california, and with private electric grids a protected right, there will be plenty left over to run reverse osmosis desalination plants to produce clean drinking water on demand with the electricity surplus, and maybe some left over for data centers if their operators are considerate of their neighbors.

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Dima Pasechnik 🇺🇦 🇳🇱

@commander555 @briankrebs wait, wind power is horrific because solar panels leak something? Excuse me?

Wind is certainly not blowing enough 24h a day 365 days a week, it doesn't matter. Because you can store the excess energy it generates.

You are repeating bad quality propaganda.