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All true, but I think they're missing the real issue here. Renewables (esp. solar and wind) are, yes, dropping in cost exponentially, and this means they are c

All true, but I think they're missing the real issue here. Renewables (esp. solar and wind) are, yes, dropping in cost exponentially, and this means they are currently zooming past fossil fuels in terms of affordability. There's an issue in regards to batteries, but that also seems to be on a learning curve that makes it better every year, so that won't buy fossil fuels much more time. Now, instead of rooting for that change, we can think about the actual consequences. It's inevitable; fossil fuels are on the way out. What does that mean, besides lower carbon? It means that countries which rely on fossil fuels for their economy, are going to see the same kind of crushing economic decline that, say, the UK coal industry has. What do you suppose happens when, for example, Saudi Arabia can no longer feed itself? It just peacefully and gently starves to death? To be clear, I'm not saying we should somehow try to prevent fossil fuels exiting the scene. The change in energy sources to lower-carbon ones is an old one, and there's no way to stop it, nor should we try. Wood gave way to coal and then oil and then natural gas, and the process will continue with zero-carbon sources like photovoltaics. That's a bullet that's already been fired, and there's no way to stuff it back inside the barrel of the gun. But, do we really have a plan for the consequences, not only in Saudi Arabia but also every other nation that's dependent on oil? Hint: we do not.

Schiendelman 6y ago
It’s always better to force us to make that plan sooner than later. The later we get, the worse the consequences are. Nobody’s going to prepare for any of this.
mrDmrTmrJ 6y ago
Here's an article worth your time on this topic: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/05/climate-geopolitics-petrostates-russia-china/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/05/climate-geopolitics-pet...
- Retric 6y ago
  That’s a surprisingly short term article about the future. The question isn’t really about what happens in 15 years but rather the next 50. The inertia of existing infrastructure is going to have a massive impact in the short term, but change is only accelerating.
dsr_ 6y ago
The House of Saud has a plan. It isn't going quite as well as they had hoped, but it's going. Aramco was IPO'd. They wanted a trillion dollar valuation, and didn't get it. The next step is to sell that stock before the oil market collapses, preferably leaving themselves with a lot of cash and a minority stake in a much smaller company. Cash is going into technology stocks, venture funds, and international real estate.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- willis936 6y ago
  Who is going to buy a trillion dollar stake in a shrinking market?
  - qppo 6y ago
    People who get left holding the bag when trading options.
  - dboreham 6y ago
    People who believe mainstream media narratives?
    - rightbyte 6y ago
      Is the MSM narrative that Saudi oil is a good investment?
  - munk-a 6y ago
    A lot of people - this IPO has already happened.
  - fomine3 6y ago
    Index funds
    - thekyle 6y ago
bosswipe 6y ago
A powerful Saudi Arabia has not been a force for good in the world so I don't know why I'm supposed to worry about it.
- HenryKissinger 6y ago
  The land itself isn't going anywhere. The sands of Saudi Arabia won't sink below the sea. The physical country will still exist. But what kind of government, what kind of state, can afford to govern that space and provide for its people, without oil revenue?
  - Brakenshire 6y ago
    It will be like any other country in the world. We should hardly feel sorry that they’ll no longer be ridiculously pampered and looked after by an underclass of mistreated immigrants. They have enormous opportunities, both in other available resources and in a capital overhang, to make their way.
  - vel0city 6y ago
    From certain perspectives it hasn't been that great of a state even with massive oil incomes. It will probably continue to be a state with massive wealth inequality and repressive government theocracy. It'll just have more social unrest to possibly change the status quo. Maybe people will really start to demand change there.
- Qwertious 6y ago
  Violence and instability in the middle east has caused problems in western countries. Of particular note are 9/11 and Europe's refugee crisis.
- sshumaker 6y ago
  Indeed. Can you imagine the alternate reality if the Saudi branch of Islam was something more like Sufism instead of Wahhabism, given the number of mosques the Saudis have funded all around the world with petrodollars?
nordsieck 6y ago
> It means that countries which rely on fossil fuels for their economy, are going to see the same kind of crushing economic decline that, say, the UK coal industry has. > What do you suppose happens when, for example, Saudi Arabia can no longer feed itself? It just peacefully and gently starves to death? First, I think you have to segregate between different kinds of fossil fuels. Coal is the worst. From what I understand, it's mostly used in industry, power generation and heating. The main problem is: it's really dirty. Natural gas probably has a much longer period of future usability. Tesla has shown quite readily that batteries are probably better than peaker plants for most cases. But for home heating and cooking, natural gas will probably have utility for quite some time. Yes - it does release greenhouse glasses, but the immediate health concerns in terms of the pm2.5 released by burning it are relatively minor. Petroleum is in a similar boat. The main use for petroleum - automotive transport will probably be gradually phased out over the next 20 years (a reasonable approximation of how long used cars last), but it's used for more than just that. Plastic production and aviation fuel are probably two of the uses that will probably have some real longevity to them. In theory, naval propulsion is more amenable to electrification than aviation, but that'll be tricky to do economically; that is another area that petroleum could have a long useful life in. In short, while there will be a dramatic drop in the consumption of fossil fuels, I have serious doubts that it will get anywhere close to zero in less than 40 years. I do think it is likely that coal burning will probably go away completely and both natural gas and petroleum use will decrease by over 90%. What that will do to the price is hard to say.
- p1mrx 6y ago
  > In theory, naval propulsion is more amenable to electrification than aviation, but that'll be tricky to do economically Unless batteries get a lot lighter, ships are more likely to be powered by liquid hydrogen or ammonia, which are relatively straightforward to produce from renewable energy.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    If there is one transport that doesn't care about weight, it's ships. The real problem is cost.
munk-a 6y ago
We don't - but society didn't feel obligated to carry the ferriers when the car eclipsed the horse and we (again, abstract society) have generally been pretty okay with not specifically planning for those disenfranchised populations. This is brutal and it's capitalism - if you're a staunch libretarian you probably don't mind that those who didn't adapt are outed as losers but... these sorts of technological revolutions have a lot of spare efficiency that's brought along with them. That spare efficiency can be taxed and used to help fund education and small business loans to try and preserve prosperity. When it comes to the international scene I think it's pretty clear that the "haves" coming will have strong reasons to make sure that the "have-nots" aren't devolving into anarchy since that causes global problems. Whether they act intelligently isn't something I can comment on - but there are clear benefits to everyone involved.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  > "sure that the "have-nots" aren't devolving into anarchy since that causes global problems" Yeah, because we've done a great job of stewarding middle-east so far. Even with the best intentions, it's not clear this " statebuilding" is even remotely realistic
  - munk-a 6y ago
    I think it's possible to supply resources to help a state become more stable. But I also think that that is almost never the actual goal due to greed.
discordance 6y ago
"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel" - Saeed Al Maktoum
- arjun-menon 6y ago
  The quote is actually likely from a member of Dubai Royal Family. An interesting fact here is that the UAE will never become poor. The UAE has saved up over 1.3 million USD dollars per citizen[a]. And this is just the government’s savings. Obviously, there’s immense private wealth on top of that as well. Even if with investment returns as low as 4% per year drawn out, that would translate to $52,000 per citizen. This is 52k of money that you could almost call free money. We’re not counting for the fact that at least half these citizens are not going to simply sit at home. They’re going to work, earn, start companies, etc. And the citizenry is very highly educated. And a lot of them actually have STEM degrees too (which correlates with higher earnings). So realistically, the per capita annual income could be in the over $100k per citizen range, even after the oil has run out. [a] The UAE has about 1 million citizens (most of the ~9 million who live in the UAE are not citizens), and the UAE’s sovereign wealth funds have total assets exceeding USD $1.3 trillion: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign_wealth_funds https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_soverei...
  - dalbasal 6y ago
    Idk if a monarchy where citizens are a small minority can be thought of this way. It's like saying a company has lots of money saved. Doesn't matter much if the operation aren't profitable. Economic activity ceasing is still what it is. ...in any case, gulf oil will likely be the last well abandoned. It's so cheap to produce that production can continue at very low oil prices. The last half of any adoption curve is long, and people will still consume some oil and gas for several more decades.
  - ehnto 6y ago
    I wouldn't so boldly claim they won't go poor, you trust in good management and no internal misfortune or subterfuge. Though their savings buy them considerable time to figure out an economic path forward, the loss of their profit center will surely affect the weight of their currency and political influence. Oil won't go away of course, once the huge capital investment no longer makes sense it will become less abundant as fewer companies will be extracting and refining it. So they could see profits from oil as a niche resource in a post oil world.
Cacti 6y ago
I mean, fossil fuels still have their uses even in a world of plenty of renewable energy: tanks, planes, etc. will still need oil, and the strategic importance of ensuring an oil supply will still be hugely relevant to major powers for that reason, and they will in turn have an interest in supporting a stable Saudi Arabia.
AmericanChopper 6y ago
Why would us HN readers (or perhaps you just meant is Americans?) need to have a plan for what happens to KSA if oil exports drop? They have their own plan for that, which is why they’ve invested so much into diversifying their economy.
- mulmen 6y ago
  Because we live on Earth. Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally in the Middle East. We need to have a plan for the future when the geopolitical landscape shifts and incentives change. Nobody exists in a vacuum, our interests are intertwined with everyone else's.
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    Well I’m sure that the people of Saudi Arabia don’t care that you want to plan their future for them, because as I mentioned, it’s something they’ve already taken care of for themselves. It’s really a rather imperialistic perspective tbh. To presume all of these countries need us to be making decisions for them, or that we would have any right to do so in the first place.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
disown 6y ago
> It's inevitable; fossil fuels are on the way out. It's not on the way out. Fossil fuel use is increasing and projected to increase for the next 3 decades at least. solar/wind/etc account for pretty much nothing today. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitution?time=earliest..latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio... And the 2050 projection shows that petroleum and natural gas use will increase and that even coal will rebound by 2050. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=41433 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=41433 Also, that huge spike for "renewables" is mostly dams. Not wind or solar.
- hectormalot 6y ago
  I hope they (EIA) are off the mark. If the predictions from the EIA a will materialize, we’re going to have a huge carbon problem. However, I think there also are reasons to believe things will be better: 1) the EIA forecasts linear growth of renewables, while its been behaving exponentially over the last 5-10 years. That gives me hope they’ve underestimated the long term growth rate. (It would be interesting to compare their older predictions vs actual) 2) nearly all of the energy consumption growth is non-OECD and will require newly built generation. If cost of renewables continues to drop, it might just be economic sense that pushes renewables over coal 3) at least on the EU side, fossil fuels are increasingly getting a negative connotation. On top of the financial comparison, I expect this could dampen new fossil growth as well.
  - disown 6y ago
    > I hope they (EIA) are off the mark. If the predictions from the EIA a will materialize, we’re going to have a huge carbon problem. The only way EIA will be off the mark is if we get something like fusion. Currently the major geopolitical issue is natural gas pipelines. Major nations wouldn't be fighting over gas pipelines if people believed fossil fuels were over. > 1) the EIA forecasts linear growth of renewables, while its been behaving exponentially over the last 5-10 years. And it still amounts to nothing. Solar/winds accounts for 1% of energy. And that's after 10 years of subsidies in the biggest economies around the world. > 2) nearly all of the energy consumption growth is non-OECD and will require newly built generation. If cost of renewables continues to drop, it might just be economic sense that pushes renewables over coal That will be all fossil fuels. The developing nations aren't going industrialize on solar/wind. Even developed nations can't do that. > 3) at least on the EU side, fossil fuels are increasingly getting a negative connotation. On top of the financial comparison, I expect this could dampen new fossil growth as well. Right... One of the biggest per capita producer of oil is norway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ... The 2nd largest oil company in the world is a anglo-dutch company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Dutch_Shell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Dutch_Shell And of course europe just invaded and took over libya for their oil. The EU is trying to take over venezuela for their oil. Etc. The EU is one of the biggest direct consumers of fossil fuels ( and the largest consumer directly+indirectly ). Fossil fuels aren't going anywhere. That's just physical reality. It's physics. Sure renewables may slow the rate of growth, but growing more slowly is still growing. The only thing that will cause a decline in fossil fuels is economic collapse or a genuine scientific breakthrough like fusion energy.
adamredwoods 6y ago
For reference, list of large power plants and their output: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_power_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_power_stations The largest solar plant is at about 2000 MW and requires a lot of land. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhadla_Solar_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhadla_Solar_Park The largest wind farm is not being used as efficiently as it could: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gansu_Wind_Farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gansu_Wind_Farm
- wp381640 6y ago
  The largest power stations at the moment are always going to be stored hydro - they take up a lot of land. Those large coal burners also take up a lot of land when you consider the mines, transport infra, tailings dams, coal piles not to mention the clean air they "take up"
  - rtx 6y ago
    Thats why we should be exclusively nuclear.
    - wp381640 6y ago
      Easy to have that opinion but the market is building wind/solar + battery + pumped hydro
    - puranjay 6y ago
      Hear hear. We need a massive pro-nuclear public campaign. When people think of "nuclear power", they just think of Chernobyl. In hindsight, Chernobyl might have done more harm to the planet than we thought - it single handedly turned public opinion against nuclear power, and all the clean energy it provides. One wonders if we would have any of our current climate issues if we had adopted nuclear power en masse in the 80s and 90s.
      - Krasnol 6y ago
        When political decision makers and investors think of "nuclear power", they just think of overdue and over budget projects that may be finished in a decade. In a decade renewables will be so far ahead that it would be plain stupid to push nuclear. This is why it's not happening outside a lobby group from the industry who try to push shady people like Michael Shellenberger.
schwartzworld 6y ago
> What do you suppose happens when, for example, Saudi Arabia can no longer feed itself? It just peacefully and gently starves to death? Won't somebody think of the poor Saudi family?!
- sbelskie 6y ago
  There are, in case you didn’t know, other people in that country.
  - schwartzworld 6y ago
    Yes, I'm aware the Saudi family has a whole population to serve them.
chiefalchemist 6y ago
Well, not just countries but whole industries/sectors are going to collapse. It's not like we're going to retrain an oil driller to be software engineer. Yes, the ecological benefits shine. But we need to prepare for the sociopolitical and socioeconomic fallout. Given how prepared we've (not) been for addressing climate change, it's difficult to imagine we'll be prepared for the unintended consequences of renewables. What leader or elected official is going to be that messenger?
- donw 6y ago
  > It's not like we're going to retrain an oil driller to be software engineer. Why not? Equipment at that scale is complicated, and requires a lot of skill and experience to operate. Not to mention responsibility. When you screw up, people die. Very likely including you.
  - chiefalchemist 6y ago
    You're discounting a key variable in the equation: You can't teach people who are not motivated to learn; who don't have enough desire to learn; who literally can't afford a "life changing" transition. Given the pay rate of oil workers, few are going to plan ahead and switch careers to something paying less. Keep in mind, that new pay drops further as the supply (of devs) increases. In theory, I agree with you. However, the reality is inertia is a key force in life. My life. Your life. All our lives. And a magic wand - Poof! You're a software developer - has little proof of effectiveness to date under such circumstances. Yes, some success stories, but none the less limited. More software bootcamps are the answer? I'd like to see evidence of that. We're not going to solve real problems with fantasy based on disconnected from reality. If we could this conversation would not be necessary.
    - donw 6y ago
      I think there's a lot of underlying assumptions here we need to unpack. First, you are correct, not everybody is just going to "learn to code", and that's not where I was going. The industrial revolution replaced, to a large degree, muscles with machines, but still required human minds to work those machines. This enabled an explosion of wealth across the entire world, giving everybody, in essence, access to the economic equivalence of an entire village's worth of labor. Goods which were once difficult to produce, and thus available only to the wealthy, became commonplace. You see this in design trends: ornate designs were favored until mass manufacturing rendered them trivial to reproduce, and then the world embraced Futurism and Bauhaus. In the information revolution, we are replacing minds with machines. We don't need as many muscles, nor do we need as many minds, and where we seem to be headed is a sort of neo-feudalism, as those that control the machines have all the power, and our societies are ill adapted for all the muscles and minds that find themselves no longer economically necessary. Nobody has a good answer to this. UBI, if implemented properly, may solve part of the problem, but human beings derive a great portion of their psychological nourishment from being valuable to their tribes. Just as how not everybody is going to learn to code, not everybody wants to be an artist or a musician, either. That's not even the ugliest problem. Two: There tends to be a very common assumption amongst the technorati, of which I suppose I am a member, that "lesser" folks, those who learned a trade instead of getting a computer science degree, can't learn how to code. I personally hate this attitude, and push back against it wherever I can. Yes, not everybody can be even a mediocre programmer; but, a great programmer can come from anywhere.
tuatoru 6y ago
> But, do we really have a plan for the consequences, not only in Saudi Arabia but also every other nation that's dependent on oil? Hint: we do not. That's kind of sad. A long time ago (just before the GFC) I looked at trends in climate change (Arctic sea ice specifically, but that's just a canary), demography, China's GDP, and things like PV/Wind learning curves, and said to myself: "things will get interesting in 2023, plus or minus 7 years." Meaning, geopolitically. Covid seems to have accelerated events, but the trends were all there way back then, visible to anyone who had the time to think about them. I seem to recall reading warnings by internal think tanks in the US Military that were penned in 2005 or so, warning of these very issues. Still, I have printed and blu-tacked up the quote from Axel Oxenstierna: "Do you not know, my son, with how very little wisdom the world is governed?"[1]. So I shouldn't be surprised. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Oxenstierna#Quotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Oxenstierna#Quotation
- mooreds 6y ago
  If geopolitics + trends is interesting to you, I highly recommend "Disunited Nations": https://zeihan.com/disunited-nations/ https://zeihan.com/disunited-nations/
  - tuatoru 6y ago
    Thanks!
    - MR4D 6y ago
      But read his other book first: Accidental Superpower. Also, he narrates that book but not the new one. Which is too bad because his narration is truly additive to the book.
      - mooreds 6y ago
        Good point, "The Accidental Superpower" is wondrous in scope and ideas. The "Absent Superpower", the sequel, is OK; had some interesting insights about shale and the coming removal of the USA from the world. But the first book is timeless. His Twitter feed is high signal as well: https://twitter.com/PeterZeihan/ https://twitter.com/PeterZeihan/
melenaboija 6y ago
Maybe they should (I have no idea if they are already doing so) invest in renewables
wait_a_minute 6y ago
Saudi Arabia sees the writing on the wall and that is why they are investing heavily into renewables. They're aiming to inject some $30 billion into renewables over the next five years. They're also looking to diversify into other businesses besides renewables.
SubiculumCode 6y ago
A whole lot of sun in Saudi Arabia....means a whole lot of energy to use.
Qwertious 6y ago
>What do you suppose happens when, for example, Saudi Arabia can no longer feed itself? It just peacefully and gently starves to death? Saudi Arabia has a sovereign wealth fund with trillions of dollars. The obvious answer is that they'll build a ton of renewables and build a ton of [hydroponic/aquaponic/aeroponic/etc] farms to make food locally. Indoor farming is expensive but very water-efficient, which suits Saudi Arabia as their water comes from expensive desalination plants.
- redisman 6y ago
  They have a lot of money to invest and they could also export solar if they want to stay in the energy business. Lots of sunlight there.
  - mariuolo 6y ago
    > they could also export solar I remember an old discussion about this. The main problem is that transmission lines to potential customers would have to traverse unfriendly countries.
    - brazzy 6y ago
      Power-to-gas* might become their salvation. *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas
    - gns24 6y ago
      There are already plans for massive investment in a hydrogen production plant - though obviously there are still lots of issues to be solved with that energy pipeline. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201112-the-green-hydrogen-revolution-in-renewable-energy https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201112-the-green-hydrog...
  - pydry 6y ago
    Export to whom? Everybody else in the vicinity also has a lot of sunlight. Why wouldn't they make their own power at home and save on transmission costs?
donw 6y ago
People do tend to forget that we make a lot of stuff with oil: plastics, fertilizers, lubricants, etc. I am happy to hear where I am behind the curve, but we don't yet have above-surface replacements for the whole of the petrochemical industry, outside of just synthetically producing our own light crude via thermal depolymerization. It'll change the game to be sure, but there's a lot more going on than just burning gasoline.
jganetsk 6y ago
Also other practical consequences of solar and wind: what about land usage? How much land do we need to power our huge appetite for energy? What impact does that have on the environment? Mining for rare Earth minerals? How do we recycle these systems at the end of life? People keep talking about the cost of renewables, but in fact, money is the one renewable resource that we do have. All of the above are majorly important questions. Maybe renewables aren't so renewable after all.
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
Saudi Arabia's plan was to share the risk by taking Saudi Aramco public, right? Or at least that was part of the plan.
ponker 6y ago
The only thing stopping the US from turning Saudi Arabia to glass is that we need their oil. If we don’t it’s game over.
- Qwertious 6y ago
  Saudi Arabia also is useful for a military base, and to keep Iran in check.
lacker 6y ago
Saudi Arabia has a decent plan, to IPO Saudi Aramco and reinvest the proceeds to hedge against a decline in the oil industry. It seems like a good idea, but a political question if they can stick to it. Similar idea to Norway’s sovereign wealth fund.
deleted 6y ago
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wukerplank 6y ago
Regarding Saudi Arabia: They should sit on a huge pile of money and the end of fossil fuels is not a big bang event. I would have expected them to use that money for R&D to shape the post oil world to stay relevant.
ashtonkem 6y ago
As an interesting addendum to what you said, how many countries are ready for the internal turmoil that the collapse of fossil fuel prices will cause? Consider the coal mining areas of the Eastern United States, and how badly the collapse of the coal mining industry has damaged those towns.
newyankee 6y ago
Middle eastern countries are a bad example. They have a very small population and were mostly supported by immigrant workers. A lot of the elites might've squandered the wealth but sovereign funds seem to have locked a fair bit of it in futuristic investments.
LoSboccacc 6y ago
> It just peacefully and gently starves to death? they know damn well and are already diversifying their portfolio; beside, even if we stop burning these fuels, fossil based carbon polymer will be with us for a while until vegetable alternative can be mass produce in matching qualities.
hutzlibu 6y ago
"What does that mean, besides lower carbon?" It also means fresh air in the cities and much less noise. Not a small point. Smaller points would be less enviroment damage with oil drills, potential groundwater poisening or earthquakes with fracking, not oil tanker crashes and oceanic catastrophic events. And about Saudia Arabia: I don't see, why "we" need to have a plan for them. I see less money for various fanatic groups, if the arabic oil nations have to be a bit more conservative about money spending. But what they could do (and some people there see this, too) is invest heavily in solarenergy, too and basically do solarfarming. And then use that energy to produce big time, or directly export the energy. Processed in form of hydrogen/methanol/.. or with high voltage direct current transmissiom directly to europe for example.
plater 6y ago
What is the problem? This is great for Saudi Arabia and great for the world. Saudi Arabia has a lot of sun and they have a lot of cash. If they invest it in producing electricity using solar they can still be an exporter of energy. Secondly, most wars in the Arabic regions and all the meddling from the USA and other countries in this region is due to the oil. Without the rest of the world's need for oil we would get peace in this region.
addicted 6y ago
Nations that depend on oil for their economy are already almost universally terrible states. Reducing their oil income will mean they are terrible states with less money to fund their terrible activities across the entire world. If Saudi Arabia runs out of oil money, the only things that will happen is their population will shrink dramatically as the vast majority of the population, who are immigrants from the rest of the world go back to the far more populous countries they come from, and they will have less money to fund Islamic terrorism across the world, and especially in Asia, probably greatly reducing whatever efficacy these organizations currently have.
hannob 6y ago
Interestingly there are signs that Saudi Arabia has this on the radar more than others. E.g. they're building the larges green ammonia plant in the world. You may not hear a lot about ammonia production and green ammonia, but this is really huge (not just because ammonia is important for fertilizers, but also because ammonia is a promising future shipping fuel). But yeah, there are other oil countries where you barely see any such signs (e.g. Russia).
495636483 6y ago
Why do you think Saudi Arabia is slowly allowing women to participate? They need them in the workforce for an economically sustainable future. They know they are heading for crisis rapidly and investing hard to get out of there. However, they are ridiculously dependent on oil. Oil money is basically the whole country's sugar daddy (not for the slaves and foreign workers...). People don't really work there, they all just live off the oil money. Literally every aspect of their lives need to change. I really doubt the rest of the world needs to be too concerned about them. They are pretty uniquely fucked and not that many people anyway.
- tomp 6y ago
  > Why do you think Saudi Arabia is slowly allowing women to participate? They need them in the workforce for an economically sustainable future. Do they? Has doubling the work-force helped Western economies? I think that Elizabeth Warren & others have questioned that idea - i.e. that the wages were reduced to compensate for the increased labour supply - although even if not beneficial for individual families it could still be beneficial for the economy as a whole (and especially for the capitalist class).
  - gvfdabgea 6y ago
    You make a good point. More workers are just good for the capitalists, unless there is actual work to be done.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  As someone who lived in Saudi and has relatives there, most of these comments are far far off the mark (Saudi has been diversifying for years, they won't be reliant on oil when it stops being as profitable, and that's also decades and decades away). But this one takes the cake. Haha, they are allowing women to participate for money? Women already participated in Saudi economically from a long time back. They make up a large part of the Aramco workforce. Don't confuse allowing women to drive and repealing qawwam system with "allowing women to participate economically". Women didn't need to drive to participate they could just have their drivers drive them around (as is common anyways). Also, Saudi is a conservative society, and the royals are more liberal than the populace (like everywhere in the world). Most people in Saudi dislike these reforms. The royals embark on them to please their allies in Europe and America and Israel as they hope to connect their economies more (they've already invested lots into these places with their sovereign wealth fund and want to protect their investments). HN gets things surprisingly wrong when it comes to non Western places, but this is far off even for those standards!
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Razengan 6y ago
> But, do we really have a plan for the consequences, not only in Saudi Arabia but also every other nation that's dependent on oil? Those countries have had plenty of time to diversify their economies, but instead of funneling some of that oil money into uplifting their nation, it went into the pockets of the elite few and dick-waving contests of tall buildings and tacky tourist traps. They chose to not even provide basic human freedoms to many of their citizens, or allowed women to pursue higher education and jobs in their lives beyond marriage. Fostering free thinking among their populace would have produced at least some individuals with enough ideas to prepare for a post-oil world.
ivan_gammel 6y ago
Carbon will not be completely phased out. It’s still used in chemistry and lower prices may help finding another use of it. The countries which manage their carbon income well will be fine. The others usually go bust no matter how big or low price is - see Venesuela. Saudi Arabia is somewhere in between, but they already adjust.
wazoox 6y ago
Wood didn't give way to coal that gave way to oil. This is a terrible fallacy (albeit very commmon, even Vaclav Smil fell into it in his "Oil" book). The world currently consumes more coal than it ever did. Wood consumption is also record high. We simply stacked up energy sources. Check this page: https://ourworldindata.org/energy https://ourworldindata.org/energy So far, fossil fuels still represent about 85% of our energy consumption, and about 99% for transportation. We had a world 100% on renewable, back in the 18th century, but we were 600 millions and lived 35 years. OTOH we have no credible way to replace 85% of our energy by renewables in the next 10 years (if we want to keep climate change at reasonable levels).
- 3pt14159 6y ago
  I agree on renewables and they are certainly part of the solution, but we can meet our energy without fossil fuels if we really leaned into nuclear the way the French did. It's simply a matter of political will. Musk looked at the regulatory tape around nuclear and said "I guess it has to be solar then" and I think that was a mistake. If we'd applied his economics of scale, and first principles thinking to nuclear we'd be far, far more along than we are right now and we'd probably have more medical isotopes to boot.
  - rat9988 6y ago
    The french did this and ended up with nuclear costing more than current renewable. That said, it has served them well for the last decades and will probably still serve well for a decade or two.
  - wazoox 6y ago
    We can relatively easily solve the problem of electricity production using nuclear, renewables and therefore make carbon-free electricity. But electricity is only 30% of our energy consumption.
    - Retric 6y ago
      Cars, Heating, and cooking can be replaced with electricity just fine even if their not currently part of that 30%. Also, solar power overwhelmingly our largest energy source. It’s generally ignored in these calculations but farms for example are very dependent on sunlight.
csomar 6y ago
There will be no consequence for Saudi Arabia disintegrating. Most of the world (hint: their neighbors and their own population) will welcome it. S.A. has lots of lands and other resources (religious tourism is big, they are the center of the Islamic world). They are only poor because of their own mismanagement. The Emirates will be largely fine since they have diversified a lot. They might need to cut a bit of spending but otherwise they'll keep as a wealthy nation. Qatar will also probably be fine. They have lots of money and built lots of infrastructure which they can open to the world. Actually, I think post-oil, we'll finally have peace in the region. Nothing to fight over any more.
k_bx 6y ago
> What do you suppose happens when, for example, Saudi Arabia can no longer feed itself? It just peacefully and gently starves to death? As a Ukrainian, I’m very optimistic about the future of democracy in Russia that would have a chance once it stops being a big gas station. We then might see a better, open Russia, without military aggression and disinformation campaigns.
- caskstrength 6y ago
  Things might get worse before they get better though. Their leaders may ramp up militaristic tendencies to distract the population from internal problems and shift their attention to fighting "western imperialists" in Russian "sphere of influence", etc.
KMnO4 6y ago
Is there any reason why energy nations like Saudi Arabia could not compete in green energy? Sure, they can supply fossil fuels from a bounty more plentiful than other countries. But Asia does not lack lithium or silicon.
HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
SA has been dumping all their oil money on investments for a long time now. They know what's coming.
nickbauman 6y ago
Saudi Arabia reached their Hubbert curve apotheosis probably in the 80's (their proven reserve is a state secret). They've been desperately trying to handle this fallout ever since. Russia, OTOH, is the real the mother of all petrostates. Any problem you might imagine facing Saudi is tiny compared to the impact on Russia. They've already suffered so much as a result of the oil crash in the late 90's by becoming a mafia state.
pasttense01 6y ago
Fossil fuels also creates petrochemicals used to create plastics and other products. Does anyone see plastics disappearing?

Schiendelman 6y ago

It’s always better to force us to make that plan sooner than later. The later we get, the worse the consequences are. Nobody’s going to prepare for any of this.

mrDmrTmrJ 6y ago

Here's an article worth your time on this topic: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/05/climate-geopolitics-petrostates-russia-china/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/05/climate-geopolitics-pet...

Retric 6y ago
That’s a surprisingly short term article about the future. The question isn’t really about what happens in 15 years but rather the next 50. The inertia of existing infrastructure is going to have a massive impact in the short term, but change is only accelerating.

dsr_ 6y ago

The House of Saud has a plan. It isn't going quite as well as they had hoped, but it's going. Aramco was IPO'd. They wanted a trillion dollar valuation, and didn't get it. The next step is to sell that stock before the oil market collapses, preferably leaving themselves with a lot of cash and a minority stake in a much smaller company. Cash is going into technology stocks, venture funds, and international real estate.

deleted 6y ago
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willis936 6y ago
Who is going to buy a trillion dollar stake in a shrinking market?
- qppo 6y ago
  People who get left holding the bag when trading options.
- dboreham 6y ago
  People who believe mainstream media narratives?
  - rightbyte 6y ago
    Is the MSM narrative that Saudi oil is a good investment?
- munk-a 6y ago
  A lot of people - this IPO has already happened.
- fomine3 6y ago
  Index funds
  - thekyle 6y ago

bosswipe 6y ago

A powerful Saudi Arabia has not been a force for good in the world so I don't know why I'm supposed to worry about it.

HenryKissinger 6y ago
The land itself isn't going anywhere. The sands of Saudi Arabia won't sink below the sea. The physical country will still exist. But what kind of government, what kind of state, can afford to govern that space and provide for its people, without oil revenue?
- Brakenshire 6y ago
  It will be like any other country in the world. We should hardly feel sorry that they’ll no longer be ridiculously pampered and looked after by an underclass of mistreated immigrants. They have enormous opportunities, both in other available resources and in a capital overhang, to make their way.
- vel0city 6y ago
  From certain perspectives it hasn't been that great of a state even with massive oil incomes. It will probably continue to be a state with massive wealth inequality and repressive government theocracy. It'll just have more social unrest to possibly change the status quo. Maybe people will really start to demand change there.
Qwertious 6y ago
Violence and instability in the middle east has caused problems in western countries. Of particular note are 9/11 and Europe's refugee crisis.
sshumaker 6y ago
Indeed. Can you imagine the alternate reality if the Saudi branch of Islam was something more like Sufism instead of Wahhabism, given the number of mosques the Saudis have funded all around the world with petrodollars?

nordsieck 6y ago

> It means that countries which rely on fossil fuels for their economy, are going to see the same kind of crushing economic decline that, say, the UK coal industry has. > What do you suppose happens when, for example, Saudi Arabia can no longer feed itself? It just peacefully and gently starves to death? First, I think you have to segregate between different kinds of fossil fuels. Coal is the worst. From what I understand, it's mostly used in industry, power generation and heating. The main problem is: it's really dirty. Natural gas probably has a much longer period of future usability. Tesla has shown quite readily that batteries are probably better than peaker plants for most cases. But for home heating and cooking, natural gas will probably have utility for quite some time. Yes - it does release greenhouse glasses, but the immediate health concerns in terms of the pm2.5 released by burning it are relatively minor. Petroleum is in a similar boat. The main use for petroleum - automotive transport will probably be gradually phased out over the next 20 years (a reasonable approximation of how long used cars last), but it's used for more than just that. Plastic production and aviation fuel are probably two of the uses that will probably have some real longevity to them. In theory, naval propulsion is more amenable to electrification than aviation, but that'll be tricky to do economically; that is another area that petroleum could have a long useful life in. In short, while there will be a dramatic drop in the consumption of fossil fuels, I have serious doubts that it will get anywhere close to zero in less than 40 years. I do think it is likely that coal burning will probably go away completely and both natural gas and petroleum use will decrease by over 90%. What that will do to the price is hard to say.

p1mrx 6y ago
> In theory, naval propulsion is more amenable to electrification than aviation, but that'll be tricky to do economically Unless batteries get a lot lighter, ships are more likely to be powered by liquid hydrogen or ammonia, which are relatively straightforward to produce from renewable energy.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  If there is one transport that doesn't care about weight, it's ships. The real problem is cost.

munk-a 6y ago

We don't - but society didn't feel obligated to carry the ferriers when the car eclipsed the horse and we (again, abstract society) have generally been pretty okay with not specifically planning for those disenfranchised populations. This is brutal and it's capitalism - if you're a staunch libretarian you probably don't mind that those who didn't adapt are outed as losers but... these sorts of technological revolutions have a lot of spare efficiency that's brought along with them. That spare efficiency can be taxed and used to help fund education and small business loans to try and preserve prosperity. When it comes to the international scene I think it's pretty clear that the "haves" coming will have strong reasons to make sure that the "have-nots" aren't devolving into anarchy since that causes global problems. Whether they act intelligently isn't something I can comment on - but there are clear benefits to everyone involved.

ClumsyPilot 6y ago
> "sure that the "have-nots" aren't devolving into anarchy since that causes global problems" Yeah, because we've done a great job of stewarding middle-east so far. Even with the best intentions, it's not clear this " statebuilding" is even remotely realistic
- munk-a 6y ago
  I think it's possible to supply resources to help a state become more stable. But I also think that that is almost never the actual goal due to greed.

discordance 6y ago

"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel" - Saeed Al Maktoum

arjun-menon 6y ago
The quote is actually likely from a member of Dubai Royal Family. An interesting fact here is that the UAE will never become poor. The UAE has saved up over 1.3 million USD dollars per citizen[a]. And this is just the government’s savings. Obviously, there’s immense private wealth on top of that as well. Even if with investment returns as low as 4% per year drawn out, that would translate to $52,000 per citizen. This is 52k of money that you could almost call free money. We’re not counting for the fact that at least half these citizens are not going to simply sit at home. They’re going to work, earn, start companies, etc. And the citizenry is very highly educated. And a lot of them actually have STEM degrees too (which correlates with higher earnings). So realistically, the per capita annual income could be in the over $100k per citizen range, even after the oil has run out. [a] The UAE has about 1 million citizens (most of the ~9 million who live in the UAE are not citizens), and the UAE’s sovereign wealth funds have total assets exceeding USD $1.3 trillion: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign_wealth_funds https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_soverei...
- dalbasal 6y ago
  Idk if a monarchy where citizens are a small minority can be thought of this way. It's like saying a company has lots of money saved. Doesn't matter much if the operation aren't profitable. Economic activity ceasing is still what it is. ...in any case, gulf oil will likely be the last well abandoned. It's so cheap to produce that production can continue at very low oil prices. The last half of any adoption curve is long, and people will still consume some oil and gas for several more decades.
- ehnto 6y ago
  I wouldn't so boldly claim they won't go poor, you trust in good management and no internal misfortune or subterfuge. Though their savings buy them considerable time to figure out an economic path forward, the loss of their profit center will surely affect the weight of their currency and political influence. Oil won't go away of course, once the huge capital investment no longer makes sense it will become less abundant as fewer companies will be extracting and refining it. So they could see profits from oil as a niche resource in a post oil world.

Cacti 6y ago

I mean, fossil fuels still have their uses even in a world of plenty of renewable energy: tanks, planes, etc. will still need oil, and the strategic importance of ensuring an oil supply will still be hugely relevant to major powers for that reason, and they will in turn have an interest in supporting a stable Saudi Arabia.

AmericanChopper 6y ago

Why would us HN readers (or perhaps you just meant is Americans?) need to have a plan for what happens to KSA if oil exports drop? They have their own plan for that, which is why they’ve invested so much into diversifying their economy.

mulmen 6y ago
Because we live on Earth. Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally in the Middle East. We need to have a plan for the future when the geopolitical landscape shifts and incentives change. Nobody exists in a vacuum, our interests are intertwined with everyone else's.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  Well I’m sure that the people of Saudi Arabia don’t care that you want to plan their future for them, because as I mentioned, it’s something they’ve already taken care of for themselves. It’s really a rather imperialistic perspective tbh. To presume all of these countries need us to be making decisions for them, or that we would have any right to do so in the first place.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

disown 6y ago

> It's inevitable; fossil fuels are on the way out. It's not on the way out. Fossil fuel use is increasing and projected to increase for the next 3 decades at least. solar/wind/etc account for pretty much nothing today. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitution?time=earliest..latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio... And the 2050 projection shows that petroleum and natural gas use will increase and that even coal will rebound by 2050. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=41433 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=41433 Also, that huge spike for "renewables" is mostly dams. Not wind or solar.

hectormalot 6y ago
I hope they (EIA) are off the mark. If the predictions from the EIA a will materialize, we’re going to have a huge carbon problem. However, I think there also are reasons to believe things will be better: 1) the EIA forecasts linear growth of renewables, while its been behaving exponentially over the last 5-10 years. That gives me hope they’ve underestimated the long term growth rate. (It would be interesting to compare their older predictions vs actual) 2) nearly all of the energy consumption growth is non-OECD and will require newly built generation. If cost of renewables continues to drop, it might just be economic sense that pushes renewables over coal 3) at least on the EU side, fossil fuels are increasingly getting a negative connotation. On top of the financial comparison, I expect this could dampen new fossil growth as well.
- disown 6y ago
  > I hope they (EIA) are off the mark. If the predictions from the EIA a will materialize, we’re going to have a huge carbon problem. The only way EIA will be off the mark is if we get something like fusion. Currently the major geopolitical issue is natural gas pipelines. Major nations wouldn't be fighting over gas pipelines if people believed fossil fuels were over. > 1) the EIA forecasts linear growth of renewables, while its been behaving exponentially over the last 5-10 years. And it still amounts to nothing. Solar/winds accounts for 1% of energy. And that's after 10 years of subsidies in the biggest economies around the world. > 2) nearly all of the energy consumption growth is non-OECD and will require newly built generation. If cost of renewables continues to drop, it might just be economic sense that pushes renewables over coal That will be all fossil fuels. The developing nations aren't going industrialize on solar/wind. Even developed nations can't do that. > 3) at least on the EU side, fossil fuels are increasingly getting a negative connotation. On top of the financial comparison, I expect this could dampen new fossil growth as well. Right... One of the biggest per capita producer of oil is norway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ... The 2nd largest oil company in the world is a anglo-dutch company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Dutch_Shell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Dutch_Shell And of course europe just invaded and took over libya for their oil. The EU is trying to take over venezuela for their oil. Etc. The EU is one of the biggest direct consumers of fossil fuels ( and the largest consumer directly+indirectly ). Fossil fuels aren't going anywhere. That's just physical reality. It's physics. Sure renewables may slow the rate of growth, but growing more slowly is still growing. The only thing that will cause a decline in fossil fuels is economic collapse or a genuine scientific breakthrough like fusion energy.

adamredwoods 6y ago

For reference, list of large power plants and their output: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_power_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_power_stations The largest solar plant is at about 2000 MW and requires a lot of land. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhadla_Solar_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhadla_Solar_Park The largest wind farm is not being used as efficiently as it could: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gansu_Wind_Farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gansu_Wind_Farm

wp381640 6y ago
The largest power stations at the moment are always going to be stored hydro - they take up a lot of land. Those large coal burners also take up a lot of land when you consider the mines, transport infra, tailings dams, coal piles not to mention the clean air they "take up"
- rtx 6y ago
  Thats why we should be exclusively nuclear.
  - wp381640 6y ago
    Easy to have that opinion but the market is building wind/solar + battery + pumped hydro
  - puranjay 6y ago
    Hear hear. We need a massive pro-nuclear public campaign. When people think of "nuclear power", they just think of Chernobyl. In hindsight, Chernobyl might have done more harm to the planet than we thought - it single handedly turned public opinion against nuclear power, and all the clean energy it provides. One wonders if we would have any of our current climate issues if we had adopted nuclear power en masse in the 80s and 90s.
    - Krasnol 6y ago
      When political decision makers and investors think of "nuclear power", they just think of overdue and over budget projects that may be finished in a decade. In a decade renewables will be so far ahead that it would be plain stupid to push nuclear. This is why it's not happening outside a lobby group from the industry who try to push shady people like Michael Shellenberger.

schwartzworld 6y ago

> What do you suppose happens when, for example, Saudi Arabia can no longer feed itself? It just peacefully and gently starves to death? Won't somebody think of the poor Saudi family?!

sbelskie 6y ago
There are, in case you didn’t know, other people in that country.
- schwartzworld 6y ago
  Yes, I'm aware the Saudi family has a whole population to serve them.

chiefalchemist 6y ago

Well, not just countries but whole industries/sectors are going to collapse. It's not like we're going to retrain an oil driller to be software engineer. Yes, the ecological benefits shine. But we need to prepare for the sociopolitical and socioeconomic fallout. Given how prepared we've (not) been for addressing climate change, it's difficult to imagine we'll be prepared for the unintended consequences of renewables. What leader or elected official is going to be that messenger?

donw 6y ago
> It's not like we're going to retrain an oil driller to be software engineer. Why not? Equipment at that scale is complicated, and requires a lot of skill and experience to operate. Not to mention responsibility. When you screw up, people die. Very likely including you.
- chiefalchemist 6y ago
  You're discounting a key variable in the equation: You can't teach people who are not motivated to learn; who don't have enough desire to learn; who literally can't afford a "life changing" transition. Given the pay rate of oil workers, few are going to plan ahead and switch careers to something paying less. Keep in mind, that new pay drops further as the supply (of devs) increases. In theory, I agree with you. However, the reality is inertia is a key force in life. My life. Your life. All our lives. And a magic wand - Poof! You're a software developer - has little proof of effectiveness to date under such circumstances. Yes, some success stories, but none the less limited. More software bootcamps are the answer? I'd like to see evidence of that. We're not going to solve real problems with fantasy based on disconnected from reality. If we could this conversation would not be necessary.
  - donw 6y ago
    I think there's a lot of underlying assumptions here we need to unpack. First, you are correct, not everybody is just going to "learn to code", and that's not where I was going. The industrial revolution replaced, to a large degree, muscles with machines, but still required human minds to work those machines. This enabled an explosion of wealth across the entire world, giving everybody, in essence, access to the economic equivalence of an entire village's worth of labor. Goods which were once difficult to produce, and thus available only to the wealthy, became commonplace. You see this in design trends: ornate designs were favored until mass manufacturing rendered them trivial to reproduce, and then the world embraced Futurism and Bauhaus. In the information revolution, we are replacing minds with machines. We don't need as many muscles, nor do we need as many minds, and where we seem to be headed is a sort of neo-feudalism, as those that control the machines have all the power, and our societies are ill adapted for all the muscles and minds that find themselves no longer economically necessary. Nobody has a good answer to this. UBI, if implemented properly, may solve part of the problem, but human beings derive a great portion of their psychological nourishment from being valuable to their tribes. Just as how not everybody is going to learn to code, not everybody wants to be an artist or a musician, either. That's not even the ugliest problem. Two: There tends to be a very common assumption amongst the technorati, of which I suppose I am a member, that "lesser" folks, those who learned a trade instead of getting a computer science degree, can't learn how to code. I personally hate this attitude, and push back against it wherever I can. Yes, not everybody can be even a mediocre programmer; but, a great programmer can come from anywhere.

tuatoru 6y ago

> But, do we really have a plan for the consequences, not only in Saudi Arabia but also every other nation that's dependent on oil? Hint: we do not. That's kind of sad. A long time ago (just before the GFC) I looked at trends in climate change (Arctic sea ice specifically, but that's just a canary), demography, China's GDP, and things like PV/Wind learning curves, and said to myself: "things will get interesting in 2023, plus or minus 7 years." Meaning, geopolitically. Covid seems to have accelerated events, but the trends were all there way back then, visible to anyone who had the time to think about them. I seem to recall reading warnings by internal think tanks in the US Military that were penned in 2005 or so, warning of these very issues. Still, I have printed and blu-tacked up the quote from Axel Oxenstierna: "Do you not know, my son, with how very little wisdom the world is governed?"[1]. So I shouldn't be surprised. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Oxenstierna#Quotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Oxenstierna#Quotation

mooreds 6y ago
If geopolitics + trends is interesting to you, I highly recommend "Disunited Nations": https://zeihan.com/disunited-nations/ https://zeihan.com/disunited-nations/
- tuatoru 6y ago
  Thanks!
  - MR4D 6y ago
    But read his other book first: Accidental Superpower. Also, he narrates that book but not the new one. Which is too bad because his narration is truly additive to the book.
    - mooreds 6y ago
      Good point, "The Accidental Superpower" is wondrous in scope and ideas. The "Absent Superpower", the sequel, is OK; had some interesting insights about shale and the coming removal of the USA from the world. But the first book is timeless. His Twitter feed is high signal as well: https://twitter.com/PeterZeihan/ https://twitter.com/PeterZeihan/

melenaboija 6y ago

Maybe they should (I have no idea if they are already doing so) invest in renewables

wait_a_minute 6y ago

Saudi Arabia sees the writing on the wall and that is why they are investing heavily into renewables. They're aiming to inject some $30 billion into renewables over the next five years. They're also looking to diversify into other businesses besides renewables.

SubiculumCode 6y ago

A whole lot of sun in Saudi Arabia....means a whole lot of energy to use.

Qwertious 6y ago

>What do you suppose happens when, for example, Saudi Arabia can no longer feed itself? It just peacefully and gently starves to death? Saudi Arabia has a sovereign wealth fund with trillions of dollars. The obvious answer is that they'll build a ton of renewables and build a ton of [hydroponic/aquaponic/aeroponic/etc] farms to make food locally. Indoor farming is expensive but very water-efficient, which suits Saudi Arabia as their water comes from expensive desalination plants.

redisman 6y ago
They have a lot of money to invest and they could also export solar if they want to stay in the energy business. Lots of sunlight there.
- mariuolo 6y ago
  > they could also export solar I remember an old discussion about this. The main problem is that transmission lines to potential customers would have to traverse unfriendly countries.
  - brazzy 6y ago
    Power-to-gas* might become their salvation. *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas
  - gns24 6y ago
    There are already plans for massive investment in a hydrogen production plant - though obviously there are still lots of issues to be solved with that energy pipeline. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201112-the-green-hydrogen-revolution-in-renewable-energy https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201112-the-green-hydrog...
- pydry 6y ago
  Export to whom? Everybody else in the vicinity also has a lot of sunlight. Why wouldn't they make their own power at home and save on transmission costs?

donw 6y ago

People do tend to forget that we make a lot of stuff with oil: plastics, fertilizers, lubricants, etc. I am happy to hear where I am behind the curve, but we don't yet have above-surface replacements for the whole of the petrochemical industry, outside of just synthetically producing our own light crude via thermal depolymerization. It'll change the game to be sure, but there's a lot more going on than just burning gasoline.

jganetsk 6y ago

Also other practical consequences of solar and wind: what about land usage? How much land do we need to power our huge appetite for energy? What impact does that have on the environment? Mining for rare Earth minerals? How do we recycle these systems at the end of life? People keep talking about the cost of renewables, but in fact, money is the one renewable resource that we do have. All of the above are majorly important questions. Maybe renewables aren't so renewable after all.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

Saudi Arabia's plan was to share the risk by taking Saudi Aramco public, right? Or at least that was part of the plan.

ponker 6y ago

The only thing stopping the US from turning Saudi Arabia to glass is that we need their oil. If we don’t it’s game over.

Qwertious 6y ago
Saudi Arabia also is useful for a military base, and to keep Iran in check.

lacker 6y ago

Saudi Arabia has a decent plan, to IPO Saudi Aramco and reinvest the proceeds to hedge against a decline in the oil industry. It seems like a good idea, but a political question if they can stick to it. Similar idea to Norway’s sovereign wealth fund.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

wukerplank 6y ago

Regarding Saudi Arabia: They should sit on a huge pile of money and the end of fossil fuels is not a big bang event. I would have expected them to use that money for R&D to shape the post oil world to stay relevant.

ashtonkem 6y ago

As an interesting addendum to what you said, how many countries are ready for the internal turmoil that the collapse of fossil fuel prices will cause? Consider the coal mining areas of the Eastern United States, and how badly the collapse of the coal mining industry has damaged those towns.

newyankee 6y ago

Middle eastern countries are a bad example. They have a very small population and were mostly supported by immigrant workers. A lot of the elites might've squandered the wealth but sovereign funds seem to have locked a fair bit of it in futuristic investments.

LoSboccacc 6y ago

> It just peacefully and gently starves to death? they know damn well and are already diversifying their portfolio; beside, even if we stop burning these fuels, fossil based carbon polymer will be with us for a while until vegetable alternative can be mass produce in matching qualities.

hutzlibu 6y ago

"What does that mean, besides lower carbon?" It also means fresh air in the cities and much less noise. Not a small point. Smaller points would be less enviroment damage with oil drills, potential groundwater poisening or earthquakes with fracking, not oil tanker crashes and oceanic catastrophic events. And about Saudia Arabia: I don't see, why "we" need to have a plan for them. I see less money for various fanatic groups, if the arabic oil nations have to be a bit more conservative about money spending. But what they could do (and some people there see this, too) is invest heavily in solarenergy, too and basically do solarfarming. And then use that energy to produce big time, or directly export the energy. Processed in form of hydrogen/methanol/.. or with high voltage direct current transmissiom directly to europe for example.

plater 6y ago

What is the problem? This is great for Saudi Arabia and great for the world. Saudi Arabia has a lot of sun and they have a lot of cash. If they invest it in producing electricity using solar they can still be an exporter of energy. Secondly, most wars in the Arabic regions and all the meddling from the USA and other countries in this region is due to the oil. Without the rest of the world's need for oil we would get peace in this region.

addicted 6y ago

Nations that depend on oil for their economy are already almost universally terrible states. Reducing their oil income will mean they are terrible states with less money to fund their terrible activities across the entire world. If Saudi Arabia runs out of oil money, the only things that will happen is their population will shrink dramatically as the vast majority of the population, who are immigrants from the rest of the world go back to the far more populous countries they come from, and they will have less money to fund Islamic terrorism across the world, and especially in Asia, probably greatly reducing whatever efficacy these organizations currently have.

hannob 6y ago

Interestingly there are signs that Saudi Arabia has this on the radar more than others. E.g. they're building the larges green ammonia plant in the world. You may not hear a lot about ammonia production and green ammonia, but this is really huge (not just because ammonia is important for fertilizers, but also because ammonia is a promising future shipping fuel). But yeah, there are other oil countries where you barely see any such signs (e.g. Russia).

495636483 6y ago

Why do you think Saudi Arabia is slowly allowing women to participate? They need them in the workforce for an economically sustainable future. They know they are heading for crisis rapidly and investing hard to get out of there. However, they are ridiculously dependent on oil. Oil money is basically the whole country's sugar daddy (not for the slaves and foreign workers...). People don't really work there, they all just live off the oil money. Literally every aspect of their lives need to change. I really doubt the rest of the world needs to be too concerned about them. They are pretty uniquely fucked and not that many people anyway.

tomp 6y ago
> Why do you think Saudi Arabia is slowly allowing women to participate? They need them in the workforce for an economically sustainable future. Do they? Has doubling the work-force helped Western economies? I think that Elizabeth Warren & others have questioned that idea - i.e. that the wages were reduced to compensate for the increased labour supply - although even if not beneficial for individual families it could still be beneficial for the economy as a whole (and especially for the capitalist class).
- gvfdabgea 6y ago
  You make a good point. More workers are just good for the capitalists, unless there is actual work to be done.
notsureaboutpg 6y ago
As someone who lived in Saudi and has relatives there, most of these comments are far far off the mark (Saudi has been diversifying for years, they won't be reliant on oil when it stops being as profitable, and that's also decades and decades away). But this one takes the cake. Haha, they are allowing women to participate for money? Women already participated in Saudi economically from a long time back. They make up a large part of the Aramco workforce. Don't confuse allowing women to drive and repealing qawwam system with "allowing women to participate economically". Women didn't need to drive to participate they could just have their drivers drive them around (as is common anyways). Also, Saudi is a conservative society, and the royals are more liberal than the populace (like everywhere in the world). Most people in Saudi dislike these reforms. The royals embark on them to please their allies in Europe and America and Israel as they hope to connect their economies more (they've already invested lots into these places with their sovereign wealth fund and want to protect their investments). HN gets things surprisingly wrong when it comes to non Western places, but this is far off even for those standards!

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Razengan 6y ago

> But, do we really have a plan for the consequences, not only in Saudi Arabia but also every other nation that's dependent on oil? Those countries have had plenty of time to diversify their economies, but instead of funneling some of that oil money into uplifting their nation, it went into the pockets of the elite few and dick-waving contests of tall buildings and tacky tourist traps. They chose to not even provide basic human freedoms to many of their citizens, or allowed women to pursue higher education and jobs in their lives beyond marriage. Fostering free thinking among their populace would have produced at least some individuals with enough ideas to prepare for a post-oil world.

ivan_gammel 6y ago

Carbon will not be completely phased out. It’s still used in chemistry and lower prices may help finding another use of it. The countries which manage their carbon income well will be fine. The others usually go bust no matter how big or low price is - see Venesuela. Saudi Arabia is somewhere in between, but they already adjust.

wazoox 6y ago

Wood didn't give way to coal that gave way to oil. This is a terrible fallacy (albeit very commmon, even Vaclav Smil fell into it in his "Oil" book). The world currently consumes more coal than it ever did. Wood consumption is also record high. We simply stacked up energy sources. Check this page: https://ourworldindata.org/energy https://ourworldindata.org/energy So far, fossil fuels still represent about 85% of our energy consumption, and about 99% for transportation. We had a world 100% on renewable, back in the 18th century, but we were 600 millions and lived 35 years. OTOH we have no credible way to replace 85% of our energy by renewables in the next 10 years (if we want to keep climate change at reasonable levels).

3pt14159 6y ago
I agree on renewables and they are certainly part of the solution, but we can meet our energy without fossil fuels if we really leaned into nuclear the way the French did. It's simply a matter of political will. Musk looked at the regulatory tape around nuclear and said "I guess it has to be solar then" and I think that was a mistake. If we'd applied his economics of scale, and first principles thinking to nuclear we'd be far, far more along than we are right now and we'd probably have more medical isotopes to boot.
- rat9988 6y ago
  The french did this and ended up with nuclear costing more than current renewable. That said, it has served them well for the last decades and will probably still serve well for a decade or two.
- wazoox 6y ago
  We can relatively easily solve the problem of electricity production using nuclear, renewables and therefore make carbon-free electricity. But electricity is only 30% of our energy consumption.
  - Retric 6y ago
    Cars, Heating, and cooking can be replaced with electricity just fine even if their not currently part of that 30%. Also, solar power overwhelmingly our largest energy source. It’s generally ignored in these calculations but farms for example are very dependent on sunlight.

csomar 6y ago

There will be no consequence for Saudi Arabia disintegrating. Most of the world (hint: their neighbors and their own population) will welcome it. S.A. has lots of lands and other resources (religious tourism is big, they are the center of the Islamic world). They are only poor because of their own mismanagement. The Emirates will be largely fine since they have diversified a lot. They might need to cut a bit of spending but otherwise they'll keep as a wealthy nation. Qatar will also probably be fine. They have lots of money and built lots of infrastructure which they can open to the world. Actually, I think post-oil, we'll finally have peace in the region. Nothing to fight over any more.

k_bx 6y ago

> What do you suppose happens when, for example, Saudi Arabia can no longer feed itself? It just peacefully and gently starves to death? As a Ukrainian, I’m very optimistic about the future of democracy in Russia that would have a chance once it stops being a big gas station. We then might see a better, open Russia, without military aggression and disinformation campaigns.

caskstrength 6y ago
Things might get worse before they get better though. Their leaders may ramp up militaristic tendencies to distract the population from internal problems and shift their attention to fighting "western imperialists" in Russian "sphere of influence", etc.

KMnO4 6y ago

Is there any reason why energy nations like Saudi Arabia could not compete in green energy? Sure, they can supply fossil fuels from a bounty more plentiful than other countries. But Asia does not lack lithium or silicon.

HeadsUpHigh 6y ago

SA has been dumping all their oil money on investments for a long time now. They know what's coming.

nickbauman 6y ago

Saudi Arabia reached their Hubbert curve apotheosis probably in the 80's (their proven reserve is a state secret). They've been desperately trying to handle this fallout ever since. Russia, OTOH, is the real the mother of all petrostates. Any problem you might imagine facing Saudi is tiny compared to the impact on Russia. They've already suffered so much as a result of the oil crash in the late 90's by becoming a mafia state.

pasttense01 6y ago

Fossil fuels also creates petrochemicals used to create plastics and other products. Does anyone see plastics disappearing?