3 ms·

How is renewable in any way independent if we don’t mine the necessary things nor manufacture the things.

consumer451 8mo ago
My understanding is that wind turbine + PV + battery storage has a cycle where you buy once every twenty years, or more. So you buy once, and have twenty years to figure out the next buy cycle, geopolitical cycles and all. On the fossil fuel side, you need to buy many times per year, every year. Each one of those buy events is an opportunity for an external party for stop your economy. The renewable buy cycle is harder for an external party to interrupt. edit: This is vastly over-simplified, but I hope my understanding reflects reality at least somewhat.
- spwa4 8mo ago
  Yeah. I've been wondering to what extent this is keeping the global geopolitics stable. Rich countries are keeping many other countries stable-ish that would otherwise rapidly devolve into disaster (obviously the middle east being the huge example). Even going so far as keeping countries stable-ish at the request of those countries (Egypt and Jordan being examples) despite those countries not really being oil countries. When that incentive disappears, as it will, what then? There is no way in hell the middle east can defend against Iranian aggression without other people doing it for them. And it's not just the middle east. The consequences of isolationism will lower enormously. Why won't rich countries just lock the border and dig in? We're not even that far removed from finding out what will happen, it's only about 7 years away. I'd love some early warning though.
  - jonplackett 8mo ago
    I think you have it a bit backwards. The reason we have Iran with an insane government and all the princes and total lack of democracy is BECAUSE of all the interference due to oil. America and before it Britain and the colonial powers just walked in there and stole everything and so now the region is divided into countries that were soccuessfully captured (Qatar etc) and countries that threw us out (Iran). If oil wasn’t as important it might be chaos for a while though because this dictatorships are propped up expressly so they can sell us cheap oil.
    - spwa4 8mo ago
      No. Iraq did not attack Iran due to oil. Iran did not counterattack Iraq because of oil. It was merely dictatorships wanting to conquer and seeing a chance to do so. Sorry.
- rickydroll 8mo ago
  I also worry about the "stop the economy" problem. To me, it's analogous to the AI employment problem. If you cannibalize how a country makes money and generates tax revenue, what do you do instead? For example, Nigeria makes a lot of money from oil sales. Take away the oil industry and how do they make money? Nobody can pretend to be a Nigerian prince or a businessman trying to reclaim millions of dollars. Now that I think of it, maybe the economic fallout from AI and the oil economic devastation will be widespread fraud, just so people can survive.
adrianN 8mo ago
There is only degrees of independence in the global economy. No country can be completely self sufficient. Having an energy infrastructure that runs for a decade or two before it starts crumpling without trade is a lot better than having an energy infrastructure that is in dire straits after a few weeks or months of embargo.
_fizz_buzz_ 8mo ago
Ideally one also manufactures them. But when you buy solar panels, one get's 30+ years of lifetime out of it. So once installed. It's tricky for China (or whoever makes time) to use them as leverage. If you cut off oil or gas there is only a few months of reserves.
- Moldoteck 8mo ago
  You can't install them at once, as result at any point in time you'll still need to buy to cover increased demand or replace old units
  - cirrusfan 8mo ago
    Huh? What prevents you from installing them "all at once"? The downside is obviously a long stretch of no sun, and for Europe winter being both low solar production and high energy demand due to heating which the soon-to-be-cheap grid scale batteries don’t really fix. The logistics of PV don’t seem difficult though - it seems by far the easiest of the power generation methods, even if the synchronization can get a bit tricky in a large grid.
    - Moldoteck 8mo ago
      Because manufacturing isn't there to do everything at once. You install say 50gw per year, each year. In 30y you need to replace first 50gw batch and so on
  - ViewTrick1002 8mo ago
    Any real system will also have backups and emergency reserves. Lean more on them as you solve the supply chain issue. No need to make a mountain out of a molehill.
- spwa4 8mo ago
  Solar panel materials are extremely toxic (current tech), or are toxic unless properly processed (hopefully, but likely, future tech). So they won't be made in the EU, since nobody wants to make concessions here. Solar panels have the same problem as oil and mining: they will destroy nature somewhere, otherwise it doesn't work.

My understanding is that wind turbine + PV + battery storage has a cycle where you buy once every twenty years, or more. So you buy once, and have twenty years to figure out the next buy cycle, geopolitical cycles and all. On the fossil fuel side, you need to buy many times per year, every year. Each one of those buy events is an opportunity for an external party for stop your economy. The renewable buy cycle is harder for an external party to interrupt. edit: This is vastly over-simplified, but I hope my understanding reflects reality at least somewhat.

spwa4 8mo ago
Yeah. I've been wondering to what extent this is keeping the global geopolitics stable. Rich countries are keeping many other countries stable-ish that would otherwise rapidly devolve into disaster (obviously the middle east being the huge example). Even going so far as keeping countries stable-ish at the request of those countries (Egypt and Jordan being examples) despite those countries not really being oil countries. When that incentive disappears, as it will, what then? There is no way in hell the middle east can defend against Iranian aggression without other people doing it for them. And it's not just the middle east. The consequences of isolationism will lower enormously. Why won't rich countries just lock the border and dig in? We're not even that far removed from finding out what will happen, it's only about 7 years away. I'd love some early warning though.
- jonplackett 8mo ago
  I think you have it a bit backwards. The reason we have Iran with an insane government and all the princes and total lack of democracy is BECAUSE of all the interference due to oil. America and before it Britain and the colonial powers just walked in there and stole everything and so now the region is divided into countries that were soccuessfully captured (Qatar etc) and countries that threw us out (Iran). If oil wasn’t as important it might be chaos for a while though because this dictatorships are propped up expressly so they can sell us cheap oil.
  - spwa4 8mo ago
    No. Iraq did not attack Iran due to oil. Iran did not counterattack Iraq because of oil. It was merely dictatorships wanting to conquer and seeing a chance to do so. Sorry.
rickydroll 8mo ago
I also worry about the "stop the economy" problem. To me, it's analogous to the AI employment problem. If you cannibalize how a country makes money and generates tax revenue, what do you do instead? For example, Nigeria makes a lot of money from oil sales. Take away the oil industry and how do they make money? Nobody can pretend to be a Nigerian prince or a businessman trying to reclaim millions of dollars. Now that I think of it, maybe the economic fallout from AI and the oil economic devastation will be widespread fraud, just so people can survive.

adrianN 8mo ago

There is only degrees of independence in the global economy. No country can be completely self sufficient. Having an energy infrastructure that runs for a decade or two before it starts crumpling without trade is a lot better than having an energy infrastructure that is in dire straits after a few weeks or months of embargo.

_fizz_buzz_ 8mo ago

Ideally one also manufactures them. But when you buy solar panels, one get's 30+ years of lifetime out of it. So once installed. It's tricky for China (or whoever makes time) to use them as leverage. If you cut off oil or gas there is only a few months of reserves.

Moldoteck 8mo ago
You can't install them at once, as result at any point in time you'll still need to buy to cover increased demand or replace old units
- cirrusfan 8mo ago
  Huh? What prevents you from installing them "all at once"? The downside is obviously a long stretch of no sun, and for Europe winter being both low solar production and high energy demand due to heating which the soon-to-be-cheap grid scale batteries don’t really fix. The logistics of PV don’t seem difficult though - it seems by far the easiest of the power generation methods, even if the synchronization can get a bit tricky in a large grid.
  - Moldoteck 8mo ago
    Because manufacturing isn't there to do everything at once. You install say 50gw per year, each year. In 30y you need to replace first 50gw batch and so on
- ViewTrick1002 8mo ago
  Any real system will also have backups and emergency reserves. Lean more on them as you solve the supply chain issue. No need to make a mountain out of a molehill.
spwa4 8mo ago
Solar panel materials are extremely toxic (current tech), or are toxic unless properly processed (hopefully, but likely, future tech). So they won't be made in the EU, since nobody wants to make concessions here. Solar panels have the same problem as oil and mining: they will destroy nature somewhere, otherwise it doesn't work.