| ▲ | thelastgallon 3 hours ago |
| Demand destruction will collapse profits and accelerate the oil/dollar downfall. Saudi Arabia can profitably pump oil probably under $10/barrel. If demand drops, thats where oil should be. China with [EVs|Solar|BESS|Turbines] will replace all of the fossil fuel countries (US, middle-east, Russia). This is probably the biggest transition in the history of mankind. This is energy production, storage and all the appliances that use electricity. After this, its incredibly hard for any other country to compete. |
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| ▲ | samrus 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > China with [EVs|Solar|BESS|Turbines] will replace all of the fossil fuel countries (US, middle-east, Russia) I dont agree with china having the same position as the FF exporters. Simply because with renewables, you export the means to produce energy rather than the energy itself. So in terms of monetary value, china will be selling alot less panels than the FF countries sell oil. And other countries can also manufactor renewables tech themselves, while with oil they couldnt materialize it under their feet Basically i think the paradigm of the energy trade being cornered for politcal controll wont exost with renewables. Renewables are decentralized and so not controllable |
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| ▲ | rzerowan 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | ACtually no , even with the export of primary goods that go into the manufactue of renewables like solar the price differential still favours China. A recent example is the boom of local solar manufacture in India whil relies on solar modules imported from china.The assembled panes are still 2X the price of a similar fullly aseembled one from China.
And not due too subsidies of labour - a lot of the value chain is highly automated and densely colocated diffrerent from other industrail setups where complimentary industries are geographically separeted which increase final costt by adding unreliable transport and delays into the mix.
So at scale and with high volume will continue to be the dominated by China , wear and tear even with renewables will continue to favour the first mover as tech evolves over time.The solar modules/batteries of 10-15 years ago are not the same effficency as those of today. | | |
| ▲ | yorwba an hour ago | parent [-] | | China indeed makes very cheap solar panels, inverters and batteries, but that just means that they take up a smaller share of the cost of a complete installation, which also includes labor and additional hardware for the mounting system. So solar panels doubling in price won't double the cost of new solar capacity, let alone the cost of electricity from existing installations. That reduces the political leverage a lot compared to oil, where a supply disruption affects prices on fairly short time scales. |
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| ▲ | toomuchtodo 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Saudi Arabia needs oil prices at ~$86.60/barrel to balance their budget, per Bloomberg. It is not the marginal cost to pump a barrel, but what a country needs to support their sticky spending from previously assured energy exports. Governments will collapse long before we approach low single digit oil prices on the global market. The World Is Awash With Oil and Prices Are Poised to Keep Falling - https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-global-oil-supply-pr... | https://archive.today/hkhtI - December 18th, 2025 (Control -F "Crude Price Forecasts Are Below Levels Needed for Budgets") > China with [EVs|Solar|BESS|Turbines] will replace all of the fossil fuel countries (US, middle-east, Russia). This is probably the biggest transition in the history of mankind. This is energy production, storage and all the appliances that use electricity. After this, its incredibly hard for any other country to compete. Strongly agree. China is replacing petrostate economic demand with demand for their clean tech products, which keeps their deflationary economy afloat, provides them soft power, and will transition the yuan to a global reserve currency. Today countries by dollars to by petroleum ("petrodollar"); tomorrow, countries will want yuan to buy "manufacturing fiat," to trade with the world's factory (China is 1/3rd of global manufacturing capacity, as of this comment). Stocks of assets vs flows of energy. |
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| ▲ | thelastgallon 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Indeed. Electricity will be the only abstraction layer of energy, all end uses (transportation, cooking, heating, cooling, appliances) will switch to electricity. Electricity can be generated from any source (dirty + clean), but the abstraction layer of electricity will allow the grid to continuously increase the clean fuels. It helps that the cleanest is also the cheapest. Solar panels are cheap as dirt. In 1975, a solar PV module cost $128.27 per watt. In 2026 it costs $0.1 - $0.2 per watt, a thousand times cheaper. In 1975, only satellites could afford solar. Today, its the cheapest source of energy. China will be an electrostate. Are there any other electrostates? Maybe Bhutan, Costa Rica, but they are too small. | | |
| ▲ | toomuchtodo 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > China will be an electrostate. Are there any other electrostates? Maybe Bhutan, Costa Rica, but they are too small. China for sure. The rest will come as they replace the last of coal and fossil gas with anything low carbon, solar, wind hydro, as well as the necessary battery storage and transmission for energy orchestration and agility. Like Norway is already at 100% of EV sales and other countries are still close to 0%, we're simply observing a global energy transition horse race. Exciting time to be on the timeline imho. Ember Energy: Global Electricity Review 2026: Solar surge halts fossil generation rise as clean power meets all demand growth and renewables overtake coal - https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-... - April 21st, 2026 The ‘profound’ global impact of China’s rise as an electrostate - https://www.ft.com/content/013e8a27-ade5-48ed-8f2e-ffbf70cc5... | https://archive.today/J0bew - October 10th, 2025 |
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| ▲ | wbl 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If you buy yuan just to turn around and spend them you aren't holding the yuan. | |
| ▲ | _DeadFred_ 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | But China is already in decline before reaching this ascendancy. I think new models will result in new structures, not just a switch from the US to China. | | |
| ▲ | toomuchtodo 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | China's population is declining while building and operating the largest fleet of manufacturing robotics in the world. The US population is not declining as quickly while having limited capability to do anything. A recent example is $500M of taxpayer dollars spent on a munition manufacturing facility that did not build a single munition. The US has coasted just about as far as it can go on it's exorbitant privilege while failing to invest in the future. TLDR China builds, and will continue to build long into the future, the US prospers (for now) from financialization but cannot build, nor has the will to attempt to. China Makes AI-powered Robots Core of National Strategy: China´s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) marks pivot to innovation - https://ifr.org/ifr-press-releases/news/china-makes-ai-power... > Frankfurt, May 05, 2026 — China has launched its 15th Five-Year Plan by placing robotics at the heart of its modern industrial system. The aim is to pivot its AI research towards physical applications with robots as main drivers for economic growth. This is a next step in the country´s strong automation development: China´s manufacturing industry already has an operational stock of around 2 million units — approximately 4.5 times more than the global no. 2, Japan. 54% of annual industrial robots installed worldwide were deployed in China. This is according to the World Robotics 2025 Report, presented by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR). General Dynamics Failed to Build Artillery Shells for the Army - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49281711 - August 2026 Wikipedia: Exorbitant privilege - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege |
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| ▲ | soco 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| But, how much of the extracted oil becomes ICE fuel? Because other transports cannot be converted that quick (air, sea...) and most if not all petrochemical industries will still need to exist even if all cars drive electric. So how big will be the effect of crashing fuel demand? |
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| ▲ | Symbiote 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | 25% of oil production is for cars 16% for trucks and buses 7% for aviation 4% for shipping 2% for rail and domestic waterways 25% + a chunk of the 16% (city buses, shorter distance or smaller trucks, etc) is a good amount. https://www.statista.com/statistics/307194/top-oil-consuming... | | |
| ▲ | soco 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | You mean a good amount of the 46% consumed by road transports. So my napkin says, when we all switch to driving EV the oil demand will drop by 15%. It's something for sure, but not overly dramatic (to me). | | |
| ▲ | toomuchtodo a few seconds ago | parent | next [-] | | Every 24 months of EV production in China destroys 1 million barrels a day of global oil demand. | |
| ▲ | realityking 11 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Trucks and buses are starting to be electrified as well. Some boating as well but that‘s a rounding error. |
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| ▲ | 4gotunameagain 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If the price were to drop all the way down to $10/barrel, demand would skyrocket. The future where oil demand is so low and and will remain low even after low prices is much further ahead I'm afraid. |
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| ▲ | rsanek 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| China is much more of a "fossil fuel country" than the US. They've got a ways to go to even catch up. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-mix?tab=stacked-di... |
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| ▲ | pnut 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I think you're not telling the full story with that chart.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-mix?tab=line&stack... | |
| ▲ | dopa42365 22 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 87.5% vs 83.1% Renewables have to go up by 10x (or more, with electrification of all the things) everywhere pretty much in the coming decades. | |
| ▲ | scottLobster 17 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Uh, that chart shows they source a greater percentage of their power from renewables than we do with the exception of nuclear and biofuels. Their wind, solar and hydropower bars are all wider, and they're building more nuclear. They just don't have our easy-access shale fields. If it wasn't for fracking our coal percentage would likely be just as high |
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