[patrickk]

Renewables to destroy the fossil fuels industry on price. A win for the environment, and some of the oil states will descend into utter irrelevance. Cheap, clean energy will be utterly transformative to the planet and will dramatically raise living standards globally.

[0xf8]

Agreed with the notion, but will point out that many of the "oil states" are not oblivious to the writing on the wall and as a result have begun allocating significant portions of their "fossil fuel" profits into alternative channels, in many cases into energy as well. The sheer amount of deployable capital at their disposal leads me to believe they will not "descend into utter irrelevance" as you suggest. At the very least they will succeed in maintaining their relative prosperity, but envision there is a state of the world in which they successfully transition into being champions of Renewable energy going forward. It's not very difficult to build an new industrial energy empire when you have trillions of dollars to spend.

edit:spelling

[dragonwriter]

> many of the "oil states" are not oblivious to the writing on the wall and as a result have begun allocating significant portions of their "fossil fuel" profits into alternative channels, in many cases into energy as well.

And not just recently; it's been that way for decades. This (alongside the fact that certain other oil states had not done so) was a major contributing factor to the 1990-1991 Gulf War, for instance.