[MattGaiser]

> Petro is pretty much upstream of everything: plastics, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, cooking oils, lubricants, cosmetics. Dow chemical just doubled the cost of polyethylene as of April 1st. Taiwan relies on LNG for 40% of its energy production and has like 10 days of fuel left--semis are implicated.

This is, on the high end, 20% of the use of fossil fuels. We overwhelmingly burn oil and gas. If we displaced the burning, Hormuz would not matter (or would minimally matter for a few molecules) and the world would be awash in abundant supplies.

Renewable investment would solve/would have prevented this crisis.

[OgsyedIE]

You could visit an alternate timeline where you have as much renewable investment into energy as you'd like going back decades and while it would help with the fertiliser situation massively it wouldn't solve the problem of needing a supply of carbon atoms to make the carbon-based substances in the list.

You can't make insulin, brake fluid or PVC out of electricity alone.

[WastedCucumber]

I think the point is that a world with renewable electricity wouldn't need as much oil, thereby making smaller sources of carbon sufficient.

[toomuchtodo]

Pakistan saves $6B/year on fossil fuel imports with their recent surge in solar, for example.

Surprise Solar Uptake in Pakistan Cushions Mideast Energy Shock - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-17/surprise-... | https://archive.today/QdgdQ - March 17th, 2026

> Millions of factories, farmers, and households have switched to cheap solar panels from China, driving a 40% drop in Pakistan’s fossil fuel imports between 2022 and 2024, the researchers found. Additionally, the country is estimated to have saved $12 billion through reduced LNG imports in the past five years as cumulative imports of Chinese photovoltaics soared past 50 gigawatts, the report said.

Pakistan’s solar boom is bigger than official data shows - https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/03/19/pakistans-solar-boom-... - March 19th, 2026

> The policy paper Electrons In, Hydrocarbons Out: Pakistan’s Quest for Economic and Resource Efficiency found that up to $120 billion in future fuel imports could be avoided over the lifetime of the 48 GW of solar modules Pakistan had imported as of June 2025. The study’s co-author, Nabiya Imran, told pv magazine that with solar module imports into Pakistan now totaling 51.5 GW, around $180 billion in fossil fuel imports could be avoided. Imran added these solar imports could generate a total 1,730 TWh over their lifetime.

Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46070915 - November 2025 (254 comments)

Pakistan's 22 GW Solar Shock: How a Fragile State Went Full Clean Energy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43620309 - April 2025 (35 comments)

[genxy]

The West is doing everything it can to limit solar from China. Which is idiotic, we should be trading anything and everything for those low cost panels from China.

[mschuster91]

> it wouldn't solve the problem of needing a supply of carbon atoms to make the carbon-based substances in the list.

How many of that could be substituted with biomass? We're already making natural gas replacements using feces, food and agricultural waste, and we're making diesel fuel replacements - in case of doubt, at least older diesel engines can burn straight olive, sunflower or rapeseed oil, just modern ones will possibly incur expensive damage in the high-pressure fuel distribution section.

> You can't make insulin, brake fluid or PVC out of electricity alone.

Insulin is made with GMO bacteria these days, so all we need is something to feed the bacteria with, IIRC it's glucose which you can easily create from any sort of starch-containing plant.

[fc417fc802]

You don't have to get carbon from oil extracted from underground and you don't have to get oil from the middle east. That's merely where the bulk of it happens to come from at present for price and historical reasons.

[RealityVoid]

Yes, but all those things, combined, are 20% of the usage. I'd say if you remove about the 50 % used for cars, that's a pretty large improvement.

[unethical_ban]

Nothing here challenges the assertion of the parent comment.

Fossil fuels are why climate change is occurring. Reducing FFs to near-zero would slow or stop climate change and allow the finite supply of oil to be used for the things you mention.

[baxtr]

Hormuz might not matter that much in the future since Saudi and the other countries will build even more pipelines and ports which are on the other side. Short-term is dire though.

[wafflemaker]

That would require some super effective anti air. Otherwise such a pipeline is an easy target.

And even the most anti air protected place on earth - Negev plant near Dimona city got hit with a warning shot. And they have 3 or 4 layers of anti air, most of them doubled (both US and Isreaeli). It's impossible to protect multiple pipelines to that extent.

And Isreal just said that they will keep attacking Iran no matter any peace deals or armistice.

The only logical course of action for Iran is to go down swinging, taking the rest of the world with them.

[megous]

It did not. Dimona city got hit. https://t.me/QudsNen/215116

Plant is far away from there.

[dotancohen]

Why is Iran hitting civilian targets?

[megous]

Tit for tat usually. Dimona strike in particular was:

"Commander of the IRGC's Aerospace Force, Brigadier General Seyyed Majid Mousavi, says that every ultimatum given to Iran is an act of war. Adds that the Iranian strikes on the strategic points in Dimona and Haifa in recent hours were in response to the US' 2 and 5 day threats."

https://x.com/smajid_moosavi/status/2036828841369301193

[nofriend]

As retribution for the attacks on their country I believe.

[surgical_fire]

I dunno man. Why were civilian targets in Iran hit?

I guess you might feel justified to hit civilian infrastructure once your enemies are vile enough to hit yours.

[youngtaff]

Why are the US and Israel hitting civilian targets including at least one desalination plant?

[cpursley]

As if those can’t be blown up with $300 FPVs or $10k Shahids…

[Gud]

You can lay them underground, making attacking them more difficult (also a lot more expensive to install).

[mono442]

You can't provide heating in winter using renewables.

[gpm]

You can, and should, over the entirety of europe apart from the northern parts of the nordic countries electric heat pumps are now simply more efficient than gas powered furnaces. This is true even if powered by gas based electricity - but obviously makes it possible to power them via renewables as well.

People in Quebec (Canada), which is colder than just about all of Europe, have been providing heating in winter using renewables for decades (thanks to an excess of renewables).

[mono442]

most of the countries don't have enough hydro to make it feasible

[gpm]

Yeah, but now wind and solar have made it feasible just about everywhere.

[mono442]

There's little sunshine in winter. Wind is better but it's still intermittent.

[oblio]

There are a gazillion battery techs being developed right now (regular lithium ion - with variations like NMC, LFP, ...), solid state lithion ion, sodium ion.

You can over provision solar as someone said.

There's geothermal, tidal, etc.

Long distance high voltage electricity transmission at scale.

Electricity is a marvel and we're just starting to scratch the surface of what we can do with it. Betting against it is like betting against electronics, a risky proposition.

[jdlshore]

Panels are cheap enough that you can overprovision for winter sun.

[lostlogin]

And geothermal, biogas and tidal.

[lostlogin]

Wot?

Solar makes a fair bit where I am. Hydro works fine. Geothermal works fine. Wind works fine. Aircon is very efficient.

This is harder in plenty of regions but a blanket ‘can’t be done’ is way off the mark.

[platevoltage]

My wood pellet stove begs to differ.

[brendoelfrendo]

...you can? Electric heaters exist?

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Always worth mentioning we should be using heat pumps, not straight resistive heating.

[brendoelfrendo]

For sure. Heat pumps aren't the best option everywhere (though modern heat pumps probably function acceptably at lower temperatures than most people realize), but if you need to do electric heating, they are the best option most places.

[fc417fc802]

For "human" temperatures don't they just degrade back to the efficiency of resistive heating? Or are some places actually cold enough to push the factor below 1?

[magicalhippo]

> Or are some places actually cold enough to push the factor below 1?

Probably some far north, but not that many. My Kaiteki 6600 has[1] a SCOP of 5.1 and a factory guaranteed COP at -25C (-13F) of 3.1.

[1]: https://mee.no/privat/produktkategori/luft-luft-varmepumper/...

[irishcoffee]

You’re choosing willful ignorance if you think petrochemicals will be replaced by renewables in your lifetime.

It isn’t going to happen. Planes don’t run on solar. Boats don’t run on renewables. The lubricant needed for wind turbines comes out of the earth. Dams need the same lubricant. Building roads, oil. Installing renewable infrastructure, oil. Running combines to harvest vegetation, oil. Building renewables requires massive amounts of oil.

Renewables are amazing and I’m all for them. Let’s keep that train rolling.

Oil isn’t going away, pretending otherwise is willful ignorance.

[tialaramex]

Oil isn't magic, you can just make it, and the reason we don't is merely that it's expensive to do that, whereas it's just there under the ground - as a fossil fuel.

But because you can just make it from ingredients everybody already has, this puts a ceiling on its actual price if you have energy independence. If you need to burn oil, you can't make oil because that's a vicious circle which would need even more oil. But so long as the only you want oil is for its other properties that's fine.

Hydrocarbons are incredibly simple, the clue is in their name, a bunch of Hydrogen (literally the most common element in the whole universe) and Carbon (also extremely common). The only reason not to make any particular hydrocarbons you need (e.g. to make JetA for a airliner) is it'd be very energy intensive and instead you can just distil some crude oil to get the hydrocarbons you want...

[OgsyedIE]

Strictly speaking, the oil in the Earth's crust is both finite and more than 50% already extracted.

However, a closed cycle of renewable-powered vehicles and processing sites growing crops for biorefineries which are then hydrocracked into the various petrochemical additives to maintain the infrastructure with surplus left over for the rest of society has been proven to be viable going back to the early 2010s.

Leong et al has a great survey of how the entire market of irreplaceable petrochemical uses (e.g. medical grade plastic) and their upstream steps (e.g. metal smelting for making agricultural vehicles) can theoretically be made to work from wind alone, with total immunity to peak oil when it does eventually happen. Although the carbon molecules are essential, having a no-oil well industrial civilization is just a matter of long and arduous implementation and negotiation with vested interests.

[MattGaiser]

You missed the point of my comment.

> It isn’t going to happen. Planes don’t run on solar. Boats don’t run on renewables. The lubricant needed for wind turbines comes out of the earth. Dams need the same lubricant. Building roads, oil. Installing renewable infrastructure, oil. Running combines to harvest vegetation, oil. Building renewables requires massive amounts of oil.

All of this? About 30% of oil usage on the high end. You are listing the small uses for oil.

May some oil always be needed? Yes. But nowhere near as much as we produce today.

[genxy]

On the low end, we will still synthesize what we need from whatever feed stock is available. Lots of pure industrial intermediate chemicals are synthesized out of natural gas.

Oil will not be viable for transportation and heating very soon due to market pressure alone.

[platevoltage]

Don't forget that we need cadmium for batteries, asbestos for brake pads, and mercury for lightbulbs.

[ZeroGravitas]

Did you read the comment you replied to?

> This is, on the high end, 20% of the use of fossil fuels. We overwhelmingly burn oil and gas. If we displaced the burning, Hormuz would not matter (or would minimally matter for a few molecules) and the world would be awash in abundant supplies.

[irishcoffee]

I did. Strongly disagree.

Nobody is sending construction boats out into the various seas on batteries and prayers, to construct turbines. The foundation on which these turbines rest, in the sea, were in no way constructed with renewable energy. The cables were not build, dragged across the sea, and connected, using renewable energy. The transmission lines from the land to a switching station were not built or maintained with renewables.

I'm in boss, I'm in on renewables. Lets fucking go. I'm just not ignoring the whole story.

[ViewTrick1002]

Ships are starting to become electrified. Currently for fixed routes.