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Comment by OgsyedIE | Hacker News Reader

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.

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

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)

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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