Investors pile into clean energy as Iran war drives push for energy security
ft.com
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I honestly think renewables will grow exponentially from now all fosil fuel is dead.
We just have to be careful there. My fellow Europeans here will remember what resulted out of depending on an adversary for energy, in our case Russian NG. We don't want another energy crisis as the result of geopolitical tensions.
We shouldn't import foreign DRM, our critical infrastructure should not utilize foreign-hosted or proprietary IoT, and we should invest in local manufacturing utilizing automation.
Solar panels and batteries are a stock. Oil is a flow. This leads to a very different dependency situation.
If you're concerned about energy sovereignty, just buy more solar panels now. If you're still concerned, buy even more. Keep buying them until you're not concerned anymore.
Nobody can prevent your country/region from developing own solar or battery supply chains. Alternatively, buy from other countries that are not China for a little bit more.
" String Inverters: The most common residential choice, lasting 10–15 years on average and boasting impressive cost-performance.
Microinverters: Mounted directly on individual solar panels, these often reach 25 years—nearly matching the lifespan of solar panels themselves. Industry data highlights lower failure rates for microinverters, though they come with a higher upfront cost.
Central Inverters: Typically used for larger residential or commercial and industrial systems, central inverters last 10–15 years. "
Without an solar invertor a solar panel is just a black panel.
https://digitalpower.huawei.com/en/blogs/how-long-will-a-lit...
"Generally, lithium-ion batteries used in ordinary consumer electronics have a cycle life of about 300 to 500 times. After reaching this number of cycles, the battery capacity will drop to about 80% of its initial capacity. For example, if the lithium-ion battery of a smartphone undergoes a full charge-discharge cycle every day, its performance will significantly decline after approximately 1 to 1.5 years.
In contrast, lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, due to advancements in technology and craftsmanship, can achieve 1,000 to 2,000 charge-discharge cycles, with a correspondingly longer service life of 5 to 8 years or even more. Lithium-ion batteries for data centers have an even longer cycle life of approximately 5,000 cycles and a service life of up to 10 years, meaning there’s no need to replace batteries during the UPS’s full lifecycle. However, these are only theoretical estimates, and the actual service life is affected by various factors."
Inverters aren’t a problem. China produces roughly half of them worldwide iirc. They’re dominant but you can source from elsewhere without an issue.
LiFePO4 is almost purely China, but those will last you 20 years, which is roughly 365 times as long as if you’re cut off from oil.
Grid storage has yet to find the cheapest storage per acre regardless of weight (which doesn't matter if they're not going to move) and solar -> thermal (underground) -> electricity (months later) is still being trialled (sort of, there's been decades of such usage at one site (IIRC)).
We used to have a battery developer, but they went instant bankrupt when the almost exclusive funding through government subsidizes stopped. They even rejected an offered loan from the government as not being what they wanted.
There is zero party platforms advocating for wind and batteries for weeks/months long storage. No party advocating a overprovisioning of solar either, possible because output during worst winter month generally reaching single digit percent.
The only political platforms that exist currently are either wind and thermal power plants to burn fuel during non-optimal weather conditions, or to expand the nuclear fleet, and it seems fairly similar when you look at other nearby European countries. Batteries are used as a grid balancer when switching between different form of production, but not as a replacement for the natural gas which is the primary form of fuel being burned in the thermal power plants. Election prediction is that voters are going to demand that construction of something is getting started as the Iran war is likely to trigger new spikes in fossil fuel prices, and thus this will be one of the major issues for the election. Other European countries will likely see similar election debates.
The consumption numbers for the worst month is a bit over 16 000 GW/h of electricity, with a steady growth each year (despite the transport sector being quite slow to electrify), and for a seasonal battery storage you would likely need capacity a few times of that. I would welcome it if a political party would adopt such strategy however, if nothing else because then we would have an alternative to the current two strategies being debated. They could calculations on what it would cost, either by buying it from china or building the production domestically.
Germany has directly funded anti-nuclear groups in other European countries.
https://www.ege.fr/sites/ege.fr/files/media_files/German_Int...
Replacing fossil fuels with renewables is a shift in the vulnerability vector. The issue isn't even that China controls the production of solar panels and batteries. Production can be launched domestically. China controls 70-90% of refining - the processing chains of critical minerals (rare earth metals, polysilicon, lithium).
Renewables work perfectly for low-density consumers (residential sector, regular commerce). For heavy infrastructure, this won't work.
For example, let's look at AI data centers. AI data centers consume gigawatts of dense energy. Renewables are low-density energy. The problem comes down to spatial energy density (Watts per square meter — W/m²). A server rack for AI training consumes up to 40-100 kW. Solar and wind energy are diffuse (scattered) sources. Their density is about 5-20 W/m². A hyperscaler data center is a concentration of colossal energy in a minimal area (hundreds of megawatts per building).
Training LLM models cannot be interrupted when the sun goes down or the wind dies down. AI requires 24/7 baseload (base generation). The capacity factor of solar is 15-25%, wind — 30-45%. Batteries can smooth out peaks for 2-4 hours, but cannot provide seasonal or multi-day baseload.
Where do we plan to build solar and wind parks? - In deserts and offshore zones. This will require a radical expansion of the grids. We will run into a copper deficit (and things aren't smooth with aluminum either).
Long-term structural capital will go into nuclear energy, gas generation (as a backup), and copper/uranium mining.
May 3 (Reuters) - The Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Sunday that a drone had targeted its external radiation control laboratory.
This is not the first event targeting nuclear plants/laboratory. Given the current geopolitical situation, nuclear plants are in danger of being targeted on purpose and the damage would be considerable.
But let's look at how Big Tech assesses the risks. Hyperscalers employ top-tier analysts; they perfectly see the difference between media noise and actual damage.
Attacking an NPP is fundamentally unprofitable. It’s an asset worth tens of billions of dollars, and any rational capital (just like a state) will protect it. What we’re seeing right now — and I’d like to point out this isn't the first time — are strikes on non-critical external nodes. It’s a tool for informational pressure, not an attempt to trigger a second Chernobyl.
In reality, a direct strike on the reactor's containment is a taboo. In military doctrine, it’s equated to the use of radiological weapons, which instantly triggers protocols for uncontrolled escalation. None of the key actors want that.
Has Big Tech already poured money into nuclear? Fact? Fact. Not because they’re blind to geopolitics, but because the math of deterrence works: the risk of deliberately destroying an NPP equals the risk of starting World War III, at which point nobody is going to care about the fate of AI investments anyway.
Let's also take this fact into account: the risk of an attack on an NPP in an active war zone (Ukraine) is simply not comparable to the risk for an NPP in Pennsylvania or Texas.
Personally, I have nothing against green energy, but economics and physics are harsh realities.
I'd love to trust this, I really do, but there are political leaders publicly threatening to erase civilisations. I live in Europe. It is still forbidden here to harvest wild mushrooms. Dead animals are burned, not eaten. To us, this is a possible reality
nearly zero capital will go into nuclear energy, unless it can be made a lot more affordable. It is structurally completely uncompetitive, and uninvestable without massive state backing.
Given the hysteria involved in Great Power warmongering circles, much of it designed to increase military-industrial outlays, this is highly unlikely at present, especially in the USA where fossil fuel demand destruction is something the investors in the fracking boom and the oilfield and refinery operators don’t want to see, just look at Exxon and Chevron profits over the past month. I doubt the affiliated investor-owned utilities would be thrilled about an explosion in US rooftop solar installations either, as that cuts directly into their revenue stream.
Now, if you want to build monocrystalline Si PV at scale from scratch to catch up to China, that’s going to take a lot of investment over a decade, and given the historical and present reluctance of the US government to fund such R & D at scale (tiny DOE budgets), it’s all going to be private, and private rentier-finance capital is not going to fund a major competitor to fossil fuels in the USA - margins are tighter, you replace a commodity stream with a one-time purchase of equipment with a minimum 20-yr lifespan, and unless you tightly control the equipment and the electrical generation, there go your rents, I mean profits.
being from a 3rd world country and having lived in Europe & the US.
you quickly learn there's nothing called an adversary when adopting technology.
you adopt what works - ruminating about where something comes from, is a luxury.
then after you can either work towards self-sufficiency or keep being vulnerable.
Europe has been kept in this loop of talking about problems while not solving them.
the US - knowin' about the problems, but actively ignoring them due to politics.
For example:
"Apple is considered the "Great Teacher" of China for playing a pivotal role in upgrading the nation's industrial, manufacturing, and technological skills over the past 25 year"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/books/review/apple-in-chi...
Most countries have days to, at most, months of imports of oil in reserve. In contrast, a panel embargo wouldn’t have disastrous effects for years. But reliance it is the same. If you’re dependent on Chinese panels, China can cap your energy growth at whim. The degradation will be slow thereafter, but present nevertheless.
Using foreign panels for anything other than bootstrapping domestic or allied production would be the EU repeating its follies first with Russia and then with American LNG.
Nuclear? Good luck building it on time and on budget. Also where exactly are you getting that Uranium from? I’m not necessarily against nuclear I just don’t think there’s much you can do in five or ten years to move the needle with Nuclear.
Wind? Actually a good option as it has a strong domestic supply chain.
Solar? Buy China’s cheap panels as long as they are selling. If they stop selling figure out how to do it yourself. It’s not some big mystery how panels get made, China just had the foresight to invest in the scale required to drive prices down.
Coal? I mean at least it’s local. But solar + batteries are either beating it now or will be in the next few years if the same trends that have held for the last 30 years continue for the next 2-5. So you’d be investing in a more expensive, dirtier technology for what end?
There is no world where you get to not make a decision and the risk just disappears. I think renewables have the clear advantage here and have very manageable risks.
Uranium can be stockpiled relatively easily (france had 4-5 years of uranium stockpiled). Since it is about 1% of the energy cost, that’s pretty inexpensive.
Also, uranium comes from suppliers on 4 different continents, there is little chance that it becomes unavailable overnight.
What’s stopping us from stockpiling solar panels?
Stockpiling uranium addresses a specific risk related to sourcing in an inexpensive way, I'm not sure what problem you address by stockpiling unused solar panels, and for what cost.
As someone who lives in Canada, we have reactors (CANDU) that can run on unprocessed / unenriched uranium.
Or you can use slightly enriched if you want:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANFLEX#Fuel_composition_and_v...
If you have a bunch of pesky plutonium that you want to get rid of, it can also be mixed into a MOX bundle and be 'burned away' as well.
France being more relevant as largest % of nuclear as part of their energy mix ...
As I replied in the comment to the "french doesn't need", apparently either they care more about money and less about Ukraine or they absolutely couldn't but the numbers don't lie (if they were wrong the government would have challenge le monde asap ...)...
Also globally it's "about 6% of global uranium production, 20% of conversion capacity, 46% of enrichment capacity, and 10% of nuclear fuel fabrication capacity.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X2...
Next time I will use we ~ humanity to be more clear and avoid exceptions to the "big picture"
Have a great evening
France has reduced it in the last couple of years but even right now they do.
I could only find that EU manufacturers of solar panels wanted tariffs on imported Chinese solar panels and EU builders and operators of solar power plants didn't want tariffs on imported Chinese solar panels.
https://www.politico.eu/article/europes-solar-industry-at-wa...
I mean the EU has ASML, the Large Hadron Collider, and ITER, among other things. There is no engineering talent problem.
If they couldn’t do it it’s a political problem.
Engineers who know how to build factories, batteries, and solar panels could sit down and create a "war plan" to build out and scale infrastructure quickly if you asked them to do it and then got out of the way.
The EU has plenty of talent with the know-how to do this. If it couldn't be done even in a crisis situation, that's a political problem.
the only interesting parts here from a supply chain perspective are power transistors. europeans have been known to design these, but idk how easy it would be to start producing them locally. they have macroscopic feature sizes though.
it would take several years of iteration to get a functioning pipeline that ran at volume, but none of this is hugely complicated. certainly not decades.
the real problem is financialization. you have to float that plant with the understanding that its not going to be competitive.
But that's residential scale: at grid scale these things wouldn't be online in the same way anyway.
"However, rogue communication devices not listed in product documents have been found in some Chinese solar power inverters by U.S experts who strip down equipment hooked up to grids to check for security issues, the two people said. Over the past nine months, undocumented communication devices, including cellular radios, have also been found in some batteries from multiple Chinese suppliers, one of them said."
It would not suprise me if not only Chinese manufacurers did this. Cellular modems are cheap and and the capability to cause blackout is very usefull.
Any such installations of solar panels, batteries and the like must be interconnected only in a private network without Internet access.
For remote monitoring and control a proxy mini-PC must be used, to which one should use an authenticated and encrypted connection.
For any competent person, this is trivial to do today, to ensure that even if some electronic device includes a backdoor for its vendor that backdoor cannot be accessed.
If there exists any kind of wireless connection provided by the vendor for a device, it must be disabled, e.g. by removing any internal or external antennas. Unlike wired connections that can be filtered externally, wireless connections cannot be secured.
Dependency is only problematic if you lack an alternative, and nobody is developing alternatives.
My gawd, lots of people in Netherlands want to contribute to the green ecosystem but govt can't even get permitting straight and everything is gridlocked. The electric grid is full and new houses and companies can't be connected to the grid, wnd if you want to install a heat pump or an AC then there are thousands of rules and anybody else in the neighborhood can block you for the slightest thing.
Less talking and more doing. The Chinese at least are all do and almost no talk.
I'm happy the OP was able to take advantage of the current prices, cheap technology, and the amicable perfidious relationship. I would avoid anything internet-connected for good reason, and of course, burying anything in our infrastructure.
How have you still not learned? By god Europe's in an awful place if you still don't get it.
You first import them en masse. You reverse engineer, learn how to do everything. Then you slowly invest in local manufacturing. China has shown you the way.
German industry does not want to pay anyone, imports cheap foreigners for tasks that have to be done in Germany and outsources the rest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution_in_the_U...
Chinese industrial policy: dominate world of manufacturing (consumer goods, light industry, heavy industry, hardware, software , everything), aquire technology and know-how by any means necessary (buy technology, companies, joint-ventures, espionage, send students abroad and return them), move supply chains as much as possible to China (buy raw minerals, mines, mining rights, ship ores back to China for refining and processing), become independent of other countries as much as possible (prefer domestic coal, gas, oil, domestic synthetic fuels, in the long term minimalize all imports).
By all means, it would be great if EU countries ramp up their own production of batteries and solar panels. But this is worlds apart of depending on fuel from Russia.
Sure, it's great to be independent when you can, but of all the groups you depend on, and all the ways you depend on them, this doesn't rank high!
If Russia stops gas deliveries you are immediately without energy.
If China stops exporting your PV and battery while just continue to work for 20 years.
If you buy a solar panel, it produces power for the next 20-50 years. It doesn't require constant flow from China. If China suddenly decides to stop buying solar panels (why would they?) then what? Nothing. Your solar panels still produce power.
It's particularly bizarre when the alternative is supply lines to countries like Russia and the GCC countries. Russia tried to use Europe's natural gas dependency to invade Ukraine. That's still ongoing.
And what has China done that warrants a similar kind of fear? Absolutely nothing other than the US has declared China an enemy for some reason.
I know it sounds like satire, but there is a good reason tech exploded in the US 30 years ago while Europe is still making cars like it's the 1960's.
So boycott HN?
Except our European counterparts, they still get ~$75k for it. But I guess "progress" because if they lose their job and bake bread instead not much in their life will change...
And Germany.
In the 2000s, when solar PV was still very expensive, Germany accounted for two-thirds of global installations, and so helped get the ball rolling on scaling up.
It was already a easy financial case to be made, let alone the extra comfort. But now it's a no-brainer. I get €100 back every month now, while others around me pay up to €300 per month.
The way the Chinese manufacturers are scaling production of batteries is something to behold.
In 2022 I bought 20kWh + 10kW inverter + installation for €7500.
My buddy just ordered a 54kWh battery for €6500... And it's not slowing down, they're only gaining speed with the introduction of over cheaper materials like Sodium batteries.
The Chinese are the only reason I remain somewhat optimistic of our chances of combatting climate change.
Europe is too lazy, the US just gave up, really.
We don't ever get those temps so I should be fine.
My biggest issue is not cold but mist. I live near a river in a valley and have underestimated how much mist hurts performance around ~1c outside.
It needs to defrost often, because of the high moisture content in the outside air where I live.
But it also has a normal, resistive heating 9kW backup. But for financial reasons this is considered 'emergency only'.
We also got solar, our entire power bill (all heating, cooking, lights, computers, etc) is $500 for the year. Best decision ever.
But induction is a game changer. It makes everything else (including gas) seem weak. I can make my steel wok glow red within 20 seconds.
And then there's the flammable gas in your house. I had it for 20 years, it works fine when installed properly but the risk is never 0.
They're a startup trying to get to the minimum amount of MWh to become a 'virtual power plant'.
It seems it's 48kwh, apologies. And it seems the cheapest batch is already sold out: it's now €6500.
correction: they may have spent $450M: https://climatepower.us/news/new-report-oil-and-gas-industry...
And then the Americans elected him in a landslide.
They gave up.
https://rigcount.bakerhughes.com/
Not seeing a bunch more rigs operating means there new drilling isn’t ramping up.
Green tech is a fledgling industry trying to challenge a dominant, well established one.
Any such industry needs basic government support, but at the very least, predictable government regulation.
Unfortunately not only have we not seen support, we’ve seen opposition from the government, and the stability has been laughable.
Meanwhile that’s exactly what the Chinese government is providing which means the entire industry (outside of a now small section of wind power in Europe, which preceded green tech becoming political football) is Chinese, so you and I and pretty much everyone outside China has been cut off from benefitting from it as an investment and can only benefit from it as consumers.
There is hope that the Europeans might finally get their act together here, but hoping the Europeans may get their act together in investment, industrial and financial policy has so far been a fool’s game. There’s little to no hope for America getting its act together for at least a few years in the green tech supply chain, although the actual green tech consumption seems to be growing even with the political headwinds.
Of course I believe oil lobby doesn't want competition, so it will be a rich guys' fight.
Green energy is challenging because it has many times less density then every other form out there, among other reasons.
Aside from privately owned solar/wind/battery on your own home, there's no evidence that I've seen anyway that indicates when utilities move to more green energy generation that those savings get passed on to customers. Perhaps, there are examples out there somewhere.
I wish that was true…
Illuminate USA in Ohio claims to be going even bigger than T1. Over 5 GW/year (10 million panels). But they just seem to manufacture panels and not batteries.
Some others include: Tesla, Qcells, Mission Solar, First Solar, Ambri, Enphase, Ørsted, TotalEnergies, and Generac.
Not all are fully vertically integrated and many still rely on global supply chains...
Now that the public has heard the term “Trillions” whether it relates to defense spending or company valuations, that term is now somewhat more meaningless for grand scale ideas. Couple that with rising energy costs and you have a potential public appetite for a massive push for renewable and storage of all kinds.
I suspect people are going to be pretty sick of Republicans after another two years of this idiocy.
I mean.. doesn’t seem to matter, right?
Oil is found in a lot of regions but the non-violent ones were obviously exploited first. They are now just emptied out, like the North Sea in Europe.
e.g. they've cultivated / funded and basically created a formerly extremely fringe "Alberta separatism" movement and are actively trying to disassemble the Canadian state. Things have gotten to the point that they're willing to light fires of instability right in the heart of the "stable" heartland of North America.
Formerly international capital benefited from stability. But the fossil fuel sector sees the writing on the wall and is trying to make as much hay while the sun shines as it can. They profit from the chaos, as we've seen from the last two months.
American oil companies: "It doesn't pay, oil prices are too low to make drilling worth while."
Donald Trump: "War, baby, war!" (Oil prices go up)
The rest of the world: "Renewables!"
Five or ten years from now, when renewables have largely replaced oil, gas and coal in most of the world, the US will be the only major country still using fossil fuels. And the rest of the world will be better off; the US, not so much.
Heating is slower to change, but new homes and buildings could come with solar walls and ceilings.
Newer cars are driven further than older cars. There's a site with data on the Norweigen transition. That shows the average EV is now driving more miles per year than the average gas/petrol, phev or diesel car.
Replacing cars that don't get driven much is less important than replacing taxis and delivery vehuckes and super-commuters. Luckily the economics seems to already be there for that.
Four out of our last five Presidents were born within 4 years of each other [1]. Three (Bush Jr., Clinton and Trump) were born in 1946.
Good news: 2024 was probably the last election where Boomers’ vote share was above 25%. In 2028, a significant number of states, including California and Texas, will have fewer than 20% of votes cast by Boomers. (194 EVs in 2028 and, using 2020 Census numbers, a further 243 EVs in ‘32.)
[1] https://www.loriferber.com/amp/research/presidential-facts-s...
I’d love to be proven wrong on this.
If millennials and young men continue supporting maga and Trump’s party as they did last election, it won’t help much if Boomers expire.
Boomers also surprisingly voted slightly less for Trump than previous elections, his coalition in 24 expanded a bit to Hispanics and young men etc. he won due to inflation and covid imo, and probably due to sexism and only 107 days for Kamala to campaign (thanks Biden).
We should absolutely stop burning them, though.
For instance, modern medicine requires petroleum and there's no real alternatives at this time.
Modern medicine relies heavily on petrochemical feedstocks (derived from fossil fuels.) These are used to make plastics, solvents, reagents, packaging, and some pharmaceuticals Many of these materials currently have no scalable, cost-effective substitutes.
Now we are supposed to buy solar panels from China while the US is depicting China as the greatest threat, senate hearings demand usage of US bases in Asia without the approval of the host countries and the US started the Iran war to maintain a blockade to control both the EU and China.
I wonder if Bilderberg group member Radoslav Sikorski will be gloating on Twitter when secondary sanctions will be imposed on the EU if they import Chinese solar panels.
Where are you getting this from? That’s not even remotely close to my understanding of the situation
Stated goals and whether this was accidental is a whole other question.
I'm not sure why people as a whole don't seem to have absorbed the fact that North America is an energy exporting economy now, not a net importer.
The question is whether North American consumers really like that they're paying so much more at the pump (and, shortly, for food prices) on account of oil executives making off like bandits.
At that level of decision making and power this is not something that is ever going to be clear.
You can only go based on material effect.
We are not dealing with detached neo-liberal political bureaucrats from 20 years ago. The American people explicitly elected the foxes to run the hen house. This is the result.
Also, I am an opponent of the Israeli state and its domestic and foreign policy. But seeing its wishes as some sort of puppet master over the United States verges into anti-Semitic conspiracy theory territory.
I prefer material, economic explanations. It's just as likely that elites in Israel have the same economic interests as well.
Here is a write-up on the China part:
https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/iran-strike...
For broader geopolitical chess games the "Path to Persia" and "Extending Russia" papers are all time favorites.
The EU part isn't that explicit. It is a mixture of the US wanting to take the Greenland Arctic Sea route, sabotaging energy deliveries from Russia and making the EU dependent on US LNG. Now the EU is even more dependent on the US and there is no sign that the US wants Hormuz open. It is stalling, in my opinion deliberately.
Were you under the illusion your house of representatives was representing you?
Oil per-barrel price is up so American energy exporter profits are up. At the same time, total quantity of exported barrels from the US and Canada are up as well because they have become the most "stable" supplier.
Stock market is also up, or at least flat, but "predictably" up where it needed be to keep the right people happy. Insider trading and a cycle of "taco-tuesdays" has allowed key parties to make absolutely insane amounts of money at the same time.
Trump is boldly incompetent and bumbling as a person. But the people telling him what to do are not. He's there to make them rich and he's doing a fabulous job of it.
Which, I mean, that should concern you as a US voter. Why aren't they?
I think Trump is a) fine with losing the house because they will hold the senate, regardless, and he is fine with ruling like a king and abusing executive power. b) they're actively rigging things to pull a rabbit out the hat in November anyways.
Getting a Putin-esque (or, actually more like Erdogan or Netanyahu) type persona out of power by elections is incredibly hard.
It remains true that the actual total costs of using hydrocarbons are not factored into their actual real world market exchange rate. And every time we've made modest steps to try to make that happen (carbon taxes, regulation) the resistance has been swift and brutal.
Until there is a regulatory model which forces the externalities to be accounted for, it's just a race to the bottom.
Bloom has done a good job of late and Watt Fuel Cell is another company I am keeping an eye on. I truly believe that this is a major path forward in the US as the infrastructure already exists and we are the best in the world at gas extraction.