this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
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Past oil crises forced countries to cut fuel use and pay high prices, but now falling prices of clean tech offer another solution.

For context, China just stopped exporting gasoline and diesel

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[–] eleitl@lemmy.zip -5 points 5 days ago (2 children)

It's not changing, look at the industrial fabrication and supply chain for solar PV and wind. None of that is powered by renewable electricity.

Renewable infra are a fossil multiplier (but not by much), but the total fraction of fossil in primary energy use is effectively constant, because use of fossil fuels is also increasing.

[–] zd9@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

It's primarily a political issue at this point. While there will always be some need for fossil fuels, a decent majority of our transportation and manufacturing infrastructure can be electrified.

[–] eleitl@lemmy.zip 1 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

Assertions do not make a reality. Transportation is only a fraction of primary energy use, but even there: ship diesels burning bunker fuel and jets burning aviation kerosene have 40+ MJ/l energy density going for them. Prohibitive for air transport. Ships, look at energy density of sodium ion and the price point of a battery bank needed to cross an ocean.

It's physics rather than politics.

[–] zd9@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

lol you didn't even read my comment

[–] eleitl@lemmy.zip 1 points 5 hours ago

Yes. You think it's politics, while the issue is physics.

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

What I see is a system that's steadily shifting from direct fossil fuel use to electricity, and with that, reducing the amount of fossil fuels burned. We're not done making the change, but it has definitely started

[–] eleitl@lemmy.zip -2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Thing is, there is no energy transition. Renewable infrastructure, built using fossil fuels is stacked on top of rising fossil energy use https://i0.wp.com/ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/World-energy-fossil-fuels-vs-add-ons.png?ssl=1

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That's what the beginning looks like. We're just at the cusp of where renewables growth gets to be fast enough to start winding down fossil fuel use at a global level and not just for a few big territories or countries

[–] eleitl@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

We're already past primary energy use peak per capita, and we're distinctly past peak net energy use. At the same time, extraction of increasingly dilute mineral resources necessary for technology requires progressively more and more energy.

So I would expect we start losing fossil inputs quickly, since increasingly unable to extract them, while the renewable infrastructure will not have grown sufficiently, and then starting to decline, since we cannot sustain them with renewable energy alone.

At the same time we're going to lose a lot of population (excess deaths of several billions this century), so at least whatever resources are left will last longer than at the current use rate.