The Group of Seven Nations agreed Friday to release 100 million barrels of oil from its stockpiles—following a desperate plea from the White House.
The G7 held an emergency meeting Friday morning to discuss global energy costs. The discussion came in the wake of a pressing call between Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron, during which the U.S. leader asked for assistance amid the current oil crisis and floated the idea of banning U.S. diesel exports, according to CBS Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Margaret Brennan.
Donald Trump announced after the meeting that “Europe has just agreed to release a massive amount of their heavily stocked Diesel Oil. The process will begin immediately.”
The European barrels are expected to hit the market over the next four months.
Serious question: if Europe were to fully commit to installing renewables, how much dependence on diesel would it maintain in, say, one year? I mean really putting it all in, like a war economy but with this
The whole transportation business run on diesel. There are currently no good truck EVs and if there are they will require special charging stations, so it would be very difficult to change to renewables and EV overnight.
We will still be dependent on petrol though, but much less, but petrol is needed in the chemical industry for the production of plastic, for plane fuel, etc.
Don’t forget freight ships. A quarter or so of worldwide commerce is international shipping by sea. I’m not aware that there’s any commercially viable solution for powering these ships with renewables. The closest I know of are US Navy Carriers, which don’t require diesel, but they’re powered by nuclear reactors, which are neither renewable nor commercially viable (not that the USN would care about profitability) and require a huge amount of expertise to maintain.
Wind?
What about trains, can’t those be electrified?
No. If you’re going to spend the time and money (a significant amount of both) to run catenary lines and set up power stations, you might as well replace the diesel locomotives with electric, instead of converting them.
