Another day, another China W.
Meanwhile in Europe…
We demand everyone stop buying energy from the evil countries!
lol, ok 
I doubt it will stay this way in subsequent months, these things fluctuate so we will probably still see sporadic imports, but it’s a sign of progress nevertheless.
Ideally the way this goes is we will see more and more such “zero months” in the coming years until all months are “zero months”.
China is going hard on nuclear power, and i imagine they’ll get to a point in the next decade or 2 where they have all their domestic energy needs met by a combination of nuclear, renewables, and a bit of russian oil imports/iranian oil imports. They clearly want to be capable of standing on their own without imports from the west. Doing a single month like this is a great test to see which areas still need improved on.
Also i know we don’t mention it much, but this isn’t just about war. There are some experts who suspect we already hit geological peak oil. In 2018 specifically. That is when over half of all recoverable oil has been drilled for already.
If they are right about that, and there are some signs they might be, oil prices are going to keep going up, and up, and up. People will say it’s inflation until it isnt ignorable anymore. The only countries who survive that are ones who can transition to other energy sources. China is basically the only major country that would be able to do it fast enough.
It’s going to give them the edge in AI
We will see. There have been predictions about peak oil before but then new technologies unlocked previously inaccessible deposits. So i don’t have a really good feel for how long exactly they can keep kicking this particular can down the road. It may be longer than we think.
The real impetus for change is going to have to also be political, not just purely economic. Driven by the increasingly undeniable reality of climate change rather than price inflation, since prices can be manipulated in a lot of ways by governments and by cartels like OPEC.
Of course it also helps that renewable technologies are rapidly becoming more economically appealing while fossil fuels are getting more expensive, but i think that leaning too much into the notion that change has to be driven by economic considerations is not such a great idea.
Because that leaves the door open to the possibility that if somehow the problems of prices and scarcity weren’t there then we wouldn’t need to ditch fossil fuels. But even if fossil fuels were endless and free, we would still need to transition away from them asap.
Well that’s the thing. New technologies unlocked new deposits that we couldnt access before, but the price to extract it kept going up. There will always be more oil somewhere the issue just becomes if it’s economical to get to it. So far since 2018 we’ve seen no new discoveries or breakthroughs that could prop it up longer. It seems like it’s on the decline now. Even if we find a way to get more hard to access oil zones the cost will be even higher. So nations that are reliant on oil become more and more economically fragile over time.
China’s imports of major US energy products—crude oil, liquefied natural gas, and coal—hit nearly zero in June, marking a significant shift as Beijing and Washington prepare for their third round of trade talks in Stockholm next week. Chinese crude oil imports from the US fell to zero for the first time in almost three years, down from $800 million in June 2024, while gas deliveries remained at zero for the fourth consecutive month and coal purchases dropped to just hundreds of dollars from over $90 million a year ago. The collapse follows Chinese tariffs of 10%-15% imposed on American energy products since February. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will meet Chinese counterparts in Stockholm to extend the tariff truce beyond August 12, with discussions expected to include China’s continued purchases of sanctioned Russian and Iranian oil amid US threats of massive tariffs on countries buying Russian energy.
Crazy achievement, i just hope this is not an bad omen of things to come. At least they’re prepared if it were to happen.
It’s good for national security in case there’s a war, but even if there isn’t one it’s still good for the environment, either way it’s good.
Even if you don’t phase out fossil fuels immediately, at least get them from the same continent so they don’t have to be shipped across oceans. Russia and Iran are literally nextdoor and pipelines and trains are much less polluting than tankers.
Trains are less polluting than tankers? I thought large ships were more efficient than trains?
Edit: there’s a lot of information about this, but this discussion on
was the first I found. It gives some math about why ships are best: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/33k5rw/why_does_shipping_by_water_use_less_energy_than/Theoretically, in terms of raw energy use per ton, sure, but in practice tankers run on diesel whereas most modern trains are electric.
Then it becomes a question of how you generate that electricity. It shifts the problem from the vehicle itself to the generation, which is a step forward as there are also efficiency gains in going from individual power generation, such as combustion engines, to big national grids.
There are huge investments being made by China in transitioning away from fossil fuels, with enormous production of solar capacity, as well as being at the forefront of nuclear technology development, and most recently news also dropped about an absolutely gigantic new hydropower dam being built.
So yes, if you could connect big ocean-faring tankers to a clean energy grid somehow, they would be more efficient just in terms of how the math works out. But in practice they are still major polluters at the moment.
I guess one possibility would be sticking nuclear reactors on tankers and cargo ships to power them cleanly like has been done with subs and carriers, but that opens up a whole other set of issues including geopolitical ones.
Great points about fully electric trains; most discussions on this assume diesel electric trains.
USA is weird in that regard, because USA have less electrified railways than Uzbekistan. Post-Soviet railways in comparison are absolutely dominated by electric trains.
Communism = Soviet Power + Electrification of the Whole
CountryRailway NetworkUS ditched everything for cars quite early, it was the “modern country” and during the 20-30s cars were the BIG flashy futuristic thing.
There actually is some consideration for nuclear powered tankers for this exact purpose, along with the fact that refueling would not be much of an issue, there’s less need to stop. Iirc China has done a small amount of work on this concept a few years ago but I don’t habe anything saved unfortunately.
The largest issues that were being discussed actually didn’t habe to do with geopolitics, but the economic feasibility of it. Even if they were to be more efficient, oil isn’t at a price where nuclear tankers are economically superior.
The other issue was in regards to environmental concerns I case a tanker happened to sink, but honestly that same issue applies to oil, and nuclear material in the ocean is honestly less dangerous then oil when it comes to a habitat, though the danger would likely come from tracking decay material moving along with a current, which could contaminate food.
Geopolitics would probably become a concern if a suitable design was finished, because then it would no longer be a theoretical concept but an actual practical technology. I’d imagine different countries, especially the US, would oppose other countries using it while Fearing that if a ship gotten taken due to piracy (or stopping a genocide perhaps) it would then give the ones apprehending the ships a nuclear reactor, nuclear fuel, nuclear decay and products.
Though I could imagine China building a few at some point if they can streamline its production and oil prices surge for a considerable amount of time (like if the US invaded Iran). The technology isn’t exactly in its infancy, considering air craft carriers and submarines use the same nuclear power process, it’s political/economic will.
Great info, thanks! I read about a few prototypes and proposals for nuclear powered cargo ships but i think the general inertia of diesel based shipping as an industry is just too big for the time being, so we’re still a ways away from that. But yeah i could see shipping becoming the cleanest and most efficient option in the future, as it was historically for a very long time.
A Reddit link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.
