We’ve heard of the petrostate. Now, get ready for the… electrostate? What is it? Is it really a thing? Does it matter?
Background
Ever since the latest bizarre, unjustified, and probably illegal US foreign war in the Middle East, discourse in the energy sector has focused on the question of why the Trump Administration insists on not only rejecting decarbonization as an element of policy, but also in spending vast sums of money to undermine it in favor of more expensive fossil fuels. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent isn’t worried, going on TV to suggest that high gas prices are irrelevant because people are still buying gas, even if they’re racking up more credit card debt that they aren’t paying off to fill their tank. And the president? Well, we’re not really sure what’s going on with him these days.
But these disruptions to global energy markets, outside of Russia’s imperial conquest against Ukraine and the Next Endless GOP War, which the administration has claimed to have won either 32, 100+, or some untold number of times, haven’t happened since the energy crises of the 1970s. (Both of those also involved conflicts in the Middle East! The more things change, etc.). So, every country is muddling through in a different way. In the United States, consumers are definitely racking up more debt. Farmers are getting screwed, although they’re also receiving bailouts, because social spending is only bad if the recipients are people of color, according to the GOP.
Meanwhile, what has China done? Well, they stockpiled a ton of oil before the conflict broke out. Why didn’t the United States do this, one might wonder? Trump had the opportunity to replenish the US strategic oil stockpile when prices were low, and simply chose not to. This issue was raised a year and a half ago. Chris Wright, who has done little to advance energy security beyond “promote fossil fuel interests and actively undermine alternative energy sources” since taking office, including but not limited to lying to Congress about renewable energy, blamed– wait for it- Joe Biden.
China reduced “oil purchases by 23 percent in the first six months of the war with Iran compared with the same period the year before,” wrote Rebecca F. Elliott and Keith Bradsher in the New York Times in September. (Bradsher is the author of the 2002 book, High And Mighty, which is about the destructive implications of the proliferation of giant SUVs on American roadways, something that has only gotten far worse in the past 24 years). The country has made aggressive progress on vehicle electrification, even while it expands highway spending (much to the skepticism of cranky academic city planner types like me). This is leading to the increasing use of the term “electrostate” to describe countries that are no longer reliant on the production or mass consumption of petroleum, but on electricity alone.
Electricity can provide domestic heating at high levels of efficiency. Resolve the “spark gap” by managing fossil fuel related negative market externalities, and ensure that building codes don’t suck, and it’s not even remotely expensive. It can provide transportation energy at a much higher efficiency than internal combustion engines. And we have decades of experience with using electricity in high-temperature industrial applications, for example, comparing and contrasting steelmaking with electric arc furnaces as opposed to coal-fired blast furnaces.
Conclusion: It Can Happen Here
It’s not that electrification even requires aggressive government spending– we are still on our way to that goal with limited to no subsidies in things like renewable energy in the United States. But we certainly can’t become an electrostate with a presidential administration that is actively involved in hindering the development of renewable energy in favor of far costlier, far dirtier energy sources, lying about it every step of the way, and trying to convince the American people that somehow, the unprecedented $140 billion in oil sector profits are going to “trickle down.” Trump says hitherto unfathomable oil profits are a good thing. It sounds like Americans aren’t buying it, from the look of the polling data. I guess we’ll see what happens Tuesday.
