However, the fact that other nations don’t control our renewable energy supply doesn’t mean that we do: wind and solar power are controlled by nature. There is no modern Agemenon ready to sacrifice Iphigenia to ensure favorable winds, despite conspiracy theories about government manipulation of the weather. Renewables can be turned down but they can’t be ramped up on demand. In effect, relying on renewables substitutes geopolitical vulnerability for operational vulnerability.

Which raises an often-overlooked point: energy crises are typically due to short-term disruptions in supply, not lack of long-term access to foreign energy. The U.S. has been a net importer of oil since roughly 1970, but only in 1973, 1979 and post-2003 was there arguably a ‘crisis.’ Energy crises have typically been short-lived and transient, solved in the longer-run by market forces (where necessary), but in the short run by finding additional supplies.

This highlights the importance of surge capacity, such as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The idea is not new: Charles I in England had an SPR in the 17^th century, the ‘P’ standing for urine or pee, a component of gunpowder that was in short supply. Being able to provide supply on short notice is the answer to a disruption, not the long-term creation of new capacity. Unfortunately, surge or backup capacity costs money, which is why no one builds solar or wind farms to sit idle in case of occasional need.

Which raises another very salient point: coal, oil and gas are geographically fungible, renewables are not. Fossil fuels can be and often are switched from one market to another, as the Ukrainian war demonstrated. A nation can arrange delivery of ship loads of fossil fuels, but you cannot order electricity, renewables or otherwise, except from nearby producers.

Granted, transoceanic shipment of renewable energy can be done by shipping batteries. But the lower energy density of batteries makes this problematical. Consider, a 100-kwh battery contains 341,200 Btu, equal to more than 300 cubic feet of natural gas. An LNG tanker carries about billion cubic feet of natural gas, or the equivalent of 11,500 100 kwh lithium-ion batteries. The additional amounts of LNG which the U.S. shipped to Ukraine on a monthly basis thus would require something like 75,000 to 100,000 100 kwh lithium-ion batteries. This is close to what the automobile industry uses every year in the U.S.. electric vehicle sales – Google Search

And since there is typically no surge renewable or nuclear capacity available (solar and wind are almost always dispatched at full production levels), the electricity to charge the batteries would have to come from existing power plants with spare capacity, mostly natural gas or coal in the U.S. Thus, the savings in greenhouse gas emissions would be significantly reduced, even ignoring the emissions related to energy-intensive process of battery construction. Perversely, were such a trade mandated, it is possible that cheap coal power in China would be the source of the batteries’ power.

While large-scale battery storage for utilities is growing to cope with supply and demand fluctuations, it remains a minor part of the energy industry, and the task of shipping 100 thousand batteries or more overseas on a monthly basis, let alone returning them to be recharged, is beyond Herculean. This explains why many countries have strategic oil reserves, but no one yet has considered a strategic electricity reserve.

Ultimately, more investment in renewable energy makes sense in many places, and even more should carbon taxes be factored in, but while having domestic energy supply from renewable energy might reduce a country’s vulnerability to foreign geopolitical disruptions, it does not avoid the near-constant disruptions due to weather fluctuations nor allow for replacement of lost supply for whatever reason from overseas suppliers.