Good morning; here's what the Oilman has for you today:

• Hack Attack Alert for Wind & Solar

• Big Oil Leaves Renewables. Rivals Cope Hard.

• Tweet of the Day

Hack Attack Alert for Wind & Solar

Power utilities in Europe are propping up their cyber defenses in anticipation of hacker attacks.

The most vulnerable part of the system? Wind and solar.

The problem nobody talks about

Wind and solar are notoriously hackable.

At least they would be if the media talked about it, which it doesn’t really.

But it definitely should.

Here’s the problem: wind and solar installations number in the thousands.

Each installation has a smart meter to connect it to the grid.

The smart meter has software in it.

Each smart meter is a potential entry point for hackers.

The more entry points there are, the more vulnerable a system, any cybersecurity expert, will tell you.

In fact, cybersecurity experts are telling it.

Only there really isn’t much that can be done.

It’s a gamble on energy security

European cyber folks are on red alert because of Russia’s cyberattacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

They’re trying to make sure they’re ready if the attacks are redirected.

But the whole point of wind and solar is that they are decentralized.

You can’t centralize them the way a nuclear power plant control is centralized.

So they will always have thousands of potential points of entry for hackers.

They will always be vulnerable.

The more wind and solar you have, the greater the vulnerability.

Food for thought for the DoE, maybe?

By the way, the DoE just got hacked this month.

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Big Oil Leaves Renewables. Rivals Cope Hard.

After BP dropped a bomb by announcing a reversal of its low-carbon strategy, Shell followed suit last week.

The two supermajors will pivot back to oil and gas and lower investments in wind, solar, and similar.

Apparently, this is good news to be celebrated by wind and solar-focused companies.

At least, according to Bloomberg.

It’s like Tesla leaving EVs

Or at least that’s how the article sounds.

“Oil companies pulling back from renewables isn’t great for climate change, but it’s good for the existing competitors,” one Sanford C Bernstein & Co analyst told Bloomberg.

The argument is that now that the big guns have left the building, the smaller ones can have more space to compete and make money.

Maybe.

Why? Because Danish Ørsted, the wind turbine major, just asked the UK for more subsidies.

Why? Because soaring costs are making its latest project unprofitable.

Here’s a fun question: could it be that this was why Big Oil upped and left?

Big Oil is as Big Oil does

The reason BP and Shell revised their plans for the future is that they are businesses.

Large businesses.

Businesses that for decades have made their owners money.

And their number-one priority is to continue making their owners—shareholders—money.

Unlike them, Ørsted and its fellow low-carbon firms have been pampered with billions in subsidies.

They have gotten used to relying in subsidies for their literal survival.

It’s safe to say they probably won’t make it on their own.

And that’s why they will not be celebrating Big Oil’s exit.

If they’d been paying attention.

Because that exit means oil and gas, even as demonized as they have become, are a safer bet than wind and solar.

Around the Global Patch

🇩🇪 Germany's power price rollercoaster.
🇨🇳 Frozen alliances: China and Russia's arctic ice-breakers.
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia's energy alliance, deepening ties with China.

Tweet of the Day

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