Sputnik Moment? China Absolutely Dominates US In Electricity Production | Doomberg

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Have you ever spotted McDonald's hot, crispy fries right as they're being scooped into the carton? And time just stands still.

**Adam Taggart** (0:15)
To me, that's sort of like the Sputnik moment, where I think the other countries around the world, especially the US., are saying, hey, well, if we want to win the iRace and also maybe just win the economic race, we've got to beat them, and we've got to start matching that pace, and we've got a lot of room to make up for right now.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:32)
As you correctly said, once you see it, it's the kind of thing that you can't unsee. And by the way, when coal is 15% of, you know, your coal burning is 15% of all the world's energy. In addition to making an enormous amount of electricity, you can make a ton of steel. So China produces 13 times the amount of steel that the US just does. And when you have a lot of cheap energy and a lot of steel, you can build a pretty big army and a big navy.

**Adam Taggart** (1:02)
Build a bunch of ships.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:03)
Bunch of ships and planes and tanks and guns and bullets and artillery shells. Like, what are we thinking that we're going to go to war with China and win near them when they are just a dominant power now?

**Adam Taggart** (1:26)
Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm its founder and your host, Adam Taggart. In today's discussion, we look at the all-important energy market. Remember, without energy, there's no economy. As we look to the future, where are global energy trends headed? How are the policies of the new administration likely to impact these trends? And where are the best opportunities for investors likely to lie? To discuss in depth, we're fortunate to sit down with the green chicken himself, the energy expert Doomberg. Doomberg, wonderful to see you again. Thanks so much for joining us today.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:00)
Adam, it's been too long, my friend. Looking forward to talking to you again.

**Adam Taggart** (2:03)
Thank you. And it has been too long. I'm so glad we're remedying that now, but very glad to see your continued success out there in the world. Doomberg, as a publication, just continues to crush it. One of the most popular substacks out there and for very good reasons. Anyways, look, just in terms of, big question that I have here is where to start, Doomberg? There's just so much going on right now. We've got the world consuming more fossil fuel than ever. It seems to be practically drowning in natural gas at the moment. Nuclear energy is suddenly the bell of the ball in a lot of spaces. I don't know where to start. What are currently, in your eyes, the most significant energy trends of 2025 so far?

**SPEAKER_3** (2:47)
I think you have to start with the geopolitical situation in the Middle East, which has been the real key driver of near-term energy market prices, at least for oil and international liquefied natural gas, a lot less so, of course, US domestic natural gas. And so your view of the energy markets for the rest of 2025 is really an expression of your view of the probability of war or peace in the Iran-Israel question. We watched with great fascination how the oil markets behaved during what is now, I suppose, known as the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, and we learned a lot of things internally, and the oil markets really guided our view of that war to come to some counterintuitive views as to what actually transpired as opposed to what the propaganda is saying happened. And the oil markets were pretty steady throughout that whole episode, and really called the end of the war long before the war ended. And so once again, markets are pretty instructive. They're not always right, but as an input into your models, what the markets are telling you is a really, really important thing. So happy to take it any direction from there, Adam, but really in a world where peace remains in the Middle East, our view of the market is that it's very well supplied.
All prices have an equilibrium of around 55, we would guess. We could explain how we come at that number. And anything above that at the moment, given the ample nature of the supply and OPEC's desire to regain market share is really just the geopolitical price premium. So we would say today, as we're recording this, there's about $13 a barrel of geopolitical risk premium priced into WTI, which is pretty reasonable considering that the ceasefire is somewhat tentative, and one never knows when hostilities will break out again. But that's our holistic view. That's the most important question. It's really the determinative question for investors in the near term.