It genuinely makes me so sad to see the US not doing the same. Having grown up to the constant beat of “energy independence” as the core goal of a party it seemed obvious that the nearly limitless energy that rains down from the sky would be the answer. But instead we’ve kept choosing the option which requires devastating our, and other’s around the world, community. That’s not to exclude the harsh reality of mining for the minerals required to build these, nor the land use concerns. But it’s difficult to compare localized damage to war and globalized damage.
Up to the 2008 election the Republican party platform called for reducing fossil fuel use, establishing a Climate Prize for scientists who solve the challenges of climate change, a long term tax credit for renewable energy (with specific mentions of solar and wind), more recycling, and making consumer products more energy efficient.<p>They wanted to aggressively support technological advances to reduce the dependence of transportation on petroleum, giving examples of making cars more efficient (they mention doubling gas mileage) and developing more flex-fuel and electric vehicles. They talked about honoraria of many millions of dollars for technological developments that could eliminate the need for gas powered cars.<p>They also mentioned promoting wireless communication to increase telecommuting options and reduce business travel.<p>All that was gone by 2012. I'm not sure what caused the change.
Fracking. Before fracking people were worried about "peak oil", and being dependent on unfriendly governments for our basic energy needs. Then with fracking we realized we are actually sitting on huge available oil reserves, and peak oil quickly became a quaint outdated concept.
Obama was elected, which made some people very angry:<p>> Here’s John Boehner, the likely speaker if Republicans take the House, offering his plans for Obama’s agenda: “We’re going to do everything — and I mean everything we can do — to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.”<p>> Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell summed up his plan to National Journal: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”<p>Sure Trump took everything to an absurd level of "do the opposite of biden no matter what", but it started back then.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/the-gops-no-compromise-pledge-044311" rel="nofollow">https://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/the-gops-no-compromis...</a>
> The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.<p>I remember that day vividly.<p>It was the middle of the Great Recession, it was the worst our economy was doing in a long time. Millions were out of work. People were looking to the government to see what the plan was to get the country back on track.<p>A reporter asks McConnell what the senate’s number one priority was.<p>The answer? Not fixing the economy, not helping out every day Americans. Not finding the root cause of the crash and making sure it doesn’t happen that way again.<p>No, the answer was “make sure Obama is a one term president.” That’s all we would expect from the senate for the next 6 years.<p>The day McConnell said that, I said out loud: “I will never vote Republican again for the rest of my life.” (Prior to that point I mostly voted D but not 100% of the time.)<p>And I plan to keep that promise until I die.
As far as I can tell they hated Obama not for what he did, said or believed. Those things were quite middle of the road.<p>They hated him for what he was.
Oh come on, Bush was the first disaster in the fight against climate warming.<p>His "win" might be one of the most impactful sliding doors in the human history.
You’re not sure?<p>In a word: Greed. In two words: Crony Capitalism. The spend on “non-renewable“ energy is significant to the domestic economy. In 2023 (most recent year I could find), consumer spend on energy in the US was $1.6T (<a href="https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/us-energy-system-factsheet" rel="nofollow">https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/us-ener...</a>) with at least 82% of that being fossil fuels - the remainder being “renewables” and nuclear energy (<a href="https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=62444" rel="nofollow">https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=62444</a>). This does not include billions in subsidies and infrastructure investment.<p>“Going green” would threaten the American Greed Machine by cutting upwards of $150B in taxes annually, interfering with the individual, corporate, and government gains from the stock and commodities markets, causing short-term inflation due to commodity value spikes, and long-term deflation due to renewable energy being relatively very low cost to generate after the infrastructure is in place. Last, but certainly there is more, the US exports a massive amount of oil and gas. Divesting from fossil fuel production would have a significant impact on GDP (find your own source).<p>This is why the US doesn’t invest in infrastructure that doesn’t generate significant ongoing income like it once did - it simply doesn’t make enough money. We only act once it is falling apart.<p>It is all about the money, man. That money is power. It keeps the Corporatocracy and those at the top of it in charge, the US as the primary reserve currency and allows the US to have a huge, formidable military.
I recently read, and recommend a book titled "Here Comes the Sun" by Bill McKibben.
There's a passage where a calculation is made of the amount of minerals that have to be mined in order to build renewable energy to cover all current energy needs.
This quantity is huge. However it is equivalent in mass to the amount of fossil fuels that are extracted every year.
The major difference is that the equipment for renewable energy will last decades whereas the fossil fuels are burned and need to be dug up constantly, for ever.
Solar panels etc. will last decades and can and will be recycled afterwards. Further, most materials needed for renewable energy infrastructure (iron, lithium) are highly abundant on earth. Most of the suppliers work to use cheaper (=more abundant) materials in their products, replacing lithium with sodium in batteries and silver with copper in solar panels. Wind turbine blades are produced now using re-solvable resins.
Not only are older solar panels recyclable, but efficiency gains in panel construction mean that multiple newer panels can be created with the resources from older panels.
And iron (steel) is the most recyclable material we have.
Wind turbines are not recyclable[1]. Besides, the foundations use a massive amount of concrete (nowadays often extracted from the seabed, with all the problematic ecological consequences involved), that stays forever in the ground.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352710225027263" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23527...</a>
<i>Existing</i> wind turbines turbines are not recyclable - new wind turbines are.<p>Except, that's not even true. <i>Some</i> existing wind turbines are not recyclable.<p>Except that's not entirely true either! The tower portion of the turbine is usually steel, and easily recyclable! The nacelle, too. It's the base and the blades that can't be recycled.<p>Except that's not entirely true either! Existing turbine blades are made (mostly) of fibreglass, which is made of the fibre and the resin. The fibres aren't reliably as strong when recycled (which makes them not-very-useful when recycled), but the resin is just fine. And of course, if the blade is e.g. carbon fibre, then you can either re-use it or just burn it.<p>So, you statement should be that <i>some</i> (<i>components</i> of) <i>existing</i> wind turbines cannot be <i>profitably</i> recycled <i>with current technology</i>.<p>The wind turbine's concrete base doesn't need to be smashed up or ignored, incidentally - it can be re-used. Concrete is much sturdier than the e.g. gearbox.
The linked article is misrepresented.<p>Two points regarding blade recycling techniques taken straight from the top of the article:<p>- Cement co-processing and chemical dissolution are primary viable methods, yielding $27.57/ton and $199.71/ton returns respectively.<p>- Chemical recycling achieves top circularity (PCI=0.7) and notable carbon reduction (−0.475 t CO₂/ton).<p>Chemical recycling is not yet ready for industrial use; cement co-processing is.
Who cares? Those blades and that concrete are totally inert and just sit in the ground after their useful life. The ground already has lots of rocks in it.
One point that gets very little coverage is that fossil fuels are a limited resource. Once they used they are gone.<p>The materials for renewable energy are still in a usable form.
A more sci-fi apocalyptic angle on this fact is the argument that fossil fuels, especially easily accessible ones, are necessary to bootstrap a futuristic multi-planetary civilization. They provide the easy energy necessary to support an industrial revolution and the society and technology level necessary for more advanced and renewable forms of energy necessary to really build and sustain an advanced civilization long term.<p>But because they take so long to form, stumbles along the path of energy advancement mean a planetary civilization could run out of fossil fuels before reaching the level of advancement necessary to move beyond them. At that point, the civilization is essentially doomed since they lack the technological ability to move beyond fossil fuels and they lack the energy resources necessary to develop that technology.
CO2 can be converted to methane. It just isn't profitable to do so yet. After the fossil fuels are depleted, it will be a viable niche for storable energy where renewables aren't practical.
Once fossil fuels run out, most exclusively-fossil-fuel-based activities will simply cease to be economically feasible.<p>That doesn't contradict your statement, of course. But in the long term the fossil fuel niches will start looking more like today's rocket-fuel niches.
> One point that gets very little coverage is that fossil fuels are a limited resource<p>Every time someone uses the term “renewable” they are providing coverage to this notion.<p>It is deeply bizarre you can think otherwise.
But it creates enough cash to redirect all ire away to weakly lobbying industries, like aggrarian-sector or other weakly lobbied sectors like nuclear.
Only there is no forever when you're talking about a finite resource, like fossil fuels.
They're talking about our nascent circular economy.<p>Recycling now recovers >95% of raw minerals (and will continue to improve).<p>The learning curves for battery and solar tech will more than make up the for the shortfall.<p>Meaning at some point in the near future (2050 IIRC), humanity will have mined all the lithium it'll ever need.<p>Also, in the same time frame, it'll be economical to mine our garbage dumps. Further reducing the need to extract raw materials.
> That’s not to exclude the harsh reality of mining for the minerals required to build these, nor the land use concerns.<p>This is Big Oil propaganda. The impact from this is massively less than the horrific damage caused by every part of the fossil fuel industry.
Yep. It's not just oil rigs in the desert. Chevron in Ecuador destroyed the Amazonian rainforest. Oil pipelines and open pit mines destroying Canadian primordial forests. Probably tons of untold stories.
Similar to the idea that electric cars are net worse for the environment because some of the materials used to make them. Worse than 20 years of burning gasoline in an ICE car? It's so ridiculous.
It’s so interesting seeing some of the comments about this. The sentence I wrote after that blames war and global devastation on fossil fuels. I was expecting to get flak for being too harsh to fossil fuels but somehow it swung the other direction. Which, as someone who shouts at the radio when the greenwashing oil ads play on NPR, is heartening.
especially when the most important total cost of ownership over life is considered
Those are nice pictures but I can take the same pictures in the USA.<p>Note: I'm not suggesting China is not doing better here. Rather, I'm going off the title "Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout" and I'm not seeing anything in those photos I haven't seen in the USA.<p>Driving down the 580 from SF to Tracy you pass several hundred windmills. Driving through Mojave the same. Also solar. Driving toward Vegas as well. And those are just the ones I've seen with my own eyes. There's many others.<p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=altamont+pass+windmills&sa=X&aic=0" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=altamont+pass+windmill...</a><p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=mojave+windmills&sa=X&aic=0" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=mojave+windmills&sa=X&...</a><p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=palmdale+solar+farm&sa=X&aic=0" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=palmdale+solar+farm&sa...</a><p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=desert+stateline+solar+facility&sa=X&aic=0" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=desert+stateline+solar...</a><p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=barstow+solar+plant&sa=X&aic=0" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=barstow+solar+plant&sa...</a>
Those windmills in the East Bay are decades old.<p>And the Mojave solar concentrator is being shut down, from what I've heard.<p>The article here starts with:
<i>Last year China installed more than half of all wind and solar added globally. In May alone, it added enough renewable energy to power Poland, installing solar panels at a rate of roughly 100 every second.</i><p>Is the US anywhere in this ballpark?
The concentrated solar plant is getting shut down because it's failing to compete with the <i>massive</i> rollout of photovoltaic panels. We've made solar so cheap that the old ways of gathering it are becoming redundant, which, no matter how incredibly cool it was to see a second sun rise over the horizon on the way to Vegas, is a good sign.
The California Public Utilities Commission moved last month to prevent the shutdown of the Ivanpah solar concentrator. They cite data centers, grid reliability, and the state's clean energy goals as reasons to keep it online.<p><a href="https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M586/K132/586132670.PDF?ref=calregulatory.com" rel="nofollow">https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M586/K...</a><p><a href="https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2026-01-11/trump-biden-both-want-this-california-solar-facility-to-close-state-has-other-plans" rel="nofollow">https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2026-01-11/trump-b...</a>
My point was the photos. They aren't convincing to someone who's seen US installations. If that was the goal then the article failed.<p>A graph comparing China to the US would have been better.
The current administration is actively shutting down in-progress wind projects.<p><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/11/how-the-wind-industry-misread-trump-00666895" rel="nofollow">https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/11/how-the-wind-indust...</a><p><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/22/trump-leaves-wind-industry-reeling-at-a-perilous-moment-for-his-party-00704170" rel="nofollow">https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/22/trump-leaves-wind-i...</a><p><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo</a>
The current US “leadership” is working as hard as it can to prevent any progress and to even dismantle some of the gains we have made.<p>Meanwhile, China has made the obvious realization that independence from oil and gas is economically, geopolitically, and environmentally beneficial.
The us president held a fundraiser for petroleum execs late in 2024. He promised to kill as many renewable energy projects as possible. They donated a billion dollars to his campaign. And he followed through.
In 2025, > 90% of new energy capacity built in the US is from renewable [0]. So the US isn't building that much solar not because they're not building solar, but that the US has been generating and consuming so much energy per capita that there isn't that much incentive to increase energy capacity dramatically.<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/us-new-wind-solar-batteries-2025-trump" rel="nofollow">https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/us-new-win...</a>
The US has done well historically, roughly on par with China on per capita renewable rollout, slightly ahead of China between 2019-2023 but probably falling behind now.<p>China being so big and populous makes it hard to make simple comparisons.<p>edit: looked it up, US is still ahead of China as of 2024:<p><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/renewable-electricity-per-capita?tab=line" rel="nofollow">https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/renewable-electricity-per...</a><p>Bear in mind that pre 2000 is likely hydro, in the early years of solar and wind that confused matters if lumped in together but I think it's now obvious when the new tech kicks in.
Not only that, but Chian actually also built quite a lot of coal capacity in the past five years [0]: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/chinas-new-coal-plant-permits-set-four-year-low-2025-analysis-finds-2025-11-25/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/chinas...</a> while the US has been retiring coal.<p>But no one talks about it because it doesn't provoke the only important narrative: "It's a shame that the US isn't doing that!"
> no one talks about it<p>People regularly talk about how much new coal capacity China has been building.<p>Quite often this is followed by "capacity, sure; they're not using all that capacity, those plants exist and are mostly not running", or some variation thereof. I've never bothered fact-checking the responses, but this conversation happens is most of the Chinese renewables discussions I've seen in the last few years.
These are new electric power plants. The US is still ramping up oil and gas production, and is now producing more than ever before. No signs of transitioning away from fossil fuels for transport, industry, export.<p><a href="https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/fossil-fuels/chart-the-us-hits-new-highs-for-oil-and-gas-production" rel="nofollow">https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/fossil-fuels/chart-the-...</a>
That's production, not consumption. The US exports huge amounts of oil and gas now. The EU/Russia sanctions and the Red Sea blockade are a huge gravy train for American oil and gas companies.
> The US is still ramping up oil and gas production<p>This also happens in China. With better ratio for renewables but still. Globally there was more energy from coal than before. Much more was from renewables but in context of climate change absolute numbers of CO2 are what matters.<p>EU is also reverting it's green targets because of this new situation. So near future does not look good.
The rhetoric around "energy independence" always sounded like it was pointing exactly toward renewables, and it's hard not to see the missed opportunity in hindsight
Can’t power the military with renewables. Need nuclear and fossil fuels for that. One doesn’t want to be dependent on foreign nations to power their military.
I vividly recall an episode of Dallas where Bobby was rationalizing to his brother JR about investing in renewables.<p>For a brief window of time our consensus for decarbonization extended all the way to (the most) popular media.
Its crazy that in 1999 "home solar" was a fancy, new millennium idea, and now we're still barely any closer.<p>Honestly, I think building regulations should mandate solar energy for homes.
Seeing fewer rooftop solar installations when I visit my home state (Texas) than I see in the one I live in (Bavaria) is a trip. Yes, I know that electricity is far cheaper there than here, but as much electricity as air conditioning eats, and as big as those roofs are (panels are cheap; it's the system that's expensive), it should balance out.<p>Anecdotally, a ton of solar has gone up in the last four years here in Germany, both rooftop and, increasingly, in what were likely canola fields for biodiesel along highways - at first driven by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the need to reduce natural gas consumption, but now by how absolutely cheap those panels are. Too bad they're not being made here...<p>My favorite installation so far: a large field in SW Germany, with the panels high enough for cattle to wander and grass to grow under them. The cattle were almost all under those panels, munching away - it was a hot day.
Something is deeply wrong with the home solar market in the US. It comes out about 3x more expensive than Australia despite similar labour costs.
Grid level renewables are more economical than rooftop solar by a significant stretch, and Texas has a lot of that, especially wind. The lifetime cost of rooftop solar just doesn't work out very well when you also have cheap electricity.
My 65yo parents installed Solar panels on the roof of their house in a Tier 2 city in the poor parts of India. So did pretty much most of their neighbours.<p>So i would have to disagree. We are significantly far ahead from the initial “idea”.
Sorry to disagree, but we are not just closer, we’ve been there for a while.<p>You can go out and buy solar panels to cover your roof for a few thousand dollars/pounds/euros. You could definitely not do that in 1999.
Barely any closer? I can see it on every fourth roof in western Slovak village.
And it would have been possible if not for the support on this platform and similar ones for people like Elon, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman, like the youth says these days: FAFO
it seems us is fighting yesterday's war<p>wars / empires etc are built on mastering an energy source<p>the Brits on Coal<p>the US rose on Oil<p>China is rising on renewables<p>my worry is can renewables be quickly brought online to power industry / power hungry Data Centers etc at a reasonable cost
China did most of its rising on fossil fuels. I think they are fairly pragmatic as to what to use.
But now their ascendance will be largely built on renewables which, due to our ineptitude here in the west, we've handed them the ball.<p>Good luck to them, because someone has to.
Everyone's rising on renewables. Renewable energy is just a victim of a heavily polarizing political atmosphere.
> my worry is can renewables be quickly brought online to power industry / power hungry Data Centers etc at a reasonable cost<p>I mean, clearly the answer is yes. The problem is political, not economic.
Meanwhile in Italy, the whole renewables discussion is gaslighted by "we should actually consider nuclear" and "wind turbines ruin the panorama".<p>I'm not against nuclear per se, but it's like this part of italians don't realize that:<p>1. if you decide to make a power plant today, it won't be online before the 2050s, in the best case scenario. It's very difficult to bring nuclear plants online, especially in the west. Even the countries with the capital and know-how (US and France) see more projects cancelled than brought online. I think US has put online a single nuclear plant in 20 years, France not a single one.<p>2. Nuclear needs tons of water, we have less and less of it as it rains less and global warming doesn't accumulate enough snow in the alps (which generally melts in the summer), our rivers are literally dry stone most of the year.<p>3. Renewables can be attached to the grid (or close to where they are needed) in the span of few months and with very little know-how required.<p>4. Money isn't limitless, building a 20B+ nuclear plant (realistically 50 knowing these projects + Italy) means this budget won't be available for the next decade on projects that could bring benefits immediately.<p>I'm sure that Italy and Germany, which are manufacturing heavy countries that need lots of energy cannot rely renewables alone, of course nuclear should be considered, but hell, in my region (around Rome), 95% of our energy comes from imported natural gas, I'm sure we could invest some more in that.
I’m anti nuclear on cost reasons but that’s excessively pessimistic. Nuclear can use seawater for cooling, and being colder offsets the cost premium of using salt water.<p>Your 2050’s comment assumes a level of dysfunction that’s presumably exaggerated. Averaging 10 years puts you at 2036 and is itself somewhat pessimistic.<p>The cost of canceled nuclear projects is generally quite low compared to lifetime subsidies of nuclear. Nuclear may be an inefficient use of government resources, but it’s also offset a staggering amount of emissions and the subsidies tend to end back up in the local economy recuperating some of the expense. IMO, there’s probably dumber things your government is doing that are worth fighting instead.
> Averaging 10 years puts you at 2036 and is itself somewhat pessimistic.<p>The average time globally is 14 years. The latest point of reference in the west, Vogtle was announced in 2006 and came online in 2025, 19 years later. It took 7 years alone just to start building it.<p>There's no chance this would take <i>less</i> time in Italy, where you need to also find a suitable place, you don't have the know-how and there's an anti-nuclear referendum that's been voted 3 decades ago. So there is a lot that needs to be changed, starting from having a public voting.<p>Hinkley Point C, in UK, has ballooned it's cost from the planned 18B pounds to a 43B pounds in the span of a decade. These projects always go overbudget, badly.
They go over budget because regulatory burdens are very high, not because of any fundamental unknowns in deploying the technology. A motivated national government could reduce the cost substantially.
Depends on what you consider the start date. Practically speaking there’s some investigation into building nuclear in Italy that already occurred but using that as a start date isn’t meaningful here. Similarly the announcement you point to was a long way from having everything required to actually build a power plant.<p>Until there’s actual funding talking about nuclear doesn’t really mean anything. Vogal was a boondoggle but it didn’t get construction approval until 2012 and like many projects ran into COVID delays on top of everything else.<p>> These projects always go overbudget, badly.<p>Using the worst examples means there’s something very wrong with each of them.
<i>> Vogal was a boondoggle but it didn’t get construction approval until 2012 and like many projects ran into COVID delays on top of everything else.</i><p>Well there you are, then: projects experience delays in construction approval and run into other unexpected delays, which extends a ~10yr estimate.
The 10 year estimate comes from a range of projects including some that go very badly and others that didn't.<p>You can always pick worse numbers by using a smaller sample of projects, but it isn’t necessarily meaningful to do so. California’s high speed rail has gone far worse than Italy’s projects, America is currently comically bad at large construction projects.
Australia fortunately has a political neutral research organisation (CSIRO) whose job is to estimate the net cost benefit for various government programs.<p>Detail and detail on cost benefit analysis <a href="https://www.csiro.au/en/news/All/Articles/2024/December/Nuclear-explainer" rel="nofollow">https://www.csiro.au/en/news/All/Articles/2024/December/Nucl...</a><p>Needless to say not at all cost effective to go nuclear at this point. There's no reason that wouldn't hold similarly in other nations since the scale of the difference in costs are so huge too.
Hasn't stopped certain parties from doing the same thing as Italy though, the CSIRO being credible really hurt their efforts though, Murdoch press tried & failed to discredit them with ferocity.<p>Worst part is, even if price comes down I think they further poisoned the idea of nuclear in Australia because their plan was brazenly to keep the coal & gas plants running in the meantime rather than spend money on wind/solar. They didn't even make an effort for their timelines and costs to be remotely believable.
If it is not in the interest of people over the age of 60, it <i>will not happen</i> in the US.
But what surprises me most in this entire debate is how little we talk about the biological cost of CO₂ itself. We focus so much on the globalized damage to the climate that we’ve overlooked the direct, physiological tax that combustion is levying on our bodies. For some reason conservative governments want us to continue to trade our atmospheric oxygen for carbon dioxide through the burning fossil fuels. I wrote more about this topic on substack:<p><a href="https://minimallysustained.substack.com/p/beyond-the-greenhouse-the-direct" rel="nofollow">https://minimallysustained.substack.com/p/beyond-the-greenho...</a>
Have you driven around anywhere rural lately? The US is doing a ton of renewables development.<p>China is also building unfathomable amount of coal plants as well.
It's particularly sad, we've known about the greenhouse effect caused by CO2 since 19th century, and now its branded as radical pseudoscience
It’s about incentives. We are “energy independent” compared to China and the EU. With China, if its relations with Russia sour and if they get cut off in Djiboutis by any number of powers, they will be a world of hurt.
The US invented fracking.<p>Arguably the US is energy independent. It has Texas, Canada and Venezuela.<p>They never did discover any large oilfields in China despite decades of frantically searching for it.
We're only energy independent in the sense that we export more oil than we import. We're still reliant on foreign oil because we haven't retooled (or built enough new) refineries for a lot of the oil we produce. Allowing the Saudis to own refineries is probably a strong factor there. If the middle east and Canada cut us off, we're SOL. Venezuela barely produces anything right now.
The US does not have Venezuela.
"It has Texas, Canada and Venezuela", eh.. excuse me?
I mean Venezuela is a touch iffy on how strongly we commit but saying the USA basically owns Canada isn't exactly controversial maybe controls is a more acceptable way of phrasing it? They are a "sovereign" with a lowercase S at best.
I thought the same thing, ... where is the "and Greenland!"?<p>The amount of hard, soft and economic power that are being burned for the bedtime stories of one person is unreal. As are all the cooperators and lobby harnessing conspirators whose actual dreams are getting implemented.<p>It isn't the fall of the USSR, but it is still a dramatic ceiling bounce.
Canada fucking hates the US right now and are actively in discussions to deepen their relationship with China, and cut back on their relationship with the US.<p>I don't blame them.
Canada is actively pursuing more pipeline capacity to the west coast, in order to sell more oil to China.<p>However, it's also true that if the US builds a new pipeline to the Canadian border, Canada will happily fill it with heavy crude.
I mean the problem with the bed Canada has made is they don't really get a choice.
Alaska
We chose this path because the U.S. dollar is underpinned by fossil fuel markets. Also, batteries do not have the energy density to mobilize a mechanized military.<p>Our elites refuse to concede dominance of the affairs of the world, so they will never allow the fossil fuel infrastructure to decline unless forced.<p>By contrast, China has every incentive to do the right thing.
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China has also just launched a megawatt scale wind generator a the helium-lifted balloon, the S2000 , they have active thorium rector the TMSR-LF1 and GW/h Vandium flow battery. The scale , speed and breadth of what they are doing is incredible and I think missed my people
Even the people who understand the scale don't understand the purpose.<p>The Chinese grid isn't renewable or non-renewable. It's built to keep the lights on for anything short of a thousand year catastrophe.<p>Their 2060 plan has enough non intermittent base load that they can run the whole country off it for a decade.<p>That half of your grid capacity is there 'just in case' is something no one in the west can wrap their head around. China building out massive solar and wind farms isn't because wind and solar are the future. It's because they can tick off their 30 year plan 25 years ahead of schedule and focus on the hard parts next.
I feel like energy is the most critical aspect to any economy and military. It's the beginning of anything and everything you want to achieve.
It totally is. I don’t remember where I heard it from but there’s a saying that all poverty is energy poverty. Not enough food for your citizens? That’s because you don’t have enough energy to run the Haber Bosch process for fertilizer production.
short of the defense of energy infrastructure, of course.
People worship China for being "green focused".<p>The reality is that they don't have a good source of fossil fuels, and energy independence is a core necessity.
And thank god they have this incentive alignment! Chinas greentech buildout and export is the only thing with a chance of getting us out of this climate mess. Imagine how fucked we’d be if they had their own oil.
The trend is clear that if we keep using fossil up, then soon nobody will have a good source for it. And it’s clear that for geopolitical reasons in addition to environmental reasons, energy independence will be a core necessity everywhere on earth. It’s handy that the sun is sending us enough energy, directly (solar) and indirectly (wind, hydro), that nobody has a good reason not to be “green focused” and phase out fossil fuels for energy. Any country that leads and shows the rest of the world that it can be done deserves applause.
Who is going to pay for it? Even when it was cheap, solar uptake was low except in Texas. EV adoption is still poor outside of California. Then there’s the issue of a K Shaped economy. Outside of our bubble in Silicon Valley, a lot of people can barely afford necessities let alone go green.
You might be confusing consumer purchasing choices with the national energy policy and infrastructure we were talking about. Going green personally is only more expensive to consumers in places where our country isn’t building and offering green power by default. EVs are a bit of a different topic. But what difference does it make when fossil fuels run out? Left unchecked, sooner or later market forces will make oil much more expensive as it becomes scarce, and eventually there is no choice. Yes we might be decades or even hundreds of years away from that, but in the big picture that’s not far away, and it doesn’t matter because the eventuality is obvious. Eventually there will be no such thing as non-renewable energy. Might as well start now.
China isn't "going green" to go green. They're doing it because it's cheaper.<p>The elites are pinning us to fossil fuels and driving up the cost of necessities.
They have a large coal mining industry.
What's the hard part?
Nuclear build out, wires and transformers.<p>China has been building 5% extra nuclear capacity every year for the last 30 years. On target for making up 24% of their energy mix in 2060.
Climate change, and having an abundance of energy allows a country to offset some of those challenges.
Weathering the knock-on effects of ecological overshoot, probably. It's going to be interesting.
Demography. They're soon going to run out of "young" workers, which mean they have to invent the robotics of the 2100s to ensure the few remaining people will have machine to harvest crops and wage wars.<p>Also, they're soon going to run out of women, so they need to perfect artificial wombs.<p>The few remaining party elites will want to live practically forever, so biology will be on the programs once fusion and robots have been cracked.<p>And it doesnot even seem like china will make ussr-level mistakes.<p>Our only hope for beating China, at this point, would be to recreate an "opium wars" situation where the whole population becomes dumb and stop caring. (A bit like what tiktok and X are doing to use at the moment, but with much more social control.)
That's GWh and vanadium flow. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery</a>
Technological, manufacturing and energy advancements aside (congrats China on those), the pictures look beautiful. Amazing work from the photographer.
Same sentiment! The one photo from Mongolia is going as my desktop background
Came here to appreciate the same. Not only it <i>truly</i> captures the scale, but does it in a great way.
I would love to see photos like these from Australia too one day. We have so much inhospitable land that would be perfect for solar and wind farms. Suncable is trying to do this on a small(er than China) scale. We are just too politically confused and too deep in the belief that mining is the only thing we can do here.
> I would love to see photos like these from Australia too one day.<p>You may never see them. Not because we aren't adding renewables, but because South Australia was at about 80% renewable last year (average, not peak) so if you were going to get those sort of pictures anywhere in Australia, you would be getting them from SA now.<p>You probably don't see them because while the countries are about the same size in land area, but China has 50 times the population so it needs about 50 times more power.
I was just saying this to my colleagues after seeing these. Decades of political sabotage has done significant damage to our transition to renewables. I'm hopeful (perhaps a bit too wishful) that we'll see more of a push for renewables in the coming election cycles, but I'm staying realistic as the last 20 years of climate debate has been frankly shameful. At least rooftop solar is so ubiquitous.
I'm hopeful that the advent of the Teals might generate some momentum here. I believe there are some very large wind farms in progress across NSW too, which is good news. Home solar / battery installations also seem to be on the rise in low density areas (I don't have hard data to back that up though).<p>I'd also love to see solar panels on top of every Bunnings, Westfield, and other warehouses/complexes, as well as above every outdoor carpark, which would have the added bonus of preventing hand roasting in summer.
I love this. I recently found a few solar panels dumpster diving that put out a good load. Just basic scratches and that is all. I am building out my own system to power my house and in the next 2 years will be energy off grid in the city.
Also worth checking out some of the mega projects on Open Infrastructure Maps like this one in central China.<p><a href="https://openinframap.org/#9.12/36.0832/100.4215/A,B,L,P,S" rel="nofollow">https://openinframap.org/#9.12/36.0832/100.4215/A,B,L,P,S</a>
Meanwhile, in London, UK, local council doesn't allow you to put anything on your rooftop that doesn't gel with the Victorian look..
It's a big town. You might want to specify which of the 33 boroughs this stupid policy exists in. There's no problem with solar where I live.
Is your building listed or something? In most cases it doesn't require planning permission even in a conservation area, and some councils are actively installing them on council houses.
The UK is actually world leading in wind electricity generation (especially offshore). So it's not all bad.
Not quite accurate anymore. The UK was indeed the world leader from 2008 until around 2021, but has since fallen to second place behind China. China now has over 41 GW installed (>50% of global capacity), while the UK sits at ~15 GW (~22%). [1][2]<p>Still impressive for a country of that size, but "world leading" is technically no longer correct.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.renewableuk.com/energypulse/blog/uk-wind-and-global-offshore-wind-2024-in-review/" rel="nofollow">https://www.renewableuk.com/energypulse/blog/uk-wind-and-glo...</a>
[2] <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1489147/uk-offshore-wind-power-generation/" rel="nofollow">https://www.statista.com/statistics/1489147/uk-offshore-wind...</a><p>ps.: Per capita it's also not #1 — Denmark and the Netherlands both have higher offshore wind capacity per person.
I guess we are. But who are the plants owned by, who built the and where did the components come from, are we also switching them off because our grid cannot handle transmit huge volumes of renewable energy from Scotland to London, and turning on gas power plants to make up for it.<p>You also have situations, like today, where a German developer has handed back a seabed lease for 3GW of offshore power because they didn’t get a contract for power from government (CFD) and their lease fees are approx £400m/yr if they want to continue developing the windfarm. This is after spending £1B already on lease fees with nothing to show for it.
For more amusement, look to Limerick, in Ireland, whose council tried to mandate all new homes have chimney stacks.
In Ireland all the rooms came with a substantial hole in the wall, mandated in case you decided to put something like a kerosene heater in your room, although the heating was electical. I generally had to block them off to stop the wind whistling through.
Right - I think it was to handle Carbon monoxide (and general ventilation). If you look at part F here I think current regs are 6500 square mm for most rooms <a href="https://www.seai.ie/sites/default/files/publications/Domestic-Technical-Standards-and-Specifications.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.seai.ie/sites/default/files/publications/Domesti...</a><p>(TBF Irish standards have gotten much better for airtightness)
That's more for ventilation to prevent damp etc (Ireland has humidity issues). Modern houses typically have MVHR instead.
Power is quite literally power, in both the physical and political senses. The Chinese know this, and Europe is catching up fast. American private enterprise knows it too.<p>Battery storage isn't quite where it needs to be, yet, so there's still some need for fossil and nuclear power, but when it is, decommissioning the remaining fossil power system is a no-brainer, and those with the biggest existing solar and wind estates will benefit most, and fastest.
One of the solar farms is in a tidal flat. Are those solar panels meant to be waterproof? I’d imagine they may not last as long from sea salt exposure too.
That looks significantly more like a long-term energy strategy than grabbing oil from Venezuela and Greenland.
Greenland's appeal is more about expanding the US military's presence in the Arctic rather than petroleum.
If you think there is oil in Greenland I think you should not contribute to these types of discussion for lack of knowledge on the topic.
Was curious, so I did a 30 second search:<p><i>"The US Geological Survey estimates that onshore northeast Greenland (including ice-covered areas) contains around 31 billion barrels of oil-equivalent in hydrocarbons – similar to the US’s entire volume of proven crude oil reserves."</i><p>Source: <a href="https://theconversation.com/greenland-is-rich-in-natural-resources-a-geologist-explains-why-273022" rel="nofollow">https://theconversation.com/greenland-is-rich-in-natural-res...</a>
Chinas policy around energy works and it has allowed them to become the world’s engine for renewable power. They get the benefit of energy efficiency and being a critical trade partner for every country in the world.<p>My experience is that the UK (for example) doesn’t really know why it is building offshore wind. Is it to reduce bills to consumers (OFGEMS remit), is it to create local jobs in manufacturing (Clean Industry Bonus Scheme), is it to stimulate national wealth by ownership of projects (British Energy). It’s a mess unclear picture for me.<p>It would be nice if politicians could spend some time trying to work together, cross parties a come up with some sensible resolutions and long term plans instead of trying to score points for soundbites and clips.
One neat thing is that solar/wind farms can be multi-use. You can position panels to provide shade and wind-break to provide micro-climates for plants and animals.
They've got some impressive power cables too <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20241113-will-chinas-ultra-high-voltage-grid-pay-off-for-renewable-power" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20241113-will-chinas-ul...</a>
This is more or less what we thought the 21st century infrastructure would look like in the 20th century. The only minor detail is it was supposed to happen in this country first.
I like Musk's lens: the sun is 99.8% of the galaxy's total mass and over 99.99% of its energy production. Pretty straight-forward where you want to be getting your energy from.
For a German none of those photos are particularly remarkable or impressive.<p>Especially wind mills - they are all over the place. Outside of cities and forests it would be difficult to not see at least one ... and they like to flock.<p>For example:<p>- <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Energiepark+Witznitz+MOVE+ON+Energy/@51.1665991,12.4199912,3932m" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/maps/place/Energiepark+Witznitz+MOVE+...</a><p>- <a href="https://www.erneuerbareenergien.de/energieversorger/stadtwerke/onshore-windmarkt-enercity-kauft-365-mw-wind-portfolio-der-norderland-gruppe" rel="nofollow">https://www.erneuerbareenergien.de/energieversorger/stadtwer...</a><p>- <a href="https://www.erneuerbareenergien.de/energieversorger/stadtwerke/onshore-windmarkt-enercity-kauft-365-mw-wind-portfolio-der-norderland-gruppe" rel="nofollow">https://www.erneuerbareenergien.de/energieversorger/stadtwer...</a>
> Last year China installed more than half of all wind and solar added globally. In May alone, it added enough renewable energy to power Poland, installing solar panels at a rate of roughly 100 every second.<p>When did German achieve that?
Meanwhile the US is using its remaining carbon budget to bomb and burn in one last effort to expand its dying empire. Eventually this system will fall, and the west will realize they wasted all their energy (literally) on non-civilian hardware that needs massive amounts of cheap oil.
All this praise around China's buildout is just encouraging others ignore a problem to sell the solution. When the major nations started coming together to reduce emissions it was agreed that they would all aim to reduce emissions. However China did the opposite and purposefully scaled coal at record rates for nearly a decade and implemented no environmental regulations so as to outcomplete the nations who were transitioning and to be the ones to sell the solution. So now that its 2025 and they are finally starting to deploy some solar and wind im just not impressed. Its a dirty move and going forward I doubt we will see global trust in tackling these kind of problems again.
>it was agreed that they would all aim to reduce emissions<p>No, it was agreed during Kyoto that developed nations would reduce emissions, and developing nations (aka PRC, India) would not. Developing nations could keeping scaling fossil to industrialize until Paris where all countries had to submit climate plan (again not explicitly to reduce), and PRC's was to peak emissions by 2030s, which they're on trend to do early. PRC did what was legally permitted / agreed upon, and if developed nations want to cope / be butthurt and label following the agreement as dirty and not cooperate in the future global projects because they're not financial beneficiaries then that's on them. Also "some" solar and wind is ~ROW combined, which surely is very unimpressive.<p>> sell the solution<p>Selling solution to problems is solving problem, selling solutions to problems cheaply is solving said problem faster. As if developed economies did not decarbonize by selling clean tech solutions... which btw PRC bought. PRC simply doing globe a favor by selling real climate solutions at cost and scale that makes global difference, instead of scaling retarded paper solutions like carbon credits from countries that primarily scales spreadsheets.
Lots of this is right, but<p>> and PRC's was to peak emissions by 2030s<p>This appears to be wrong. Peak is supposed to be <i>before</i> 2030. They will not hit it.<p><a href="https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china/targets/" rel="nofollow">https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china/targets/</a>
On the one hand, the geometry is beautiful and almost serene; on the other, it's a reminder that decarbonization at this scale is still an industrial transformation of landscapes
So they ruined and polluted the natural landscape for "green energy" that is falsely sustainable and creates a ton of waste.<p>I'd prefer the nuclear route.<p>Solar panels require mining.<p>Wind turbine blades aren't recyclable because they're made of epoxy resin and fibreglass.
Uranium requires mining and is recyclable at most once (solar panels components are way better).<p>Recyclable wind turbines blades are appearing (RecyclableBlade, ZEBRA, PECAN...) and even existing ones (today, decommissioned blades are burned in cement plants, thus providing energy) may become so (check the 'CETEC initiative')
Your uranium grows on trees, mh?
Wow, pictures look great, well done Mr Weimin Chu
They are going for energy security. Not relying on middle eastern oil.<p>A lesson Europe could learn.
>A lesson Europe could learn.<p>We've learned that lesson. Not to toot our own horn too much but we to a large extent kickstarted the thing in Germany with very little reward for it. 50% of Europe's energy produced is now reneables[1]. China's progress is incredibly impressive, but they are also the largest consumer of middle eastern oil in the world. Not really to their own fault, countries are going to be dependent on oil for a long time to come. (it's used in many more things than energy production)<p>[1] <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20260114-1" rel="nofollow">https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...</a>
Americans keep drilling baby drilling for oil that is becoming less and less necessary
China is far more incentivized to champion renewable considering that they do not have the same access as the US. US is also on a path to quite literally invading other countries to extract crude and other resources. I don’t think China is in a position to do this, yet. If China invades Brunei or arrests Bolkiah, they will face irreversible repercussions.<p>All that said, I don’t think wind and solar are the answers. Geothermal and fusion will need to be the solution.
I think China is incentivised due to health effects of coal. "China's reliance on coal reduces life expectancy by 5.5 years" <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jul/08/northern-china-air-pollution-life-expectancy" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jul/08/northern...</a> etc.<p>I think it's a bit better now. I don't think invasions change that much.
>All that said, I don’t think wind and solar are the answers<p>Found the Oil & Gas lobbyist / apologist.<p>China might not have oil, but at least they are trying to figure something else out. Credit to them. Say what you want about The Party (I certainly have) but gotta give credit where and when its due. They have an interest in pushing alternative fuels, and by god they are doing it.
> Geothermal and fusion will need to be the solution.<p>China needs power NOW though.
What is the question to which fusion and geothermal is the answer? From a climate perspective those will come too late to aid our planet much until decades of further change, if fusion even comes at all.<p>Seems to me like wind solar batteries and nuclear are the answer, what’s actually being built now in a big way, not pie in the sky like fusion.
Fusion is the answer to "how can we extract R&D money for decades without ever actually delivering anything." There is little prospect it's going to be competitive, particularly DT fusion. The engineering/economic obstacles are profound even if all the plasma physics problems are solved. Most of the efforts being touted are obvious nonstarters.
You can get a lot of stationary batteries for a couple of trillion dollars.
I know nothing about the topic.
Although it seems a better alternative than coal or petrol, is it free of side effects for the nature?
I wonder if the heat that would be spread around the atmosphere and back to space can actually gradually serve as a trap for heat?<p>Does this question make any sense at all?
No it doesn't make sense. Every photon that hits the Earth is eventually either absorbed as heat, reflected back into space or both (eg. partially absorbed and partially re-emitted as lower energy photons.) There is no net global increase in heat from a wind turbine or solar panel. (There might be slight local shifts.)<p>The only way this could change net heat if it significantly altered the reflectivity of the surface, and in practice the affected area is too small to matter. As an exaggerated example, I found an article [1] that calculated the area that would need to be covered by solar panels to generate power equal the total global electricity consumption to be 115,625 square miles, approximately equal to the state of New Mexico.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.axionpower.com/knowledge/power-world-with-solar/" rel="nofollow">https://www.axionpower.com/knowledge/power-world-with-solar/</a>
> is it free of side effects for the nature?<p>What is free of side effects for "nature" ?
Sure, everything has downsides. Even breathing. But none of the alternatives have downsides that are as big as taking carbon from the soil and pumping it in an already stressed ecosystem.
Meanwhile POTUS has his head stuck in the sand [0]:<p>> “All you have to do is say to China, how many windmill areas do you have in China? So far, they are not able to find any. They use coal, and they use oil and gas and some nuclear, not much. But they don’t have windmills, they make them and sell them to suckers like Europe, and suckers like the United States before.”<p>One of the most factually BS statements ever.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattrandolph/2026/01/12/china-does-in-fact-have-wind-turbines-a-lot-of-them/" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattrandolph/2026/01/12/china-d...</a>
When you're not trying to act like the "richest" country in the world, the sensibility of asource of energy is a complete no-brainer.<p>Even though associated costs exist, a free source is the lowest of its kind you can find.
All I see is missed opportunities to build a bunch less nuclear power plants and call it a day, without messing up with the landscape. Am I the only one? I believe if we Europeans and Americans start building nuclear power plants again we could finally compete. Renewable energy is not constant and has a storage problem
I also lament the landscapes covered by solar panels. Even deserts are not dead barren ecosystems. Some of these installs are only slightly better than paving the whole area.<p>But I get it, and tradeoffs are necessary.<p>Another reason China may prefer this to more concentrated nuclear power is that is is much more distributed and resilient to targeted attacks.
If nuclear plants were as inexpensive as renewables, that would make a ton of sense.
At least half of people I talk to are strongly opposed to nuclear energy. How many are opposed to the current sources of energy as well? I wonder.
Agree they oppose nuclear, perhaps because of the fear of the unknown radiation or whatever. Reality is all nuclear incidents combined are nothing compared to the health problems oil and gas created(not to mention political implications). To me filling a giant space with solar panels or installing giant bird killing turbines is such a moronic move when you can have unnoticeable small nuclear power plants
Beautiful!
It is incredible to see just how many big-oil talking points there are in this thread. From renewable energies resource costs, to their land use impact. I didn't realise just how effective their propaganda was in the tech space till reading this thread. That is not to say that these projects should be free of criticism, but anyone who believes these negatives are remotely close to the damage that fossil fuels are doing needs to re-evaluate their world view.
I was just about to make precisely the same comment. The fear, uncertainty, and doubt about renewables here is ridiculous, and I expected better. I suppose everyone watched too much <i>Landman</i>.<p>China is rocketing ahead in every domain possible, from resource and financial independence, to infrastructure in terms of high-speed rail, bridges, roads, advanced fission reactors and bleeding-edge fusion research. Heavy industry like mining and processing, chemicals, ship-building.<p>Let's not even get into semiconductors. I fully expect them to achieve parity with TSMC before 2030 and surpass them shortly after.<p>Meanwhile, Western countries will say 'clean coal' or have a million different stakeholders squabble about where and how to build nuke power plants.
Whoa boy. I caught Landman for the first time today because my partner was watching it.<p>Oil, cigarettes and alcohol were all clearly being pushed and promoted. Pretty sure it was episode four where a women rather matter-of-factly stated that one alcoholic beverage when pregnant was perfectly fine - inso much that it was good because it helped her body generate breast milk. Such a weird statement to shoe-horn into this soap opera.<p>Coupled with BBT chain smoking the coffin nails, the rampant shit-canning of renewables and incessant self promotion of how large and wonderful the fossil fuel industry is the money behind the show was as subtle as a sledgehammer.<p>Plus the sexual objectification of women in this show is ludicrous.<p>It's 2026. It seems everything old is new again.<p>Oh, and the
I haven't seen Landman, but I have heard of it. My understanding is that all the characters are pretty miserable, but that it nonetheless weirdly glorifies their lifestyles.<p>I guess it is a bit like François Truffaut's statement that there are no "anti-war films". I imagine if some population segment has chosen to identify with a particular lifestyle (oilman, soldier, gangster, etc.) then it doesn't really matter quite how that lifestyle is portrayed so long as the viewer can make a connection with it.
never heard of this show, I wonder who produces it<p>oh Paramount<p>the ones that just decimated CBS News, put talentless propagandist Bari Weiss in charge, and censored a critical report on human rights abuses ordered by POTUS<p>all running on Oracle (tm)
With China's huge resources both natural and human it's only expected that China will again reclaim its position as the leading country in science, technology, production and generally everything.<p>If you assume that .5% of population are "einsteins" then China has 7.5m einsteins who are now able to access universities and advance sciences whether it's AI or solar power or self driving cars.<p>There's no doubt about the fact that the future belongs to China.<p>There's just no way to deny this. The economical and political power will shift to China.
China draws mainly on the talents of the best of its billion+ population. But America has had its pick of the best of the world's 8 billion people. We are taking a break now, but starting 2029 America will resume having its pick of the best.
> but starting 2029 America will resume having its pick of the best<p>Your current government seems determined to make sure this won't happen.
US is a crumbling democracy with crumbling infrastructure and society. I just hope while it goes down it doesn't take the rest of the planet with it.
And in 2032 everyone just crosses their fingers this doesn't happen again? Unless 2029 includes a structural overhaul of the entire government I really don't see how the US regains it's status as the capital of the world. We are doing everything in our power to permenantly isolate ourselves from the rest of the world at the moment. Attacking a nato state, even threatening to attack a nato state really, is not something everyone will overlook in a years time. The wheels are turning now to divest from the us.
> There's just no way to deny this.<p>Of course there is "way".<p>All the above above in itself sounds like propaganda. You forget other political (authoritarian system making massive mistakes), demographic (1.0, probably less in reality, birth per woman), psychological (disillusioned young population), and geographic (food and other imports) aspects, among other things.
Especially since the US is not going to have any allies anymore soon.
Landman is fascinating because it goes out of its way to bring up valid claims about renewables or criticisms of oil/gas but then spits an insane amount of propaganda and lies at you in quick succession to falsely "debunk" these criticisms or sweep them under the rug. This is definitely not being done for the character's benefit in the show, so its quite impressive how effectively and frequently its tossed in there.
> I suppose everyone watched too much Landman.<p>No, too much Fox "News".
I expect China to overbuild and the west to underbuild.
Overbuilding energy doesn't seem like a problem, if Jevon's paradox applies to ANYTHING, it applies to energy.
I know which error I’d prefer to be making.
You say that and OpenAI is signing compute deals in excess of 20X current revenues.
Good point. Reality is more nuanced than simple overbuilding and underbuilding. Still, we aren't really still building enough housing and mass transit infrastructure.<p>That may hamper us more than anything else. If AI proves to be as beneficial as its proponents hyped, the economic gains will just mostly get soaked up by landowners. Even UBI won't save us, because it will just get absorbed by landowners. Ditto for renewable energy.
The EU is moving towards 50% sustainable with lots of countries that at 60-75%, while the USA is at 25%.<p>Europe is also at least a decade ahead.<p>And since renewable + batteries is now cheaper than nuclear, we should spend our money and time wisely.
> And since renewable + batteries is now cheaper than nuclear, we should spend our money and time wisely.<p>Eggs in one basket. Renewables are good, but it gets cloudy, it becomes night, it might not be windy. Nuclear will output power come rain or shine, and like I said, it's not like China <i>isn't</i> investing in advanced fission. They're throwing money at <i>everything</i> to see what sticks. They're working on SMRs, molten salt, thorium, and more.
It's two orders of magnitude difference between renewables and nuclear though. China commissioned about 3GW of nuclear and almost 300GW of solar last year.
> Eggs in one basket. Renewables are good, but it gets cloudy, night is a thing, it might not be windy<p>Also, we can't survive an asteroid crash/extinction event with solar.<p>Nuclear is transcedental.
If we had practically unlimited fusion power, we could build underground, grow plants in aquaponics and aeroponics and ride it out in underground cities and farms.
> Also, we can't survive an asteroid crash/extinction event with solar.<p>Maybe tell the Chinese they have it wrong and are risking extinction.
> unlimited fusion power<p>This is pie-in-the-sky, by-and-by fantasy. Fusion's sole accomplishment is likely to be making fission look cheap in comparison.<p>Just because something became a science fiction trope doesn't mean it's actually going to be a part of the future.
One of the problems with nuclear is, um, it's ability <i>to</i> cause an "extinction event". Sort of.<p>In that:<p>* Nuclear power plant failures can be very, very nasty. As in, "producing uninhabitable land for eons" nasty. Yes, dam failures are spectacularly nasty, too (but don't create unlivable land as much). Yes, fossil fuel power plants also are quite bad in a "more silent way" via pollution (plus the occasional centuries-burning coal mine fires etc.). All power sources have problems. But this is a pretty big negative.<p>* What this means is that big centralized nuclear is also a big target for rogue actors... similar to dams, but <i>not</i> similar to more distributed energy sources like solar or wind. Blowing up a single solar farm or windmill doesn't have a huge impact, relatively speaking, compared to blowing up a nuclear plant. Nuclear plants thus have to spend extra expense protecting themselves against this sort of thing. (And, in the United States at least, classify much of the process of doing so.)<p>* Nuclear power plants can also be used to produce nuclear weapons. Now this is where the <i>really</i> fun politics begins. Many countries would be really unhappy if their adversary countries start making nuclear weapons from their nuclear power plants. A lot of military stuff has been spent over the last decades trying to prevent such.<p>This last point is where China's solar panel play actually makes more sense compared to nuclear. Think of the politics involved if China builds a big nuclear point in (insert adversary of some other country here). Could be very, very tricky in many cases. Whereas, there is very little if any politics involved with shipping a solar panel somewhere.<p>The distributed, small scale nature of solar panels also means that customers in countries with poor centralized power grids (common in developing countries) are able to use them to bypass the current system. This happened previously in many of these countries with mobile phones, where customers were able to bypass poor centralized phone networks. In this aspect, I think the "decentralized" aspect is far more important than the "renewable" aspect... but still.<p>(There are positives to nuclear, of course; I'm mainly countering the "transcendental" word here. All power sources have plusses and minuses.)<p>(Note: I have heard of work on smaller scale nuclear systems, but I am not certain if even a small nuclear power device completely resolves political or security concerns.)
Fusion will be its own extinction event as things go. At our development level, if we develop fusion, we'll have to live underground after boiling the oceans to generate crypto tokens and undress videos.<p>The asteroid is just science unlikely fiction.
There's words like "cloudy", and then there's proper simulation studies which demonstrate that these concerns are unfounded.
Okay... and? I'm not saying 'let's only do nuclear, and not bother about wind/solar/tidal'. I'm saying there is plenty of money to go around, and it doesn't hurt to spend some of that to diversify our power generation and have some reliable, non-polluting, highly power-dense, high-tech base load (nuclear) that can be quickly throttled to meet demand, and is generally resistant to most environmental conditions.<p>The Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, French, British, and even Singaporean[1] (of all places, one might expect a tiny equatorial city-state to be the <i>last</i> place to think about nuclear, but it is all the same, because nuclear is <i>ridiculously</i> power-dense) governments seem to agree with me.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/singapore-seriously-considering-nuclear-energy" rel="nofollow">https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/singapore-seriou...</a>
> Eggs in one basket. Renewables are good, but it gets cloudy, it becomes night, it might not be windy.<p>That's two baskets right there.
> it becomes night, it might not be windy.<p>That's where long distance interconnects come into play.
Nuclear isn't getting built at any significant scale in the US after Vogtle. We might get a couple of plants opened up (like 3MI) but large scale new buildouts aren't happening until SMRs are available at scale. Anything else is an Internet fantasy.
> Renewables are good, but it gets cloudy, it becomes night, it might not be windy<p>...which is why China has 40 000 km of UHV transmission lines forming a vast network to move the energy from where it is abundant to where it is needed. They have 8 new UHV projects that started in 2024 or 2025 that will add another 10 000 km.
If they're cheaper than nuclear, why is the AI crowd looking to nuclear for data centers?<p>I can think of two possible reasons: (1) it's America, and it's very hard to build anything, and nuclear is smaller and fits on site, and (2) we have an administration openly hostile to solar and wind energy for political "vibes" reasons.<p>Vibes are dumb. I think looking back this is going to be seen as an age of people deciding based more on vibes, which ultimately comes down to tribal dog whistles, than reason.
NVIDIA wants to run on 100% renewable electricity and already does so: <a href="https://nvidia.com/en-us/sustainability/" rel="nofollow">https://nvidia.com/en-us/sustainability/</a><p>OpenAI bets on SMRs (now an ectoplasm, check NuScale...) and solar arrays: <a href="https://cdn.openai.com/global-affairs/openai-doe-rfi-5-7-2025.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://cdn.openai.com/global-affairs/openai-doe-rfi-5-7-202...</a> , and drives breakthroughs on renewable energy: <a href="https://openai.com/index/strengthening-" rel="nofollow">https://openai.com/index/strengthening-</a>
americas-ai-leadership-with-the-us-national-laboratories/<p>Microsoft: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/microsoft-qcells-strike-massive-supply-deal-us-made-solar-panels-2024-01-08/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/micros...</a><p>Alphabet (Google) buys 'Intersect' which "delivers ((...)) infrastructure for data centers and other energy-intensive industries by co-locating industrial demand with dedicated gas and renewable power generation". 4.75 billion USD.
<a href="https://abc.xyz/investor/news/news-details/2025/Alphabet-Announces-Agreement-to-Acquire-Intersect-to-Advance-U-S--Energy-Innovation-2025-DVIuVDM9wW/default.aspx" rel="nofollow">https://abc.xyz/investor/news/news-details/2025/Alphabet-Ann...</a>
See if they've actually committed money in a serious way, not in a "if you can actually achieve this absurdly low price point we'll buy it" way.
> If they're cheaper than nuclear, why is the AI crowd looking to nuclear for data centers?<p>They're looking for credulous investors in the nuclear startups they founded?
America is stuck in its past, specifically the 1950s-1960s.
And it's aiming to go further back.
That would be nice. It looks more like the early 1900s with naked imperialism and crony capitalism right now. Possibly staring down the barrel of a 1930s economic collapse.
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>It is incredible to see just how many big-oil talking points there are in this thread. From renewable energies resource costs, to their land use impact. I didn't realise just how effective their propaganda was in the tech space till reading this thread.<p>What makes this more valid than something like "it's incredible how many YIMBY talking points there are" in a thread about housing, aside from you agreeing with the YIMBYs? Is "talking points" just a roundabout way to summarily dismiss the opposition's arguments and imply they're dumb/misguided?
Oil and gas have used, between drilling and refining, over 7 million acres of land in just the US. Yes, it provides more electricity, but at the cost of destroying the entire planet's biosphere, global warming, etc.<p>Current US estimates for solar land usage are 500,000 acres.<p>The land use arguments are bunk. Anyone who complains is repeating oil and gas propaganda.
> Is "talking points" just a roundabout way to summarily dismiss the opposition's arguments and imply they're dumb/misguided?<p>It is. I've read <i>dozens</i> of comments like this on HN, and repeatedly see the "it's incredible that...", "talking points"/"propaganda", and "wow look at how much bad stuff there is in this thread"/"I'm so disappointed in HN" memes, and <i>every single time</i> it's because the author is trying to dismiss the opposition's arguments without responding to them individually and actually addressing their points.<p>This kind of thing clearly fits into the "sneering" category of things that aren't allowed on HN and so is valid for flagging. I do it and I highly encourage anyone else to do it who wants to preserve the culture of HN.
> Is "talking points" just a roundabout way to summarily dismiss the opposition's arguments and imply they're dumb/misguided?<p>For me, yes it is. It wouldn't if policy discussions were purely technical and well informed. In the arena of public discourse they aren't. The majority of the population (including HN) is tribal, ideologically biased, emotionally driven and badly informed. Public discourse, particularly in America, is contaminated by propaganda of established economic powers (i.e.: Big Oil, Big Pharma, Tech companies). They can easily advance their talking points because they have much more economic resources for propaganda and lobbying.<p>I agree that, eventually, most people will discover that oil & coal are doomed and destroying the world. Reality has a way to force itself into ideologies.<p>But that will take a long time. I need truth and certainty now.
You don’t consider<p><i>that oil & coal are doomed and destroying the world</i><p>to be green-agenda talking points?
At the moment most who are chasing the green agenda are learning that it’s not reliable. Germany for I instance can’t even figure out where their power comes from and their grid is an absolute mess. They are busy destroying their nuclear power plants and coal plants while prices are skyrocketing and reliability is disappearing and systems are failing. The propaganda of the green is winning at the cost of people’s lives.
Why is that a failure of the green agenda as opposed to a failure of Germany?<p>Edit: I don't have the facts about reliability of green energy (though you didn't provide any evidence against it either), but it's clear the "not knowing where your energy comes from", "having messy grid" and "not investing in nuclear" are unrelated to renewable energy.
Germany's grid is an absolute mess because their nat gas pipelines have been cut off. Renewables are preventing a worse disaster, saving their limited LNG storage capacity to cover for dankelflautes.
It's kind of bizarre to see the far right and far left circle to the same misguided big oil conclusions, although for different reasons. The right doesn't want their traditional oil/coal industries threatened. The left is kind of... just against the continued growth of technology/industry/humanity.
Fossil fuel could be heading for a big cliff where most countries that currently import a lot of oil/gas will be year on year reducing their imports. China is ahead of the curve here and is already importing less oil year on year. That's likely going to spread. If you extrapolate growth curves trending up for EVs a few years you can draw similar curves for oil demand trending down.<p>We can speculate about how quick/slow all this will progress. But it's worth pointing out that e.g. IEA, EIA and similar institutes have been repeatedly wrong and overly pessimistic with their predictions for things like adoption and cost of renewables. People are still basing policy and important decisions on their reports. So this matters. The "What if they are wrong, again?" question might have some uncomfortable answers if you are betting on them not being wrong.<p>A lot of developing markets are skipping oil/gas/coal completely and are going straight to renewables. They are not first building a grid using coal/gas plants but working around what little they have in terms of unreliable grid by going straight for solar/batteries and microgrids. That's a pattern you see all over parts of Africa with historically very little/flaky power infrastructure and countries like Pakistan. These are growth economies showing much quicker economical growth than the world average. That's going to spread.<p>Lots of countries are going to be decimating their oil/gas imports over the next 20 years. That includes transport and power generation. They'll be installing wind/solar/batteries and buying lots of EVs. Fossil fuel usage won't go all the way to zero. But it won't stay at current levels or anywhere close to that. Some countries will be faster some will be slower. Being slower isn't necessarily good for economies.<p>Good advice here is to take an economic point of view and be aware of things like growth trends, cost curves, learning effects, technological changes, etc. You don't have to be an early adopter or believer. But there's a lot of data out there that supports an optimistic view. And a lot of pessimistic wishful thinkers that are not really looking at data or just cherry picking reports that support their believes. The fossil fuel industry sponsors a lot of reports research. And they are about as trust worthy as the Tobacco industry is when it comes to the pros/cons of smoking. That's why the IEA and EIA keeps getting it wrong. It helps to understand who pays for their reports (hint: fossil fuel companies and countries that depend on those).<p>A healthy personal perspective is maybe considering what happens if your pension fund bets on fossil fuel and that cliff I mentioned turns out to be very real in about 10-20 years. Because if you bet wrong, that affects the value of that. Before you knee jerk to an answer, take a close look at what institutional investors have actually been doing for a while. Hint: coal plants were written off as good investments ages ago and gas plants aren't looking much better at this point. I think you'll see them move on oil funds next.
Your point about developing markets resonates for me in a different area. Instead of layering mobile phones on top of landlines, many developing markets went straight to mobile phones. Another thing to consider is that solar/wind is an incremental expansion of power capacity, versus the "big bang" expansion of nuclear capacity.<p>To your point about the fossil fuel cliff, I think it was either a Bloomberg or Forbes article that discussed how China's deep involvement in the EV/battery/solar/wind Expansion in dozens of countries around the world gives it a chance to put a serious dent in oil consumption as well as locking American interests out of developing markets.
It's incredibly how common it is these days to see valid criticism dismissed as "X talking points" or "Y dog whistle". I guess that's easier than providing an argument.
Criticism is healthy. False equivalence isn't.
Really? I don't think I have a dog in this hunt but my judgement of comments is that it's maybe 70/30 (with the 30 being critical in one way or the other) and anyone critical is getting down voted to oblivion.<p>That said "you're just repeating what you're told" is a comforting argument but doesn't go all that far.
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And a talking point in the other direction is to refer to people as "boomers".
In case you haven't noticed, it's the non-thinkers of all generations who willingly bury their head in the sand.<p>Most people don't normally think it's the boomers in particular unless their powers of observation are somewhat limited.<p>Which is understandable, you don't reach maturity overnight.<p>Edit: not my downvote btw
I'm not disagreeing with you so much but<p>> Most people don't normally think it's the boomers in particular<p>Interesting because most of the critiques, especially to electric cars come from boomers. Also to Solar and Wind, the kind of silly criticism like "Why are we filling our barely-arable lands with Solar?!"<p>Now we'll watch how the European car manufacturers get swallowed by Chinese electrical manufacturers.
Oh, what a weak argument: "you've just fallen for the propaganda".<p>You might notice comments simply arguing for less energy usage are buried at the bottom too. Have you considered whether you may have fallen for the "green" propaganda? It's so predictable after all.<p>Two wrongs don't make a right. We look back and curse our ancestors for their unbridled use of fossil fuels. Who is to say future generations won't look back and curse us for destroying all wilderness?
Do you have ANY datapoints or arguments to underpin that renewables "destroy all wilderness". Or even more that they are worse than fossil fuels? This claim - especially in your harsh tone - could need at least some reason.
> We look back and curse our ancestors for their unbridled use of fossil fuels. Who is to say future generations won't look back and curse us for destroying all wilderness?<p>I curse my ancestors for destroying all wilderness to get at fossil fuels.
Ok, I'll bite. What if solar panels turn into breeding grounds with perfect environmental temperatures to create viruses that kill us all? Who is to say the sun won't blow up tomorrow? Why not enumerate all the things that might happen to distract? There is a nice quote going around re a weather scientists who gets asked annually what's it going to be like this year? He's tired, and notes "this year, and every year for the rest of your life is going to be the hottest ever." That's in large part to oil, full stop.
Yes fracking wells are <i>famously</i> harmless to the environment.<p>Right.
Those big oil comments are in your head. The comments here, not cheering, are nowhere near parroting any Big Oil talking point. God forbid that we have an actual conversation.
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If the US ever blocks Chinese ports the lights will be kept on. Although I'm sure that situation will end with a mushroom cloud.
It would be interesting to see how Carrier Strike groups fare against hypersonic weapons, as well as witnessing what the modern fighting doctrine is when there is no absolute air superiority.
Or massive industrial hacking that destroys enough transportation, farming, and supply chain integration that there is mass starvation when food delivery and production stalls - and it all comes crumbling down.
Depressing to look at.
Not as depressing as if it was coal power stations and coalmines blighting the landscape.
You mean in context of a complete regression in the West, right?
No, they are beautiful.
> Heidu Mountain Scenic Area<p>Not so scenic any more... I get it, electricity good, but man are we destroying places just to get this stuff. In the UK I reckon within my lifetime it won't be possible to go to the sea any more. I mean, the sea how it used to be, without wind turbines in it. Fossil fuels gave us too much. If only we could figure out how to want less.
My local beaches on the Yorkshire coast have some of the biggest wind farms in the world.<p>We’re never going to reduce energy consumption. It’s a balance between gas and wind here, just pick how many wind turbines you want, and burn gas to fill in the gaps.<p>Your ruined horizon is my safer future for my kids. I like seeing them there. I wish there were more.
I think there is reason to think that we will reduce energy consumption.<p>US energy consumption per capita peaked in 1975 and has trended down even as population has increased. There's going to be a peak in global population, likely before 2100 (and it keeps getting revised sooner, not later).<p>So it stands to reason that as we become more energy efficient (already happening) and we start to have fewer people on earth (likely to happen in your/ your children's lifetime) that overall consumption will in fact go down.
Every generation thinks they're building a safer future for their kids, including the boomers. If you want to talk about safety then you need to take sustainability seriously.
In the US, "Boomers" made the environmental movement mainstream, created the EPA, started cleanup of superfund sites, and passed the clean water and clean air acts. There are waterways where I live that are swimmable for the first time in generations because of the Boomers. It's not an either/or proposition.
Fossil fuels have destroyed far more places than renewable energy's land coverage ever will.
Less scenic, sure. But still beautiful.<p>I would rather they not have to be built in the first place. Yet, this is unfortunately the price we must pay today for not reducing our carbon emissions yesterday.<p>Had we taken a serious effort to do something in, say the mid nineties when the scientific community reached a large consensus regarding the major contributors of climate change it had been less urgent to do something now thirty years later and we would have had a much longer time for the academies and industry to research and improve performance of non-fossil energy production and do the same for energy using applications.<p>It's not the renewables which are to blame, because if we continue to burn fossil fuels the way we do then these places will either soon be destroyed, or nobody can appreciate them due to civilisational collapse.
> I reckon within my lifetime it won't be possible to go to the sea any more. I mean, the sea how it used to be, without wind turbines in it<p>I didn't know they were so big that you can't fit in the sea anymore. /s
Why aren't we doing it in the rest of the world as well?
The rest of the world is, in fact, doing it as well.
Basically everyone is except the USA
Country of facades and shortcuts. None of those are plugged in to anything, just a propaganda piece. They paint rocks green
Wouldn't it be better to just go with nuclear? Isn't this a gigantic waste of space and overhead to maintain it? And how "renewable" are the materials used to produce these?
They've got a huge amount of space, solar has a low cost and provides an additional consumer to build out yet more capacity for supplying the world.<p>> Wouldn't it be better to just go with nuclear<p>If this is legit : <a href="https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/china-nuclear-power" rel="nofollow">https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...</a> then they have 59 reactors right now with 37 currently in production. Wikipedia lists 62 reactors being built in the world in total, and 28 of them being in China. The amount of power those additional plants will generate will take them from third in the world to second this year (wikipedia) and in total would pass the US when built.<p>They're not slouching on nuclear, they're ramping up energy production at an incredible pace on a lot of fronts.
Which leads to a shrinking nuclear share in their grid. It peaked at 4.6% in 2021, now down to 4.3%.<p>Compared to their renewable buildout the nuclear scheme is a token gesture to keep a nuclear industry alive if it would somehow end up delivering cheap electricity. And of course to enable their military ambitions.
> how "renewable" are the materials used to produce these<p>Very renewable. Solar panels are mostly glass, silicon and a little bit of metal. And they last ~30 years. Wind turbine blades are made out of fiberglass or similar materials. They may need replacing every ~30 years as well.<p>Other infrastructure would not need any significant maintenance for even longer.<p>These kind of power plants, apart from being renewable, have <i>very</i> low running costs. And that is the point.<p>Of course their production is very variable and therefore they cannot be used as the only power source. So e.g. nuclear power plants are still needed to back them up.<p>I think it is very rational to build as much power plants that are cheap to run. And back it up with nuclear or other power plants that are expensive to run but which can cover for time when the production of renewables is low.
I don't think the characterisation of this as waste of space is correct. There's a growing body of research suggesting that solar panels are compatible with grazing animals and farming, and the wind farms don't really stop usage of the space unless you are planning to go ballooning.
> Wouldn't it be better to just go with nuclear?<p>Only if you want the spicy radioisotopes. For some people that's a benefit, for others that's a problem.<p>Who controls the spice, controls the ~~universe~~ nuclear deterrent.<p>If all you care about is price, the combination of PV and batteries is already cheaper, and builds out faster.<p>> Isn't this a gigantic waste of space and overhead to maintain it?<p>No. Have you seen how big the planet is? There's enough land for about 10,000 times current global power use.<p>If your nation has a really small land area, e.g. Singapore, then you do actually get to care about the land use; China is not small, they don't need to care.<p>> And how "renewable" are the materials used to produce these?<p>Worst case scenario? Even if they catch fire, that turns them into metal oxides which are easier to turn back into new PV than the original rocks the same materials came out of in the first place.<p>Unlike coal, where the correct usage is to set them on fire and the resulting gas is really hard to capture, and nuclear, where the correct usage is to emit a lot of neutrons that make other things radioactive.
<a href="https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Power-Play-The-Economics-Of-Nuclear-Vs-Renewables" rel="nofollow">https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Power-Play-The-Economics-...</a>:<p><i>“According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the LCOE for advanced nuclear power was estimated at $110/MWh in 2023 and forecasted to remain the same up to 2050, while solar PV estimated to be $55/MWh in 2023 and expected to decline to $25/MWh in 2050. Onshore wind was $40/MWh in 2023 and expected to decline to $35/MWh in 2050 making renewables significantly cheaper in many cases. Similar trends were observed in the report for EU, China and India.”</i><p>I think the only thing that may be able to beat this is nuclear fusion, and that’s hypothetical at the moment.<p>And even that may be undesirable. If fusion requires huge plants, it may put power (literally and figuratively) into only a few hands.<p>Recycling of solar panels and glass-fiber wings is an issue, though.
The cheapest solar auction to date was $13 per MWh (middle east) - so utility solar in the best regions is already very very cheap. When you add 4hr batteries, it's still competitive with CCG gas - in the $50 range.<p>The cost models for first generation fusion plants show ¬$400 per MWh - it will take a while for them to get to reasonable cost levels.<p>Recycling of mono-crystalline solar (the dominant tech today) and modern turbine blades are solved problems.
There is good reason to think fusion (particularly DT fusion) would be even more expensive than fission.
Take too long time and cost.
I honestly perplexed by the fethism towards Nuclear Power Plants. Have you seen the delay and bloating cost of Olkiluoto, Flamanville and Vogtle?<p>Nuclear Power Plants are only good too spread the cost of maintaining strategic nuclear jobs and industry and some hope that nuclear space propulsion could be available later.
PRC Solar is cheaper (LCOE) than nuclear, more distributed, faster to build. Western PRC with good solar is mostly empty/depopulated (2/3 of PRC with 80% of solar/wind potential has like 5% of population, it's empty). Easy to install, lots of transferrable skills from general construction (vs nuclear workforce). Real estate crack down = lots of lower skilled blue collar installing solar as jobs program. Serendipitous synergy. PRC installed renewable capacity exceeds energy required to manufacture same equipment on GW basis, functionally makes production of entire sector carbon neutral/sink, as in will displace more fossil than used in production and sink after. Obviously manufacture works off grid mix, including coal, but broad point is every panel going to save more emissions vs embodied carbon payback through life cycle. There's also plans for recycling / recover materials for circular economy.
This construction of wind and solar has nothing to do with renewable, and everything to do with China's desire to get as much electricity generation as possible, which involves increasing nuclear, coal, hydro, and everything else.[1]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China</a>
> Wouldn't it be better to just go with nuclear?<p>But for economics. Renewables are simply the cheapest option for generation.<p>For reduced land use, and hence reduced impacts (overall) on the environment and agriculture, nuclear wins hands down. But decades-long lead times, radioactive waste disposal, encumbering safety regulations, water supply etc. etc. etc. are problems you don't have with renewables.
If it was 2.5-3x cheaper, sure. But alas.
Nuclear still have to deal with nuclear waste.<p>> gigantic waste of space<p>Good thing China isn’t running out of space
Only if you have a fetish for wasting money.
There's two big parts of the earth that are uninhabitable because of nuclear.<p>Anyway, they are going with nuclear too.
Why can't you do both? Why does it always have to be either or?
How renewable is uranium?
The problem is that it is extremely expensive and takes a very long time to build.<p>The supply chain for nuclear power, including fuel from mining to waste storage, is not tiny either.
China is has most of its population further south than either USA or Europe. Solar makes much more sense there than in those locations.<p>Furthermore, by stimulating production of solar and wind related products with domestic consumption, the Chinese state has effectively captured absolute majority share of production across the entire supply chain. This is incredibly useful, when developed countries roll out subsidies for clean power.<p>Since there are no manufacturers that can match those in China in both price and volume. The bulk of subsidies is used to buy Chinese produced equipment.<p>At the same time, China is also investing in nuclear technology, and deploying far faster than anywhere in the world.
We are so done, and are going to be forced to instead fight the rest of the world for the remaining oil left if we don’t wake up. It may even be too late.
I find the idea of blanketing mountainous wilderness in relatively short-lived e-waste just awful. Surely there are much better terrains for solar panels?
Modern solar panels last around 30 years, so I wouldn't exactly call it "short-lived".<p>Economically, I'm sure the locations chosen were optimal. You'd imagine that actual mountainous wilderness would be a much more expensive terrain to blanket with solar panels, compared to flat areas. If there were other choices, economically they'd better options.
Given the vast amount of flat, well-lit terrain within the borders of China, it should be clear that the pictured projects (and the other "blanket a mountain in solar panels" projects that are easily discoverable) are not about the economics of power generation.
Bring back those big beautiful chimeys, burning their beautiful coal and blanketing us in the warm glorious embrace of soot and fly ash.
In this particular case I believe the mountain is largely karst (limestone) and the panels substantially reduced erosion -- particularly of soil -- leading to an increase in fauna that thrive in the shade.<p>As others have said, it's hardly waste, it's an installation with a 30-year lifespan.
Still much better and lower impact than whatever the fuck we'd been doing for the past 200 years
Yes let us wait for an optimal aesthetic solution for another 50 years while we choke on our own fumes. Plenty of time to rearrange the deck chairs.
Beautiful pictures. To be clear: China runs on coal and will for the foreseeable future.<p><a href="https://www.iea.org/countries/china" rel="nofollow">https://www.iea.org/countries/china</a><p><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-by-country-terawatt-hours-twh?tab=line&country=~CHN&mapSelect=~CHN" rel="nofollow">https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-by-count...</a>