One of the things that COVID make crystal clear to me is that radical changes for the better are much more straightforward than people think, and the only reason they don't happen is the people in charge couldn't be bothered.<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/chinas-solar-industry-losses-balloon-falling-prices-2025-08-26/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/chinas...</a><p>There is no excuse for every government in the world to not be covering every bit of rooftop or scrap land with solar. China is losing money on panels at the moment they have such production capacity. Its free money for anyone country who wants to do it.
It's extremely inefficient to put solar on buildings, especially compared to utility-scale installations in a field
Why is it so bad? Idk about buildings but I always thought putting them over parking lots would be a good idea since it would provide shade for the cars. I feel like only using it in empty fields has it's own downsides and getting mixed used purpose could be good, but I won't pretend to have thought through this.
To be fair. The government tried in my country, and it completely backfired. Because the power grid cannot handle the current load anymore. We've had more frequent blackouts because of it.<p>Because of this issue, starting next year I will be paying my power company money for surplus solar energy that I give back. Unfortunately, batteries are expensive and impractical to install in our houses.<p>So now, it's not that popular to buy solar panels unless you can also immediately finance the batteries.
I don't know what your exact situation is, but for some people you can consider other "battery" options. Almost everyone needs heat in some way (hot water, space heating) so if you're making a lot of excess electricity you could get an electric resistance hot water heater. It can be used to pre-heat your hot water before entering your main hot water tank, or be used to loop through your residence for hydronic heating.<p>This wouldn't be for everyone but there are other options to chemical batteries depending on whats easy for you to do.
It didn't backfire, the easy sensible solutions were ignored for 15 years until a problem was caused.<p>And they get away with it because people are so willing to believe ridiculous lies like this. Their newspapers have told them "this is a problem" nearly daily for years. Any problem can immediately be blamed on renewables with no need to wait for expert input. A triumph of propaganda.
Genuine question, because I am pretty ignorant to European laws; if you're producing so much excess that selling it back would actually cost you money, wouldn't this be a pretty good case for something akin to those Tesla Powerwalls?<p>Not necessarily that brand specifically but something similar?
> if you're producing so much excess that selling it back would actually cost you money, wouldn't this be a pretty good case for something akin to those Tesla Powerwalls?<p>Yes, I mentioned that in my comment. They are quite an investment, and they're impractical to place in many houses. So it's not always an option. I personally have the space. But there's some ongoing projects that make it impossible for me to currently install them.
Why are you giving it "back"? I'd stop immediately if I had to pay. Can you not set your inverter to "zero-export"?
You can, and that is what's going to happen. We gave back because we used to get reimbursed for it. But it's essentially going to get flipped around now.<p>I honestly have no clue how I can configure my inverter, there is zero option to configure on my end. So I'd probably have to get the installer here to set that up. The panels were already on my house.
Netherlands? The problem here is that they incentivised putting solar on peoples roofs, but forgot to increase the capacity of our grid for this completely predictible change.<p>Thank Mark Rutte and his short sightedness.
Yup, Netherlands.<p>Kept pushing for renewables and more electrical dependency. And then oops, sorry, the infrastructure can't handle it.
Frequent blackouts? In NL? There were maybe two regional ones in the last year that I can remember. It's all relative of course, but if you offered that level of service to someone in SA they would be extremely happy.
would solar + a house battery not help with grid congestion? Seems like it would mean less power transmitted overall.
It really sucks because there is a technical solution to this (load dumping) but I don't think most non-battery controllers support that
Meanwhile the motorways are untolled and public transit fares rise.
I very much think nobody can be bothered, not just the people in charge. We're all the same people and if there was an actual want by the regular person, the ones in charge in most of the world would be influenced enough to either want it too or have to do something
I, along with many other people, have fitted solar panels on my roof, installed a battery in my loft and replaced my gas boiler with a heat pump. Lots of people are bothered.
I bet you had to fight the government or give away some of your produced energy to them to get it done.
No: in Scotland I got a subsidy for the heat pump install capital cost, and I'm on the old feed in tariff scheme that pays me for every unit of energy produced. Including, oddly, energy I consume myself.<p>It's not so advantageous for new installs because the point of awkwardness in the UK has switched to storage. It's currently possible for some battery owners to make money from arbitrage because the grid hasn't bought enough batteries and north/south links yet.
Not the person your replied to, but I'm in the same position.<p>No? Unless you consider an HOA the government. Why would the make this hard? I now quite a few that will subsidize it. Fill in some paperwork, submit it along with the invoice and wait a few weeks/months for some free money back.
I believe the nobody can be bothered is a figure of speech, meaning: way too little.<p>Unluckily, your noble and exceptional on a global but even on a national scale efforts are not pulling that CO2 chart down.
Olson's Theory of Collective action explains why this isn't true.<p>Concentrated interests can defeat popular movements. It fits the facts very neatly.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_theory" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_theory</a>
Romantic model of people being heard. 500M speaks more than a single vote. Its a shame. This already disproves your model - however, we should move towards it!
Wasn't the complete worldwide failure to anything about COVID exactly a high speed analogue io how we've also failed to do anything about climate change?
Sort of, but there is a crucial difference: the lockdowns affected the treats. There is nothing about a rapid rollout of renewable energy in the US and elsewhere that would threaten the supply of McNuggets, the main thing people would see is their energy bills go down as they get plentiful daytime solar and can charge house batteries on cheaper night rates.
A big one. We just need to look at the noaa.gov CO2 chart.<p><a href="https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/global.html" rel="nofollow">https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/global.html</a>
> the people in charge couldn't be bothered.<p>Watching the last decade of American politics has led me to absolutely despise the culture of learned helplessness and attitude of "everything is someone else's fault."<p>You're absolutely right about the first part. Radical change is much more straightforward. At the individual level there are absolutely things that can be done that are pretty easy Consuming less and recycling more is a huge one. But if the attitude is, "we can't or won't do it individually. We need someone to make us behave," then that's a losing culture. The last American election reassured me that indeed, even if the elite class wants something, no amount of money will override the will of the people. The people just don't want this badly enough.
> "we can't or won't do it individually. We need someone to make us behave,"<p>Well, we need to be organized around a plan, such as electrifying power generation and transport. Since government already heavily manages those things, it's not a matter of individual behavior, apart from the behavior of voting, and generally expressing approval of policies.<p>I do think you should stop with the guilt-tripping of individuals, and I do think that they're powerless - without organization - and that attacking consumers is wrong-headed. To complain about consuming says that the problem is that we have industry and nice things, but that's incorrect. It's a hard sell, firstly because people like nice things and think they're entitled to them, and secondly because they're right about that. The problem is that we have emissions, not that we have consumer goods.
Which people are you talking about? The ones that voted? The problem with American politics (and Australia provides an easy point to compare against) is that the young do not vote. Consequently, they have no power, and no one in charge is inclined to do anything that will have long-term impact.
Is this pointing fingers at young people and saying, "everything is someone else's fault?"
I am a young person. So no, it is not someone else's fault per se. I am frustrated by my generation, but I also understand it.
The nice thing about blaming someone else is it absolves you of all responsibility to change yourself. Win-win.
It makes no sense to sacrifice yourself if collective action is needed. Democracy allows people to express the direction they want society to go in, and consuming less and causing less fossil fuel emissions is clearly not what the majority of people want.<p>It is logical to vote and advocate for policies that require everyone to consume less while not individually doing so. Similar to wanting changes in taxing policy while still only paying the minimum required tax.
Well the young votes in 2024 for the current admin, and again this year for the opposite of the current admin, it's not exactly fair to say that they're not showing up to the polls when 2024 and 2026 was driven pretty much by them
<i>>is that the young do not vote. </i><p>Because they realized they're minority compared to boomers so they can't outvote them anyway, so then what's the point of going to vote just to see yourself lose.<p>That's the issue with democracy. The bigger group wins.
Yes, if anything they want the opposite. Cheap gas.
> But if the attitude is, "we can't or won't do it individually. We need someone to make us behave," then that's a losing culture.<p>This is every culture. We address it structurally or not at all.<p>> The last American election reassured me that indeed, even if the elite class wants something, no amount of money will override the will of the people.<p>:|
it's not that the people in charge can't be bothered. the people really in charge see the status quo as a profitable situation. it'a "good" for them and bad for everyone else.
People are in charge, especially in democracies. Not to mention that they are the end consumers, everything produced is eventually for something that people buy, use, eat, burn, throw into the garbage fast. People need to act, not some dedicated father figure (actually servant) making things good for them by a swish of a wand [1], compensating for the consumption and emissions.<p>[1] As of the wishful thinking that huge capacity solar panels bring joy, one aspect of the several directly related is this: <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-026-02144-0" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-026-02144-0</a>. An other one of the further ones: <a href="https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-government-approves-new-gas-power-plant-auctions-back-wind-and-solar" rel="nofollow">https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-government-appro...</a>. So big dreams and delegating responsibility are not enough for the people.
Back when companies were talking about carbon capture seriously, it would have cost $1-2 / gallon of gasoline equivalent to put atmospheric CO2 back in the ground.<p>That's much less than the Iran war is costing us.
So we need to paralyze 30% of the economy, that would have gone to bankruptcy within months if not for massive money creation, just to get a -10% in CO2 emissions. Easy. Then, where do you get the next -10%? And the next one? And...
The radical change during COVID was consuming less on a global scale. Simple!
Yes. If I can make that choice everyday so can everyone else. But we have to change peoples hearts, not their minds.
It was only for the better if you were in an industry like ours, which even benefited and also allows remote work.<p>For a huge number of people it ruined their lives. Which is why it’s sensitive to this day. Like the financial bailouts there was a sense that some people benefited while others got ruined.<p>Bad example to invoke for “beneficial change.” If that’s the answer then it can’t be done in a democracy.
There were plenty of people in our industry who suffered during it. If anything I would say the divide was between introverts and extroverts.
Of course COVID was a disaster, what I mean is that rapid reactions were demonstrated to be a question of political willpower rather that logistical challenges.<p>* Total reorganization of society was carried out in a matter of weeks.<p>* Oil is worth negative dollars if society isn't forced to consume.<p>* Generous payments were made to those who couldn't work, with no one humming and hawing about how it'll be paid for.<p>If the governments of the world were serious about climate change they would focus on it with that same iron will...
The event after which dozens of governments were destabilized and incumbents were ousted from power all over the world… convinced you that radical change is easy…?<p>The <i>United States</i> was a couple feet from an actual coup dude.
Leaving aside whether they were, and whether all countries are necessarily equally unstable.<p>Would that not have been different? I certainly haven't heard of a suspected coup by disgruntled democrats and/or minorities.<p>I suspect the coup you allude to would have amounted to a coup of the people in power to <i>stay</i> in power. Not a popular, armed uprising. So I don't see how it's relevant to the point you are trying to make.
Is instability only instability if it's the right shape or color or flavor?<p>The point is that the radical change that was "so easy" during COVID was 1) forced by an emergency, and 2) triggered a stream of emergencies that we're still dealing with today across the entire world.<p>If GP meant "radical change is easy so long as you can accept a stream of emergencies with uncertain outcomes for an indefinite amount of time into the future," then sure... radical change is easy!
Straightforward isn't the same as easy, it's just that the difficulty of a transition to a carbon free economy is heavily overestimated
So in other words: radical change was almost easy?
If you think the "killing the people in charge" is the hard part of radical change, then you haven't read much history.
"Easy" is kinda a "for whom?" question.<p>The pandemic was easy <i>for me</i> to live through because I'm just like that; and it was easy for the disease to evolve in a wet market*…<p>… but that whole "flatten the curve" thing was because it came within a hair's breadth of overwhelming national healthcare systems and this was obviously a risk to be mitigated before the event.<p>* this happened in wet markets many times, not just COVID; and this will happen again if steps aren't taken to mitigate that, no matter what you may think about lab leaks which do also happen sometimes because humans are fallible and do make mistakes on occasion.
Given how the much-vaunted "checks and balances" seem to be, well, rather unbalanced ... and how the country is so, <i>so</i>, partisan over "their own side" that politics is mainly theatre... It seems like the US doesn't really need any italics in that statement. From an outside perspective, it seems fairly vulnerable to fascism actually.<p>In any event, over here in the UK there's a real wind-power push (with the surrounding water being so shallow that off-shore wind-farms are very possible), but even in these extended latitudes, solar power is viable and the government currently make them VAT-free for installs, with no planning requirements because they fall under 'permitted development'. Renewable energy was at ~56% Q2 2026.<p>The UK government set up 'Great British Energy' with £8.3B of funding for coinvestment with private firms in various clean energy generation. I think the UK is definitely doing its part.
First past the posts for a nationwide position (president) ensures two party polarization even without any external influences (and there are many). In the UK (and Canada) you use fptp for the lower house but due to regional differences that can still create multiple parties and more viewpoints within parties. Regional differences get obliterated with a nationwide fptp position, making every act of compromise a betrayal.
> The United States was a couple feet from an actual coup dude.<p>How does this square with the oft-repeated line that the Second Amendment is useless when the government has tanks, bombs, and aircraft carriers? January 6th was a bunch of unarmed boomers. If you really think the government was >this< close to being overthrown by them, then you might as well pack it up. The US wouldn't stand a chance if a couple thousand armed Russian or Chinese nationals decided to show up to the Capitol.
Go read some books on how coups work and the numerous historical examples. This comment is just too full of either bad faith or too-far-afield misunderstandings to be rectified in an HN comment thread.
That statement assumes that the government orders the military to fight against the coup. The commander in chief would not order it, and had the coup succeeded, the Congress would certify that the commander should continue in power.<p>At that point it would require the top generals to stage a coup of their own. Which they probably would have. But I'm glad we didn't find out.<p>The military is extremely strong and would easily show off foreign invaders. But the Constitution didn't foresee an elected but corrupt executive overthrowing the government. That is a blind spot they reasonably didn't anticipate.
You <i>really</i> don't see why the US would be less willing to shoot its own citizens than those of an invading nation?
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> There is no excuse for every government in the world to not be covering every bit of rooftop or scrap land with solar.<p>is it intentional hyperbole and you mean something else, or are you making exactly this kind of claim?<p>because there are many many caveats to add here (even if we go with plan that specifically governments should be doing it)<p>For start: land with legitimate environmental protection, land where connecting power would be ruinously expensive, area likely to be destroyed by floods and landslides or scheduled to be overbuilt and so on...
Its a bit hyperbolic, but you know what I mean. Build it out very rapidly.<p><a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pakistan/@30.1940381,71.4914266,231m" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pakistan/@30.1940381,71.49...</a><p>You can look at random cities in somewhere like Pakistan and see their rooves are covered in solar from a boom that has occurred in only the past 2-3 years. In comparison I live in a far wealthier country and people hesitate.