> One nice thing about what’s happening is that politics are losing to reality. I’m not even sure how this became a left vs right issue in the first place (isn’t the right meant to be pro free market!?)

No, the right isn't meant to be pro free-market. It's meant to protect the interests, longevity, and demand-capture of its donor industries, primarily fossil fuels extraction, processing, and distribution, but increasingly large technology companies in monopoly positions in their markets.

All the "free-market" to "culture-war" rhetoric are just political/religious strategies to achieve that end.

> It’s certainly not because of Texan politics either. It’s just cold hard reality.

one of the few good things Rick Perry did for TX was upgrade the grid so West Texas wind power can reach the main cities. Once West TX showed renewables could make a profit then there's not much anyone, left or right, could do to stop it. The lobbyists made sure of that.

Southwest Texas, where all the fracking took place, also turns out to be good for solar. It's very flat, sunny, and has pretty stable weather. I guess the grid is beefed up and accessible in that region because of the oil/gas industry, I've seen solar farms out there that are so big it's hard to describe. Imagine seeing a shimmering blue that looks like a lake on the desert horizon but then you get to it and it's just miles of solar panels. Again, the moment solar turned a profit there was no stopping it.

Yea I wonder how that battery capacity graph will look like post January 2026, since Texas's SB388 specifically excludes batteries from it's dispatchable power generation requirements. That doesn't necessarily prevent batteries storage from being constructed, but it does tilt the field pretty heavily in favor of natural gas.

It became left vs right because the interests of the rich have an easier time exploiting the right wing's vulnerability to fusion identity. The right wing is defined by a collective appreciation for hierarchies and conformity.

A lot of folks are spreading the message 'it's not right vs left but up vs down when in reality its both.

> I’m not even sure how this became a left vs right issue in the first place (isn’t the right meant to be pro free market!?)

Besides the whole petro money and lobbyism thing that drove the US politics since Edwin Drake?

You also get 30 years of efficiency improvements and 20 years of capacity and reliability improvements when you replace them.

In practice: https://www.rte.ie/news/regional/2026/0116/1553440-mayo-wind...

>> "Each one of the new wind turbines will be capable of supplying more power to the national electricity grid than was generated by the entire Bellacorick wind farm."

The world isn't ready for that.

> It's wild that there are multiple, very serious global conflicts heating up over control of oil…

That's what happens when the "Leader of the Free World" is 79 with dementia with memories of the 1970s oil crisis.

We're not likely to get useful oil out of Venezuela, and any we do get isn't gonna be cost-competitive against solar.

> That entire talk didn't once mention the phrase "energy density" which is the real reason we rely so heavily on hydrocarbons.

For planes. For no other major use of hydrocarbons is it the primary concern.

He has a whole video[0] on the difference between energy and electricity, so he understands it. Maybe there's some disconnect between the video and your interpretation.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOK5xkFijPc

Yeah I watched this a week or so ago and had a similar issue.

I'm super optimistic about green energy and in favor of expanding it.

But also acutely aware it's barely putting a dent on energy use despite year-on-year record levels of capacity install (>90% of new capacity is green), which far exceeds expert expectations every single year. Non-renewables keep growing, forecasts and ambitions were cut by the Trump admin, and it is expected that the latest economic revolution's (AI) main bottleneck is going to be energy by the end of the year.

We have essentially blown past the paris accord thresholds (we've seen months of +1.5c temperature, which was the limit we envisioned in 2015) and despite renewables far exceeding expectations, they completely fell short of what is necessary pre-2023. Post-2023 you have Trump derailing renewables wherever he can and AI increasing demand even further.

It really looks pretty hopeless and frankly it's sad that there is no real conversation about this, which seems to be an existential question for the generation living in 2100 and beyond.

You're also now getting to the point that adding new capacity is increasing the amount of renewable energy that is being curtailed (i.e. thrown away), meaning while renewables get cheaper over time, the rate of things getting cheaper will slow down as renewables must be increasingly paired with storage investments (which are also getting cheaper but introduce additional cost).

For example, sunny Cyprus curtailed 13%, 29% and 49% (!!) of its solar generation in 2023 to 2025 respectively. Yes last year half of the solar power that was produced, was thrown away, because of a lack of demand-supply balancing. Cyprus is uniquely poorly positioned (high solar potential, small country with a single small timezone, no interconnectors to offload surplus to other countries, no storage facilities etc) but it's still a sign of things to come. Further generation will increasingly need to be paired with significant storage, or it's partially wasted.

He talks about transport and heating

That doesn't leave much left when you look at the energy flow once you remove domestic, commercial and transportation usage and replace it with electricity. A tiny amount left for plane s(and reducing per flight as planes get more efficent and battery planes start coming to market), and industrial gas usage.

https://www.energyvanguard.com/attachment/llnl-us-energy-flo...