| ▲ | US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects(bbc.com) |
| 369 points by defrost 3 hours ago | 323 comments |
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| ▲ | saagarjha 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement posted on X that Americans deserve an energy system built on common sense and not one dependent on "costly subsidies". I agree. This is why we are building offshore wind and not subsidizing fossil fuels, right? |
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| ▲ | Kim_Bruning an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > not one dependent on "costly subsidies". While paying out 1.2 billion dollars. | | | |
| ▲ | jeltz 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | All kinds of power generation are typically heavily subdized in some way. I do not think this "common sense" strategy exists. | | |
| ▲ | i5heu 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | "common sense" is common sense because it is not "specialised sense" or "expert sense" So if politicians base their decisions on "common sense", they confess to not being able to use experts that refine their knowledge and position about a topic. A "common sense" strategy is therefore what is most popular and on the basis of the understanding of laymen without deeper understanding or knowledge. | | |
| ▲ | blaze33 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | For at least a few years, "common sense" has been hijacked by populist politicians, now it just means whatever simplistic idea that fits their worldview, even when it's not complicated to see that said idea is clearly misguided. The original meaning seems lost to me. | | |
| ▲ | bitmasher9 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Furthermore, using the phrase “common sense” to describe an idea inherently dismisses any individual that will argue against it. They either are too dumb to have common sense, or too much of an elite to have common sense. | | | |
| ▲ | ben_w 15 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Always meant that, so far as I can see. |
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| ▲ | smolder 29 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "Common sense" might also mean "do the simple thing" which, given how cheap it is to invest in renewable energy sources like solar farms, and how much room we have to build daytime capacity that way without large scale storage, might mean installing a lot more solar. Don't pretend the current US admin is anything but corrupt and stupid. | |
| ▲ | latch an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "common sense" is common sense because it is the "sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts" (1). Maybe what you meant to say is that the position isn't, in fact, "common sense", that it is neither sound or prudent? (1) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/common%20sense | | |
| ▲ | LodeOfCode an hour ago | parent [-] | | Keyword being "simple". The common sense solution often turns out to be unsound based on a more detailed perception of the situation | | |
| ▲ | XorNot 31 minutes ago | parent [-] | | i.e. "every complicated problem has a solution which is simple, elegant and wrong" |
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| ▲ | StilesCrisis an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In politics, "common sense" just means that they don't have a real justification. You can just apply it to anything and your base will accept it. | | |
| ▲ | einpoklum an hour ago | parent [-] | | > don't have a real justification. Oh, but the ju$tifi¢ation is all too real for having that kind of "common sense". |
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| ▲ | bs38 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You dont need deeper understanding of knowledge for everything. Ask Grandma whether she needs a chemical engineering degree to bake apple pie. Then there is the Theory of Bounded Rationality which tells us expertise may exist but resources, time, energy, info, attention etc etc may not therefore bounds and limits of expertise alone must be recognized and solutions reached are satisficable rather than optimal. Aiming for optima when other factors havent been sorted just creates new problems. | | |
| ▲ | PurpleRamen 40 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > Ask Grandma whether she needs a chemical engineering degree to bake apple pie. Grandma doesn't bake with "common sense", she is using the specialized knowledge of cooking & baking. | |
| ▲ | ToucanLoucan 19 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | > You dont need deeper understanding of knowledge for everything. Ask Grandma whether she needs a chemical engineering degree to bake apple pie. You've clearly never baked before. Baking is a chemical science. You have to adjust temperatures for your freaking elevation relative to sea level. Granted some recipes are pretty forgiving, sure, but far from all, and some are downright merciless in terms of complexity and effort required. Even people who do it constantly have items that just don't turn out because it's legitimately hard shit. | | |
| ▲ | Eldt 4 minutes ago | parent [-] | | You seem to have conflated a chemical engineering degree with the concept of baking being a chemical process |
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| ▲ | scotty79 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Common sense is the sense of commoners. The entirity of science if a fight against common sense. In Poland the closest phrase to "common sense" is "na chłopski rozum" which means "according to villager's mind/smarts". | | |
| ▲ | dspillett an hour ago | parent [-] | | A significant part of science is plucking the true bits from common sense. A fair chunk of what we call medicine is folk remedies that stood up to rigorous testing. | | |
| ▲ | teamonkey 38 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Yes, but the testing bit is what makes it a scientifically-proven method and not a folk remedy. There are also a lot of folk remedies that have been disproven as medicine. They too were ‘common sense.’ |
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| ▲ | verandaguy 28 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It probably comes from the recognition that energy access being a common good, a tax-collecting government should work for its constituents in helping provide energy at a reasonable cost, especially if the subsidies support an improvement to the technology behind it. Subsidies aren't universally a bad thing. This is silly thinking. | |
| ▲ | PowerElectronix an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There are too many interested parties involved in the energy sector. The only common sense I can think of is solar+storage at the single building level and interconnected through smart grids with neighbours. But that leaves out the government and all those interested parties so we're never ever getting that. | | |
| ▲ | windyoil an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | While I do not know if the following is relevant for the Carolina Long Bay area, and while neither Republicans nor Democrats can be trusted, it is not without precedent for offshore wind turbine projects to be disallowed due to radar concerns. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2024/11/11/why-swe... > Why Sweden nixed new wind farms for fear of missing Russian missiles > BERLIN — Sweden’s government this month blocked the construction of 13 offshore wind farms over concerns that they would shorten the country’s early-warning window for a Russian missile attack. > ... > That is because wind farms can interact with radar signals, reducing the quality of the situational air picture or even outright blocking out parts of the sky. Other possibilities than radar concerns is that the stopping of the project here hinders corruption, or is corrupt itself, or it moves corruption around (as in both the old project and new project was corrupt). Whatever the case, a way to avoid corruption would be helpful. Perhaps like making it market-driven and contest-driven as much as possible. Solar and wind is already significantly cost-efficient and market-driven despite their significant drawbacks like not producing energy consistently and on demand. If the main challenge is creating domestic production of wind turbines and solar cells instead of being reliant on other countries and without state support ending up being mired in corruption, perhaps some bidding and contract process that moves the financial risk onto private companies, such that the government never pays in advance, could work. I agree with posts here saying that a mosaic or plethora of energy sources should be used. Wind, solar, fossile, nuclear (for big countries like the USA at least), geothermal, etc. In general, energy companies should not be focused on just one kind, but lots of kinds. | | |
| ▲ | Y-bar 30 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Wind power is a purely commercial enterprise which only requires state support for permissions to build and permissions to connect to the grid. There is no issue about state support for manufacturing of equipment. Living here where this happens. They are stopping it for two reasons: First on a national level they want to concentrate on their renewed push towards building new nuclear power reactors, means wind has to take second fiddle: https://www.government.se/press-releases/2026/06/sweden-take... Second, on a local level, the far-right party "SD" is voting agaisnt wind power in 96% of the cases. As presented here, the national government is declining 84% of all requests of requests to build wind power, ad on the local level the right wing parties vetoed wind power at a rate of 64-92%: https://research.chalmers.se/publication/?created=true&id=09... | | |
| ▲ | windyoil 13 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > There is no issue about state support for manufacturing of equipment. For the sake of the USA, domestic production is a concern, right? Since they likely do not want to be reliant on foreign countries far away. > As presented here, the national government is declining 84% of all requests of requests to build wind power, Like the defense article about radars and wind farms stated for one case, do the officially stated reasons for not allowing wind farm projects by the Swedish government often include radar concerns? Edit: The concerns about radar and wind turbines do not seem fake when private sector military companies try to offer solutions for it. https://www.terma.com/products/radars/radar-mitigation/ "Wind Farm Radar Mitigation" > ad [sic] on the local level the right wing parties vetoed wind power at a rate of 64-92%: For both onshore and offshore wind farm projects, local citizens can have concerns, especially the larger each individual wind turbine is. Which is unfortunate, since the larger the individual wind turbine is, the more efficient it also tends to be. Wind turbines are arguably generally good overall, but their drawbacks and costs should not be ignored. In general, offshore should be less of a problem for local citizens, since people will not live and sleep close to them, but then the radar question might come into play. With the geopolitical situation, and WW3 and nuclear war drawing ever closer, well, effort should have been put into stopping world war, but otherwise caring about defense concerns do make sense. And Sweden's coastal line mostly faces east. |
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| ▲ | jtbayly an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And in the winter in the North people are just supposed to freeze? | | |
| ▲ | whizzter an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | The energy mix for electricity in Sweden, Norway and Finland is mostly made up of hydro+nuclear+wind, especially wind and hydro complements each other very well since hydro is very much on-demand and can cover for most temporary wind shortfalls. Driving through my childhood area up north a few weeks back I was also surprised by the amount of solar going up, for comparison this is an area _north of_ Anchorage/Alaska with less than 3 hours of sun around Christmas, but already by late January (usually the coldest period of the year) there is over 6 hours of sun a day (so with high pressure cold peaks with less wind, the 6 hours probably eases the power bill quite a bit). An interesting fact about those solar installations was that the panels were mounted almost vertically (probably to avoid being snowed over but also useful in the winter since the sun mostly just shines from the south anyhow). | |
| ▲ | PowerElectronix an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Solar would produce enough power in winter. Germany is europe's top solar energy producer and is at a latitude similar to Alaska. | |
| ▲ | mapontosevenths an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | North Americans mostly do not use electricity for heat in the winter. Around 60% use natural gas with forced air furnaces. Something closer to 80% have the option, but 20% don't bother to use it. Some of the deep south get by with electric heat, but they aren't in places where the cold is a typically a legitimate danger to health and safety. | |
| ▲ | WillAdams an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Supplement w/ geothermal? | | |
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| ▲ | carlosjobim an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That leaves a lot of free energy sources untapped - especially hydro. | | |
| ▲ | PowerElectronix an hour ago | parent [-] | | If you can set up a hydro/pump dam without wrecking the ecosystem and don't need handouts to function, I'm all for it. | | |
| ▲ | happosai 35 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | People complaining about renewal electricity production with hydro/pump dams while ignoring mountaintop removal of Appalachian mountains for coal... | | |
| ▲ | realreality 14 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Why not complain about both? Industrial civilization is inherently unsustainable, no matter how you try to power it. |
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| ▲ | rob74 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | As opposed to fossil fuels, which are great for ecosystems, both locally and globally? | | |
| ▲ | smolder 22 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Right. Gentle reminder that tuna has dangerous amounts of mercury in it specifically because of humans burning coal, not because the ocean was always so polluted. |
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| ▲ | friendzis an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The only common sense I can think of is solar+storage Even in Texas/California photovoltaic output in the winter is measly, anywhere more to the north and it's effectively inexistent. Solar+storage requires massive overprovisioning, to the level that it's cheaper to burn literal money. Windmill farm outputs tend to dip during summer and peak over winter. With a given minimum power output windmills + photovoltaics + storage is massively cheaper per unit of yearly energy. Of course, if you value any semblance of network stability. Solar+storage is clear path towards either guaranteeing reliance on fossils or brownouts. The smart energy meter you got that encourages running the washing machine during cheap hours will ensure that you voluntarily go dark during undersupply as the cost will skyrocket. | | |
| ▲ | swiftcoder 31 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > Even in Texas/California photovoltaic output in the winter is measly, anywhere more to the north and it's effectively inexistent. The northernmost point in Texas would be at the extreme southern edge of Europe. The northernmost point of California is level with the sunny French Riviera. Hell, even frozen Minnesota has about the same solar potential as northern Spain... If Europe can make solar work, so can the states (assuming a similar level of investment) |
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| ▲ | TeMPOraL 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Indeed. Energy is at the core of everything we do. Make it more expensive, you immediately make some people go hungry, and then you also make everything else in the economy a tad more expensive, slowing things down, and as market readjusts and contracts, this makes even more people go hungry. There's a really strong incentive to keep energy generation cheap, because pretty much every social and political issue is downstream of it. | |
| ▲ | kklisura an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Just like "first principles", "common sense" differs from man to man. | |
| ▲ | eastbound 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That’s a perverse incentive against ecology, case in point. Hear me out. We take citizen’s money to subsidize energy so they can get their energy for cheaper (at marginal level - while still paying the subsidy’s taxes) so they can undertake industrial/residential projects that we wouldn’t do with less energy. In a word, we incentive people to consume more (in a consumerist sense), which is bad for ecology, because we can’t afford them, and neither can the Earth. Of course, leaving aside how petroleum is subsidized [through the department of defense]. While ecologists usually are in favor of subsidies, subsidies incentive people to consume more, which exhausts our Earth. We should develop less, i.e. we should develop in accordance with a higher facial cost of energy, which sometimes implies having a smaller home and fewer industries, which is what would happen if we didn’t sponsor solar or wind energy [or coal or fossil]. | | |
| ▲ | master-lincoln 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | won't happen with capitalism which has an emphasis on economic growth forever... | | |
| ▲ | carlosjobim an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Economic growth also comes from getting more for less. A company can increase their profits by growing and increasing both what they spend and what they earn. But a company can also increase their profits by reducing what they spend without decreasing what they earn. Almost all companies are constantly trying to do this. | |
| ▲ | victorbjorklund an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Does the env work better in a communist country like North Korea? Or in the Soviet Union? Or are we gonna do no true Scotsman and say Soviet was always capitalist and had no connection to communism? | | |
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| ▲ | ghtbircshotbe an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And don't forget ethanol, probably the least efficient form of energy ever discovered | | |
| ▲ | usrnm an hour ago | parent [-] | | What are you talking about, it powers a lot of people I know | | |
| ▲ | ghtbircshotbe an hour ago | parent [-] | | Does it do it efficiently though? | | |
| ▲ | rob74 an hour ago | parent [-] | | It saves energy by making them feel warmer in the winter. If they overdo it and freeze to death, it saves even more energy... |
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| ▲ | rayiner 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's even dumber than that. Someone built a wind farm near Trump's golf course in Scotland and now he hates wind farms: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo. He thinks they're ugly and noisy. | | |
| ▲ | prox 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If this is true, this is the person some folks think is fit to lead a nation. One little thing not suiting his whim of the day? Lets hate something that helps with energy production. Welcome the world of transactional opportunism. | | |
| ▲ | dofm 25 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | This is absolutely true. He has been angrily obsessed about this for years, and since he is a malignant narcissist with an ever greater need for narcissistic supply, his irritation has been manipulated by powerful lobbyists that tell him his instincts are brilliant and correct. | |
| ▲ | rayiner 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's not a "whim." Trump has a whole aesthetic. The wind farm thing is a dumb manifestation of that aesthetic, but the aesthetic is one of the things people voted for. Trump is the closest person in the U.S. pushing something like the Singapore model of keeping public spaces nice for average people by fixing them up and jailing the small minority of people who create most of the ugliness and disorder. (As opposed to progressives who say they want nice public spaces in theory, but seek to do that by throwing money at the people causing problems instead of throwing them in jail.) You don't have to like the policy, but it is a policy choice, guided by an overarching aesthetic and ideology. Trump's aesthetic is one of the reasons I think he and outgoing D.C. mayor Bowser low-key got along. She's been big on renovating parks, youth curfews, etc. (instead of "fix the root causes" and whatnot). DC hasn't looked this good in decades. | | | |
| ▲ | 1234letshaveatw 24 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'm sure you would welcome a data center in your backyard |
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| ▲ | whazor an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think wind farms on sea look really cool, especially if the turbines are huge. It gives some majestic feelings | | |
| ▲ | BoxOfRain 29 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I'm not a huge fan of their aesthetic in its own right, but it beats the aesthetic of fossil fuel infrastructure any day in my view. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 28 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I like wind farms, but I think it's fair to observe that they're often built in nice places, whereas fossil fuel infrastructure is built in places you'd never go to voluntarily. | | |
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| ▲ | iso1631 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > He thinks they're ugly and noisy The feeling is mutual | | |
| ▲ | moritzruth 43 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Are you saying that wind farms think you are ugly and noisy? | |
| ▲ | vincnetas 29 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | We don't need to "think" if they are noisy. We can measure that. So how noisy are they? | | |
| ▲ | pornel 6 minutes ago | parent [-] | | They're silent. I don't know where Trump got the idea from. Perhaps he thinks they work like fans? |
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| ▲ | tialaramex 11 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | To be fair offshore wind is relatively expensive. A brand new wind farm is probably cheaper than burning methane because Trump started another pointless war, but it's closer than for like Solar PV. Of course "common sense" ought to probably include "Not cooking ourselves". | |
| ▲ | louiereederson 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | While they pay a subsidy:
> RWE said that it will now reinvest the sum | |
| ▲ | Marciplan an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Inferior Secretary | |
| ▲ | shevy-java 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's even more hilarious than that because all nuclear energy is heavily subsidized by taxpayers already. People such as Doug just lie strategically. No surprise in that current government of liars. | | |
| ▲ | jeltz 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | All forms of power generation are heavily subsidized. Anyone complaining about a particular form being subsidzed is a dishonest liar. I am personally for building nuclear and compulimenting it with some wind and hydro, but that is not related to what things are subsidized but because nuclear and hydro has worked really well here in Sweden providing reliable power and while wind has a spottier record I think diversification is good. |
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| ▲ | zmmmmm 20 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I read up recently on the history of the fall of the roman empire and it was fascinating how eerily similar it was to the current state of the US. Overwhelmed by corruption and wars they make stupider and stupider decisions on ever larger scales, ever more frequently. And the population grows ever more cynical, eventually opting for authoritarianism before eventually the center can't hold any more and it all collapses in on itself. Funnily enough, the most striking part was the pure stupidity of a lot of it - seems so strange, but every day it seems I hear another really stupid story and think ... huh, maybe it really can be like that. |
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| ▲ | bakies a minute ago | parent [-] | | Older generation has lead poisoning from all the leaded gasoline burned |
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| ▲ | chewbacha 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Parts of the world are literally on fire but the US is redirecting money to halt renewables and towards gas. The demand for energy is higher than ever due to AI data centers, but I guess the next model is more important than a habitable environment. |
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| ▲ | throw0101d an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > Parts of the world are literally on fire but the US is redirecting money to halt renewables and towards gas. Parts of the US are literally on fire. * https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/map/#d:24hrs;@-100... * https://wfca.com/fire-map * https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/maps | | |
| ▲ | zelphirkalt 38 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | The issue will be "out of sight, out of mind" (or rather knowingly ignored) until the issue appears at scales as small as the home village, which in terms of the US government means the front and back yard of the white house or similar. These people are living in parallel societies, where they are completely detached from the reality for many people living in the country. And that is not merely a problem in the US. | | |
| ▲ | dolmen 7 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > The issue will be "out of sight, out of mind" [...] ... while an offshore wind farm was once in DT's sight in Scotland. |
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| ▲ | RobotToaster 25 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Nobody will care until the white house burns down (again) |
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| ▲ | ZiiS 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It is important to keep the main issue clear. Failing to invest in renewables is an existential risk to humanity's future.
Permanently shutting all Datacenters (not just AI) saves us about 1 year. | | |
| ▲ | einpoklum an hour ago | parent [-] | | I believe you may be basing your figure on current Data Center power consumption. But - it's estimately to grow significantly: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/doe-data-centers-... also - 1 year is a lot, if we actually act diligently to stave the warming crisis and to prepare for some of the effects through changes to construction & infrastructure. Still, I would agree that Data Centers are just one particular aspect of the struggle against global warming. | | |
| ▲ | benjiro29 32 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Ironically, we are also moving to more capable / faster models that use less power. DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 is so extreme capable and comparability to a lot of models cheap to run. We are seeing stuff like AMD buying Taalas, with their Llama 3 8B on a chip, being able to push 17.000 tokens / second. https://chatjimmy.ai/ Generated in 0,033s • 14.212 tok/s ... People need to understand, that even AI companies do not like to build datacenters and the high energy needs. It cost them money and they are also looking at ways to develop better hardware / solutions that gives them more inference for cheaper (what means less power draw / heat generated). | | |
| ▲ | smolder 11 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I just tested out chatjimmy and a bit and it did some misinterpretation of my prompts, E.g. "write me a python script to generate insults for a name given by command line" had multiple of the same insult in the insult list, and it had a list of names like John and Jane instead of doing the obvious thing and making the name a variable. Not good code. | |
| ▲ | niek_pas 21 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Unfortunately, "more capable / faster models that use less power" will likely mean those models will be used in more places than ever before. LLMs on laptops, on tablets, on phones, on fridges, in your web browser. See the Jevons paradox. |
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| ▲ | crowbahr 24 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Fun tidbit: Climate change is real, caused by humans, and the fires were seeing are absolutely exacerbated by the effects of the climate. However this is the _least_ on fire the world has been for a while because it's usually Asian and Africa that are rampantly burning and they're improving land management techniques enough that it's tamping down on the worst of the burns. Progress isn't evenly distributed | |
| ▲ | Jumpstylish an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Is there a particular threshold of windmills to construct before we gain better control over earth’s temperature? I’m a little unclear what the victory conditions are in the fight against heat. | | |
| ▲ | alex_duf an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | The threshold isn't measured in windmills, it's measured in co2. If we emit more than 0, then we're in trouble. Needless to say, we're in a lot of trouble. | |
| ▲ | estearum an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The goal is not to "gain better control" over the earth's temperature, it's to stop actively throwing the temperature out of control. Worth scrolling through this if you have been midwit-pilled into thinking humans have no levers of control on this question: https://xkcd.com/1732/ Please explain your alternative hypothesis. | |
| ▲ | bakies 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They're not mills | |
| ▲ | tstactplsignore an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's kind of lucky for everyone that climate is mostly a perfect sliding scale, the more CO2 you avoid putting into the atmosphere the more heat capacity you'd avoid. So every bit helps. Many negative impacts of heat, like changing intense weather, biodiversity loss, and deaths to high heat also correspondingly change linearly with heat. So every bit is a literal victory, there's no major cutoff that we know of until things get really bad (which they might). What's your point? |
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| ▲ | juntoalaluna 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Insane. Over the last year, wind - mostly offshore - has generated more than 35% of electricity here. Gas is down to 27%. It's really, really good. And it looks cool. |
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| ▲ | _joel 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Not great for the wildlife during drilling but it's better than the carbon rich alternatives. | | |
| ▲ | dschu 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Global warming is also killing wildlife. And by many magnitudes more than drilling some holes for offshore wind parks. | | |
| ▲ | _joel 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Literally what I said, but thanks for playing. | | |
| ▲ | virgildotcodes an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Is the game you're playing "see if I can be subtle enough to get away with undermining renewables through misleading statements on social media without people calling me out on it"? If so I think you're down 1 - 0 so far in this thread. Best of luck on the next round though, really cool and awesome game! | | |
| ▲ | constantius 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I think it was your reading that is faulty, the commenter wasn't subtle and didn't undermine anything. Can you stop playing the game of owning people with teenager level zingers based on you yourself being too thick? | |
| ▲ | carlosjobim 5 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Thank you comrade for your alert senses! You correctly identified that anybody who pretends to be a "moderate" voice or utters any kind of even light criticism towards the Party program is always a detractor or enemy spy which is trying to sabotage and undermine our internal cohesion. The individual has promptly been dealt with and put in a reeducation camp. I will talk to your local commissar so that your brave act of psychological self defence in this message board is rewarded with +50 extra social credits. | |
| ▲ | _joel an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Get a grip, where did I undermine renewables, I said it was better than the carbon rich alternative. I see you're playing the, "let's be misleading and pretend the OP was saying something they weren't". Fun game, not that productive though. |
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| ▲ | bfmalky an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | You don't seem to understand the meeting of the word 'literally'. | | |
| ▲ | _joel an hour ago | parent [-] | | You don't seem to be able to read the "better than carbon rich alternatives" that literally in what I originally wrote. |
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| ▲ | TeMPOraL 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Nothing is great for wildlife, including leaving it alone and undisturbed, because nature doesn't care if animals are happy, or even if they exist. | | |
| ▲ | josh-wrale an hour ago | parent [-] | | I’m thinking you mean that nature does not possess the ability to care at all. | | |
| ▲ | neuronic 36 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Nature does have the ability to care unless you postulate that humans aren’t part of nature. |
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| ▲ | yxhuvud 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It is really great for the wildlife after the drilling is done though, as the windmills tend to make the area safer against fishermen. | |
| ▲ | neuronic 38 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | No energy source producing the required amounts to run civilization will be non-disruptive to wildlife and the environment. But perfect is the enemy of good. Renewable energy sources heavily reduce this factor, make countries more independent from imports (other countries) and slow down the catastrophic effects of increased atmospheric energy due to greenhouse effect of carbon-based energy sources. Conservatives should be the top number one supporters of renewable energy because of more independence from other governments and better conservation of the environment. But alas, the only thing they like to preserve is their personal greed. |
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| ▲ | budsniffer952 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | What's insane is that one person will cite something this in one place, but the rest of the people in the thread say "why aren't we building wind and solar????" We are building lots. Of everything. | | |
| ▲ | estearum an hour ago | parent [-] | | But... you're commenting on an article in which we are stopping the "we are building" part? | | |
| ▲ | sbarre 8 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Who is "we" here? This is about one company bending the knee, not an entire industry or population. |
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| ▲ | gman83 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is the exact reason it's happening. Offshore wind is cheaper than gas /kWh and would therefore kill Trump's fossil fuel donor's profits. So kill offshore wind and the grid is forced to go to more expensive fossil fuel sources, which increased the grid price and means extra profits go to those companies. All this raises energy prices. | |
| ▲ | lenkite 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Utterly Insane. I mean the saying "Truth is stranger than fiction" is proven true by this US administration again, again and again. If you put this as a plot point in a novel, you would get a 1-star rating with readers complaining about lack of realism. | | |
| ▲ | iammjm an hour ago | parent [-] | | People were for years joking about us approaching Idiocracy but I think this reality is already dumber than that in some regards. Trump & co really turbocharged the idiotification | | |
| ▲ | glaslong an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | In Idiocracy, President Camacho recognizes that someone has scientific skills and expertise* he doesn't and puts them in charge to help his people.
* even if it's just "feed plants water, not Gatorade." From that angle, Idiocracy is notably BETTER than our current situation. | |
| ▲ | ZeroGravitas an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's a cliche now to say we're past that as in Idiocracy they listened to the smartest person to solve their problem. We're now onto Captain Planet baddies. Ridiculously childish cartoon carictatures of greed and evil are now in charge | | |
| ▲ | b3lvedere 15 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I wonder if the power of heart will save us then. | |
| ▲ | CuriouslyC 27 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | They even look like Captain Planet baddies. Trump with his orange skin, purple sores and ridiculous hair, RFK jr. walking around barefoot looking like a scrotum on steroids, Pete Kegsbreath answering the question "What if a mob boss fucked a frat bro", etc. |
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| ▲ | mrits 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The LNG plant is being built in Texas which are covered with turbines, and they absolutely do not look cool. | | |
| ▲ | InsideOutSanta 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There's a reason so many racing games put them on their maps. They look dope. | |
| ▲ | defrost 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Chevron’s Gorgon project LNG plants on Barrow Island also absolutely do not look cool. | |
| ▲ | DFHippie 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Texas which are covered with turbines Is "Texas" the plural of "Texa"? | | | |
| ▲ | thatwasunusual 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Texas which are covered with turbines, and they absolutely do not look cool. Compared to coal plants, which are _extremely_ cool-looking. /s | | |
| ▲ | mrits 25 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I've never seen one here, which makes sense because we don't use much coal. I suppose if they were 200m high and scattered across half the state I'd have a similar opinion. |
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| ▲ | layer8 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | So they look hot? |
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| ▲ | s_dev an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | What's more mental you talk to any Germans about deprecating their Nuclear power stations they will bang on about their plan for renewables and then you read these sorts of headlines. What the hell is happening over there? Why can't they get 'energy' despite being a scientifically literate nation. France has a far superior energy policy so it's not like you even have to travel beyond a few miles to see a wildly different price for electricity. At this rate French electricity will be half the price in a few years compared to German electricity. Germany is making mistake after mistake on energy. From Russian dependence to Nuclear scepticism to now accepting money to not build renewables. | | |
| ▲ | myrmidon an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Germany is already way ahead of the US in switching away from fossil electricity (also ahead of China). Sure, keeping the entire nuclear fleet from ~2000 would have maybe helped, but would have required very costly (economically and politically!) investments over the last few decades, and those basically went into renewables instead which turned out fine. See:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s... | | | |
| ▲ | mcintyre1994 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is about a German company that was going to make a renewable project in the US. Germany itself has a huge offshore wind industry, which is probably how they have companies that planned to do the same in the US. | |
| ▲ | smmeis an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | There is no french or german electricity price. Its a common market. Price difference is only different taxation | | |
| ▲ | legulere 8 minutes ago | parent [-] | | There are indeed bidding zones in Europe. France is one bidding zone and Germany and Luxembourg is another one. Market prices are indeed pretty comparable. Taxation and cost for the net are very different with a higher price for the connection in France and a higher price per kWh in Germany. In the end for a normal use of electricity the prices are very comparable. |
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| ▲ | satvikpendem 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Meanwhile China is becoming entirely energy independent and electrifying their economy. I don't understand how the US doesn't see that they won't be top dog forever especially in this multipolar age. |
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| ▲ | 0xfedcafe 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They still mostly rely on coal. Slightly more than half of electricity is generated by burning coal, whereas in the US, it's only 15%. The renewable energy share in generation is roughly the same in the US and China, but not for capacity. | | |
| ▲ | kccqzy a few seconds ago | parent | next [-] | | [delayed] | |
| ▲ | energy123 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You can look at current levels, or look at trends. China has stopped increasing coal. They're building a small number of new coal plants, but this is outstripped by the coal plants being underutilized or decommissioned China is really only building new renewables, almost 100x as much net renewable capacity per year compared to nuclear. | | |
| ▲ | cobbaut 33 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Plus they are building coal plants as backups for when other sources fail. |
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| ▲ | myrmidon an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is misleading, because China has no gas, and they use coal power as dispatchable source with lower capacity factor (similar to gas elsewhere). Coal+gas electricity is basically the same fraction in China than in the US. But countries like Germany or Spain are significantly ahead in this regard, with much higher fraction of electrical energy coming from solar/wind. See:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s... | | |
| ▲ | skybrian 6 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Burning natural gas instead of coal should result in about half as much carbon emissions theoretically, although methane leaks will narrow the advantage. |
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| ▲ | MSFT_Edging 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | China is also ~4x the population of the US and accounts for 30% of the worlds manufacturing and energy production. The scale is so crazy that these numbers rarely make sense on their own. | | |
| ▲ | contingencies an hour ago | parent [-] | | ie. China is the future, US is the past. | | |
| ▲ | arcbyte an hour ago | parent [-] | | Well, China is already "the past". They're past the Lewis turning point. We'll have to look somewhere else for "the future". | | |
| ▲ | CuriouslyC 25 minutes ago | parent [-] | | If China is declining more slowly than the rest of the world, that's still relative progress. |
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| ▲ | remus 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The direction of travel is clear though. China is making massive investments in renewable energy (and dominating sectors like solar in the process) while the US seems hell bent on going the other way. | |
| ▲ | ZeroGravitas an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Slightly less than half now as of the most recent figures. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-generates-less... > That [coal] share was well down from 65.5% in 2016, previous NEA figures showed. > Renewable energy's share grew to 41.2% — topping 40% for the first time — and of that wind and solar accounted for 24.6%, Xing added. Wind and solar's share was up from 9.7% in 2020. | |
| ▲ | arrrg an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Things are changing. Look at starting points and direction, not just things as they currently are. That said, renewable sources are so cheap and consequently economically appealing that not even the incredibly dumb Trump admin can stop them. | |
| ▲ | raverbashing 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Slightly more than half of electricity is generated by burning coal, So this means, slightly less than half is other sources (hydro, solar, etc) |
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| ▲ | Amezarak an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The US is the biggest oil producer in the world. Consumption does exceed production, but obviously this changes the calculus around energy independence. It is the third largest coal producer, behind India and China. | |
| ▲ | OtomotO an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | China thinks long-term, the US administration, especially the current one doesn't. And who is to blame them (or to hold them accountable)? Some won't live long-term... I mean, being 80 and fat, what are the chances... | | | |
| ▲ | epolanski an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | US is rich in fossil energy so it doesn't have the same incentives as China does obviously. | | |
| ▲ | estearum an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Someone who is "rich" in a consumable asset and therefore chooses to just consume that instead of investing in a renewable or compounding asset is colloquially known as "a dumbass." | | |
| ▲ | navane 37 minutes ago | parent [-] | | And it's called "dutch disease". We did it with gas. Now look at Norway. We could've been like Norway. |
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| ▲ | flohofwoe an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > US is rich in fossil energy so it doesn't have the same incentives as China does obviously. China isn't rich in fossil energy? That's news to me. They are the world's largest coal producer and still create over half of their electricity from coal. The difference to the US is that China seems to realize that this strategy isn't a long term solution. |
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| ▲ | bsenftner 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The USA is governed by evil people, and the people of the nation are too stupid and expecting someone else to stop them. Plain as day light. |
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| ▲ | jfengel an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | No, we're not expecting someone else to stop it. We voted for this. The evil is not imposed on us. It is us. Not everyone, but a majority. The minority is looking for ways to stop it, but it requires getting literally everyone else to work together. Which means any disagreement among them results in a loss, and more of the same evil. | | |
| ▲ | zeezer0 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | It's not a majority at all. it's a manipulating minority. | | |
| ▲ | burnto an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | And a population that seems content being manipulated. | |
| ▲ | doublerabbit an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Fraudulent minority too. Let's not forget Elon Musk was paying folk to vote for. |
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| ▲ | RobotToaster 16 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Less than half of people who voted voted for Trump, and turnout was 64%. Being allowed to chose between two evils every few years isn't democracy. |
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| ▲ | squidbeak an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In the USA's defence, the system that put these gangsters in charge also gives it a shot at changing course in a couple of years. | | | |
| ▲ | ourmandave an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 149 days until Jan 3, when new representatives are seated. | | |
| ▲ | gilrain an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | What is your contingency plan for if the groundwork that has been laid to falsify election results works? Wait harder? The ethical US has rolled over already. | | |
| ▲ | zer00eyz an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > falsify election results This is something that is extremely hard to accomplish in the US. It would be akin to all of Europe voting on the same day and trying to falsify an election in each country. The logistics of this means that you need a lot of participants, and someone is going to blow it (and the whole thing unravels). That is not the same as interfering: Jackboots at the polls, screwing with the mail, ID requirements. These two things are NOT the same. | | | |
| ▲ | wbobeirne an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Funny how at this point election fraud is a bipartisan issue, everyone seems to believe it's happening or will happen! | | |
| ▲ | kqp 13 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Not sure what you intend by this, but yes, that’s their goal. The same people put on a “Trump was robbed” act for the Trump voters and a “Trump is robbing you” act for the Democrats, and with both they accomplish their true goal: get Americans to stop believing in democracy. | |
| ▲ | hilariously 43 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Time passes. Trump is literally doing his utmost to disenfranchise voters, called electors to personally harass them, and has spent years "investigating the fraud" to setup groundwork for violating people's voting rights. One side says bullshit, the other side says "look at all of the fucking evidence of your eyes" |
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| ▲ | Timon3 30 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Even if the Republican party loses this time, what makes you think they won't find someone even worse than Trump next time? That seems to be the pattern over the last decades. I don't see myself ever being able to trust the US again. Maybe if they manage 2-3 decades without conservative idiocy, but the Epstein class would never allow that. | | |
| ▲ | CuriouslyC 24 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Trump is either going to break the US, or the Republican party. Either way, we're in for a long period of one party rule and chaos. |
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| ▲ | marcyb5st an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Honestly, despite having a wife from the US (not an US citizen anymore), I agree with you. It is really weird to me that such a thing as lobbying can be legal. Or the fact that you can donate to an election campaign so that they have more money to influence people. And it is even more surprising that the vast majority of US people don't even question these things. I have the theory that American exceptionalism hinders their critical thinking when it comes to these kind of subjects. Ie "If we decided to do it like this, it means is the best way possible". | |
| ▲ | gilrain an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It really is. “This is bad. When will someone stop us?” | |
| ▲ | ghosty141 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not evil, just dumb. | | |
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| ▲ | eigenspace 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Hopefully they take the money and use to to build more wind turbines in Europe I guess. Absolutely shameful what the USA has become. |
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| ▲ | evan_a_a 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | >RWE said that it will now reinvest the sum into conventional gas projects, including $900m (£669m) in a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal project in Louisiana. | | |
| ▲ | morkalork 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That kinda stinks, I wonder if getting the settlement was contingent on the re-investment. | |
| ▲ | eigenspace an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yeah, they say that, but I wonder how much of it is just to make the Trump admin happy. Like, I don't doubt that they will go and build gas projects, and might even use some of this money to kickstart it, but presumably RWE was already pretty far along the pipeline of preparing this offshore buildout, and there's likely a lot equipment orders, staff, ships, etc that they'd rather not cancel, and would rather redirect into another project if they can. Maybe that's copium from me though, just sad to see a big wind project go to waste. | | |
| ▲ | evan_a_a an hour ago | parent [-] | | They'll certainly continue wind projects, just not likely in the US and not with this money. | | |
| ▲ | eigenspace an hour ago | parent [-] | | Right, I just mean I wonder how much of the buildup to this project will be wasted. | | |
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| ▲ | ebri 39 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I wish I had not read this. I am not kidding when I say this is ruining my day thinking about. One thing is they ruin our times. But they are in the game of ruining the rest of time for humankind, too. |
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| ▲ | niek_pas 18 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | As well as all the other species. | |
| ▲ | flyingjoe 10 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | More and more it seems like we're trying to do a speed run of killing our planet (or rather a planet worth living on). |
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| ▲ | r0b05 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is beyond my understanding. They are actually paying to stop society from advancing. |
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| ▲ | TrackerFF 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Trump holds a grudge against wind turbines, for no other reason than that they "ruined" the view at a golf course / club he owns in Scotland. He tried to get them removed, but lost that case in court. That's mostly it. Another factor would be Trump getting donations from the oil & gas industry. | | |
| ▲ | doublerabbit an hour ago | parent [-] | | When I have drive past the course, I always have the urge to pee. One day I'll get out and take a piss on the green. |
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| ▲ | kuu 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Because the money they are spending and the money they will be making comes and ends in different pockets. | |
| ▲ | fnordsensei 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | To be fair, this seems consistent with what they normally do, and arguably consistent with what their voters want. | |
| ▲ | jfengel 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | As Republican commentator Bill Buckley put it, "A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop." The rest of the quote is actually about how it's meant to give people time to think, but it has clearly become an autonomic action. |
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| ▲ | glaslong 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Quick! Back to the other thread! I've spotted somewhere DOGE could recoup $1.2B |
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| ▲ | inigyou 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Can I also threaten to build an offshore wind project if they don't pay me $1.2 billion? |
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| ▲ | londons_explore 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | These guys had already signed a deal to build - giving them permission and probably an agreed price - the money was to persuade them to give that up. | | |
| ▲ | Avicebron 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | So like a subsidy? | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | No, like a breakup fee in a commercial contract. | | |
| ▲ | jaapz an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | So a subsidy to stop building, instead of a subsidy to start building | | |
| ▲ | rayiner an hour ago | parent [-] | | No, it's compensation for backing out of a deal. In contract law, once a deal is signed, you're entitled to the "benefit of the bargain" if you perform your end of the deal. A breakup fee allows one side to get out of the deal, while compensating the other side for sunk cost into the project, opportunity costs from not having pursued other deals, etc. |
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| ▲ | Avicebron an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | ...the point being the hypocrisy of exercising that option in the name of removing subsidized power, not the literal financial mechanism. |
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| ▲ | thrance an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | More like a bribe. |
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| ▲ | jacknews 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Trump literally just paid money (taxpayer money) for nothing | | |
| ▲ | jazzyjackson an hour ago | parent [-] | | I don’t understand what pot of money this is coming out of. Has Congress authorized taxpayer money be used for paying energy companies to halt projects? | | |
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| ▲ | b3lvedere 10 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Only if you are willing to be harassed by Trump for as long as he and his sons live. |
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| ▲ | phyzix5761 6 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement posted on X that Americans deserve an energy system built on common sense and not one dependent on "costly subsidies". Isn't the $1.2B deal a subsidy for conventional gas? |
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| ▲ | shrubble 6 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| They bought back the leases; how much did the lease cost originally, and how much work was done on the project? Those are the only important questions |
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| ▲ | minraws 20 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Wait halting energy projects when energy is so scares for data centers? Couldn't US just have handed it over to some US Big Tech? I am not in US but why pay to "not" do something like building infra. |
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| ▲ | thelastgallon 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Also, > The administration signed a similar $129bn (£96bn) agreement with Charlotte-based Duke Energy last month in exchange for the termination of the company's offshore wind lease in the Carolina Long Bay area. |
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| ▲ | robbiep 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I had to check that,
It is 129 million | | |
| ▲ | mark_something 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Indeed: https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/interior-announces-energy-... | | |
| ▲ | wiether 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Putting aside the sycophantic wording around the orange leader and the total lack of details of how it's going to achieve what they are promising and what is actually going to happen, it's funny to see the distinction between gov officials and the Duke exec: Gov: valued at $129 million and reinvest that same amount in additional generating capacity
Duke: will reinvest nearly $129 million in additional generating capacity, which may include
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| ▲ | micw 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I wonder how Americans feel to see that their elected president takes tax money to forcefully destroy the planet and our kid's future :-( |
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| ▲ | ChrisRR 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You would think that the US would be all for energy that reduces its reliance on the far east, regardless of the climate change benefit |
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| ▲ | kashnote 8 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I thought I misread the title at first. I assume we're going to pay labs to stop doing cancer research next? |
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| ▲ | klamann an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| RWE is the biggest producer of energy from lignite in Germany, which causes massive emissions even when compared to burning black coal, oil and gas. Lignite used to be really important for Germany because it has almost no reserves of oil and gas that can be accessed with traditional methods, but Germany has huge natural gas reserves that can be accessed with hydraulic fracturing. Of course, fracking is illegal in Germany, so we keep burning lignite instead, which is so much worse. Mind you, I'm not arguing that fracking is the future, we need to decarbonize the entire energy sector, but we could do so much better with the cards that we were dealt. So the lignite-burning energy dinosaur from Germany accepting a billion dollar bribe to divest resources from clean energy into fossil fuels is totally in character for that company. Shame on them. |
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| ▲ | ssl-3 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Please always vote. Thank you. :) |
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| ▲ | iammjm an hour ago | parent [-] | | Just “voting” is not sufficient. In fact, voting for the “wrong” people got us here. This guy won because people voted for him. Twice! How about: please always vote for the person who seems the least likely to fuck up the present and the future for all of us | | |
| ▲ | exe34 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Nah the people voting for the orange fuhrer are beyond reason. It's the third that doesn't vote that needs to decide which road they want us all to take. |
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| ▲ | kingleopold 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Energy lobby in the USA is incredible. Maybe the best one? They have direct power too |
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| ▲ | petesergeant 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | That lets Trump off the hook by suggesting it's just run-of-the-mill corruption. It's not. He has a personal vendetta against wind power ever since a bust-up with Scotland about the views from his golf course getting "ruined". Today that cost Americans $4 each. |
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| ▲ | iammjm 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Wow what a great value on those $1.2B for the taxpayers! |
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| ▲ | theyeenzbeanz 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | We have totally not communism sending money to every other country in existence, but spending a single cent towards the betterment of your citizens is super duper evil communism. I would love to know the thought process of this administration because it feels like a fever dream. | | |
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| ▲ | firtoz 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Is the policy now to "harvest whatever we can ASAP" without any regard or consideration for the future or the environment? |
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| ▲ | rf15 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Or, you know, the future bottom line. I wonder how much these people understand that if you kill everyone or put them under serious resource strain because of environmental collapse, there's no one left to pay anything to you. How hard is that to understand? Don't pull the trigger, because yes, right now you don't have a bullet in your foot, but in a few milliseconds... | | |
| ▲ | whatevaa 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Most of those people are old and don't care about the future. Not their problem. | |
| ▲ | soco an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Once you are a trillionaire or getting there, personal safety can be bought even without receiving future payments. |
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| ▲ | jjice 29 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Is there any way to view our consistent destruction of green energy products in the last few years as anything other than hostile towards the majority of people purely to have a handful of people profit on cost of gas? |
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| ▲ | 0xfedcafe 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| "RWE said that it will now reinvest the sum into conventional gas projects, including $900m (£669m) in a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal project in Louisiana." "Trump has sought to boost government support for fossil fuels after campaigning for the presidency under the slogan "drill, baby, drill"." That's insane, even though half of Republican supporters believe in climate change, and almost all Democratic voters do too. I can understand cutting government spending on the transition to green energy when projects are unprofitable, but what is the point of cutting it for profitable ones? If I'm not mistaken, energy firms like RWE are even threatened with lawsuits if they continue building wind turbines. Other coal investments are even more insane. |
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| ▲ | seydor 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| We found trump's achilles heel. I demand a trillion to shut down my solar |
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| ▲ | Incipient 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I fully understand why power generation is subsidised - however honesty I feel if the govt is subsidising it, they should get a cut of the profits too. I also believe in a free market, and power should be subsidised equally per MW (MWh maybe?) this takes the politics out of a structural necessity. If you want to push a political agenda - great - but do it on political topics. |
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| ▲ | layer8 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | This might make sense if power companies would bear the environmental costs, but they don’t. That’s one reason why it is a political topic. | |
| ▲ | cicko 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There is no such thing as a free market, the way you refer to it. | |
| ▲ | askvictor an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | A free market that avoids externalities like climate change? |
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| ▲ | Havoc an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Can the US please keep their bad decisions within their borders... |
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| ▲ | whh an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Take that $1.2bn. Invest it. When this moronic administration is gone, use it to build more renewable energy infrastructure. |
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| ▲ | tiberius_p an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Big Oil getting what they paid for. |
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| ▲ | qsera 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| How much wind power can we extract before we disrupt the global wind circulation and thus the climate regulation by winds? Is no one worried about this? |
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| ▲ | lkbm 10 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | It's occasionally mentioned, but the answer appears to be "roughly 1000x current global electricity production", so we don't worry about it too much. Energy is much higher than electricity, of course, but we're not planning on replacing all energy [or all electricity] with just wind. We'll hit other constraints long before that happens. There may be some local effects. I think the main one is one cluster of wind turbines effecting the output of nearby clusters (and effects within a cluster). Pretty sure they account for this when engineering wind farms, with the effects actively being studied. | |
| ▲ | niek_pas 16 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Probably a lot: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC526278/ |
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| ▲ | KSteffensen an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Why does Doug Burgum need to underscore the fact that the RWE investment is 'voluntary'? |
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| ▲ | hooo 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| We need more energy. We should be doing this, gas, nuclear, solar. Not either or. |
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| ▲ | eigenspace 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | ̶W̶e̶i̶r̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶m̶e̶n̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶w̶i̶n̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶l̶i̶s̶t̶ ̶(̶e̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶s̶i̶d̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶t̶e̶x̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶e̶n̶t̶i̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶t̶i̶c̶l̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶w̶i̶n̶d̶)̶.̶ (Edit: apparently I can't read today) In most locations, unless you have extremely stable weather, it's ideal to have a nearly even mix of wind and solar capacity, since wind is rather strongly anticorrelated with sunshine. | | |
| ▲ | raincole 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > We should be doing this It'd be very reasonable to assume "this" means wind here. | | |
| ▲ | eigenspace 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I somehow missed the "this", that makes way more sense, thank you for pointing it out. |
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| ▲ | _heimdall 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | We also need to use less total energy, regardless of source. That number doesn't have to always go up. | | |
| ▲ | kingleopold 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That number directly correlates with life quality in almost every country on earth. More energy per capita means higher life quality, without a doubt in every high quality place. | | |
| ▲ | KronisLV 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | What about quality of life per watt and just making having a certain standard of living more energy efficient? Simple examples: energy efficient lights seem to have no downsides, better insulation helps my apartment building retain heat, more efficient electronics mean that my homelab servers pull like 100 W total and public transport probably removes a bunch of cars from the road and increases air quality and decreases traffic jams (I can get everywhere I need that way, there’s literally train, tram and bus stops like 5-15 minutes away). | | |
| ▲ | antsar 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > energy efficient lights seem to have no downsides Efficiency is good, but this isn't true. Decades into LED-ification we still suffer shit-tier PWM strobing, poor dimming, disruption to wildlife and human life, and streetlights turning purple en masse. (The last two are installation and quality issues, but when driven by lowest-bidder compliance with simplistic "efficiency" mandates that's what you get). | | |
| ▲ | mrob an hour ago | parent [-] | | Lower color rendering index than incandescent lights too. High CRI LEDs are available, but they're still worse than incandescents and less efficient than the conventional LEDs. |
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| ▲ | _heimdall 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There must be a cap where quality of life is good enough though, right? Or do you propose it should go up indefinitely? Air conditioning is quite nice if you find yourself living in a hot environment, for example. But do we really all need smart watches? Or cameras everywhere? Or LLMs, for that matter? | | |
| ▲ | iso1631 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Do smart watches and cameras and llms increase quality of life? | | |
| ▲ | _heimdall 11 minutes ago | parent [-] | | That depends entirely on how you measure quality of life. Though I'd argue that if quality of life measures didn't noticeably increase after those products were released, then I'd say no. |
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| ▲ | uecker an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You can do more with less energy, if you use it more efficiently, which sometimes may be more cost effective compared to producing more. Electricity consumption peaked in Germany in 2007 and is down 15% since then while GDP grew by 50%. Also energy consumption per capita is more than 2x higher in the US compared to Germany, while quality of life should be roughly similar. (In my personal opionion quality of life is better in Germany). | |
| ▲ | backscratches 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | OK some people should use less energy | |
| ▲ | parkersweb 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You say that like it’s an infinitely scalable proposition? It really isn’t. |
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| ▲ | ZeroGravitas 43 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Electrification roughly halves total energy use in an economy. Fossil fuels are very inefficient compared with alternatives like EVs and heat pumps and renewables. | |
| ▲ | rapind 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You're not wrong, but it simply isn't politically viable, which has been illustrated quite obviously by now. The "use less" strategy is a complete (and predictable) failure. | | |
| ▲ | _heimdall 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Oh it shouldn't be a political issue at all. We don't need the government forcing us to reduce energy use, we need people to do it for themselves. | | |
| ▲ | mrob an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | It is absolutely the government's job to regulate externalities. Otherwise, personal virtue is just subsidizing third party vice. Energy is fungible. Every joule you save lowers the cost for people who don't care. | |
| ▲ | rapind an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I wish. Look up "coal rolling". | | |
| ▲ | iso1631 42 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Coal rolling is done to spite the holier-than-thou sanctamonious bullshit that people who say "we need to eat lentils and live in a cave" come out with. It's an illogical reaction, but it's human. We need answers, not revert to a world of catholic sin Change your car to run off electric, great Change your city to transport 1000 people by train rahter than 1000 separate cars, great Power your AC from your off-grid rooftop solar, great Whine that people need to stop using AC, stop eating meat, stop watching TV, it's just harmful. |
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| ▲ | mrob an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There are only two routes to preventing the climate disaster we've already set in motion: Risky geoengineering projects like stratospheric aerosol injection. Direct atmospheric capture of CO2. The latter is the safer option because it's just restoring the atmosphere to a known good state. Direct atmospheric capture of billions of tons of CO2 per year will take enormous amounts of energy. We're going to need a lot more nuclear power plants if there's any hope of pulling this off. Alternative is World War Three when large parts of the planet become uninhabitable. | | |
| ▲ | _heimdall 20 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I've never been particularly intrigued by the climate disaster angle. Not that it isn't an issue, but that it shouldn't be a prerequisite for a person to consume less by choice. If I have to convince someone that 1) the climate is changing beyond historical patterns 2) I know the chemical/mechanical processes at play and 3) we caused it just so they turn off the TV when they leave the house or enjoy their current car a few years longer, its a situation that will never be resolved. | |
| ▲ | jaapz an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Atmospheric capture of CO2 seems to me to be one of the things pushed by the fossil fuel industry. It is clearly not really feasable (at least not now). To me it just seems like the fossil fuel industry is doing the tobacco industry playbook of pushing stuff that doesn't actually work so people don't even try the stuff that does work: using less energy, and using less carbon intensive energy. We really can move to less carbon intensive energy, there's lots of options all around us. Yes it means a systemic change - which is exactly what the fossil fuel industry doesn't want. |
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| ▲ | iso1631 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In medieval times we used tiny amounts of energy on lighting and everyone sat around in the dark, however the energy used per lumen and indeed the carbon impact per lumen was far higher than it is today Do you think we should return to medieval heat and light? | |
| ▲ | budsniffer952 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Pack your stuff and go to a country that uses less energy and leave the rest of us alone with the degrowth. | | |
| ▲ | sensanaty an hour ago | parent [-] | | Your "growth at all costs" mindset is going to kill everyone, including yourself, so it's not as simple as just moving elsewhere. |
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| ▲ | ModernMech 29 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| "US strikes..." Oh God, what now, we've finally bombed Cuba? "...$1.2B deal to pay..." Oh thank God! "...halt offshore wind projects" God damn it. |
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| ▲ | mikkom 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is Dr. Evil level stuff |
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| ▲ | dgellow 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Clown administration, there is nothing else to say. It’s completely captured by grifters at that point |
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| ▲ | MariusGjerd 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| take a look at what Spain is doing. diversifying the energy system is needed |
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| ▲ | blondie9x 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| We are outraged. We know we are nearly the climate abyss. We see the changes all around us. What are we going to do to collectively to change course? To right the ship? I wrote a book on the issue. I think the next best thing we can do is work together to amplify our voices to the point ignoring us is no longer politically convenient. https://sustainedminimalist.com/book |
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| ▲ | neuronic 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| As a German I am highly confused by US actions. America is sabotaging its own economic future, demonizing independent renewable natural energy sources (you don’t need to import wind or sun) and Mr. „art of the deal“ is even paying us for it. |
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| ▲ | dudefeliciano 14 minutes ago | parent [-] | | With Herr Merz at the helm this should hardly be confusing for a German. Let's not take the high ground here, we don't deserve it. |
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| ▲ | softwaredoug an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| To be clear, this isn’t wind power currently under construction. It’s proposed future wind power with leases being planned. Trump has largely failed to stop the nearly complete projects in New England, New York, and Virginia. Still short sighted and stupid, of course. |
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| ▲ | davexunit an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Can't have wind power. Can't have bike lanes. Can't have trains. Can't have healthcare. Love this country! |
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| ▲ | numbers_guy 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Why are they scared shitless of wind power? What's the deal? I don't get it. Like, they seem to be more determined to stop wind power than solar power. Why? |
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| ▲ | kibwen 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The US continues to cede the energy revolution to China. |
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| ▲ | sensanaty an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's just so blatantly and absurdly evil for literally no reason. It's a cartoon villain type of plan, the absurdity of it leaves me at a true loss for words |
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| ▲ | layer8 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. | | |
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| ▲ | christkv an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Offshore wind projects when you have tons and tons of empty land always seemed weird to me. The cost, logistics, reduced life of the installations, disruptions to the ecosystems and potential production issues with winter storms and other extreme weather events. |
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| ▲ | newswasboring 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| So in short a company was servicing power demand in a low pollution way. Then American government gave them money so they can instead service the same demand while causing more pollution. Just... Why? To protect a few hundred jobs in America? They could have just given a small portion of that money to these workers and they would stop complaining about job loss. 1.2 Billion is a big number. |
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| ▲ | ulfw 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Every single day it's getting stupider and stupider with the NewUSA |
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| ▲ | johnea 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Leave to the idiot cheato to be #1! Nobody else ever spent this much money to NOT have cheap power 8-/ |
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| ▲ | dmje 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Literally setting fire to the world because the US government is rammed full of corruption and oil cronies. Meanwhile everything is fine for the handful of billionaires who benefit from this shit. Absolutely sickening. |
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| ▲ | yablak 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Barf |
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| ▲ | titaniumrain an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| this is the stupidest thing ever. literally this administration cancels the contract and compensates german company... omg |
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| ▲ | metalman 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| my guess is that this project will be quickly relocated somewhere else in a double loose for the US, but then may very well prove to illegal in any number of violations of US law, triggering further confusion and unplanned costs for US tax payers.
it's a triumphalist celebration of anti logic |
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| ▲ | ck2 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| November can't come soon enough, this administration is beyond disgusting They are literally a non-stop crime-spree against humanity But if the Dems don't get 52 in the Senate absolutely nothing will change and might get even worse, likely much worse |
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| ▲ | phplovesong 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The madness continues. No one else is to blame other than the american zeros who made this hell to continue this long. |
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| ▲ | dudefeliciano 17 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Don't worry they are now starting to wake up and realize that Trump has been lying to them so they will vote for Tucker Carlson in the next election. |
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| ▲ | TrackerFF 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The challenge is that you're not dealing with rational people. The big dog in the White House is a imbecile of the highest order, and everyone is doing everything in their power to appease him. It is a unwinnable situation as long as Trump is POTUS. |
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| ▲ | petesergeant 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| One of my guiltier pleasures is reading r/Conservative to see which knots they're tying themselves in today defending some of his more insance ideas. In the unlikely event this surfaces up beyond some rage-bait culture war story they've found on Breitbart, I will enjoy reading their thoughts on why this is 4d chess† †: in fairness to them, they are almost uniformly opposed to Trump's adventurism in Iran and mostly not supportive of the Jan 7th slush-fund, and will call out both when pressed |
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| ▲ | shevy-java 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Now people understand why Merz is so obedient to Trump: USA always pays Germany handsomely. Canadians understood Trump being a problem. German taxpayers also understand this. It is german politicians who consistently act against the people in Germany here; Merz is just doing this very shamelessly and obviously, while also insulting germans as "lazy bums" (https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2026-07/friedrich-me... - here he claims to never have insulted Germans as that, but prior statements contradict this). There is a reason why more than 70% (!!!!) of germans oppose Merz now. https://ip-quarterly.com/en/troubled-merz-faces-crucial-elec... Being so obedient to Mr. Trump, who in turn now faces allegation of being more involved than was previously already known with regards to Epstein's sexy islands, is a lose-lose situation Mr. Merz. USA paying german companies to abandon green energy plans, also ties into that. If Merz would have something called a spine he would not be so addicted to the money and instead reject the USA trying to influence Europeans and Germans negatively here. Because that money is ultimately bribery money for RWE. Shame on RWE as well. |
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| ▲ | dathinab an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| is it just me or does that seems to be a decision driven fully by a personal dislike of wind energy without having actually run the numbers, or in other words the art of a deal isn't that like yes there was binding commitment to RWE getting some level of subsidies, hence he had to "pay them of" around the amount of profit they have likely list, and probably more but... compared to not paying that much more in subsidies _and_ getting more electricity out of it which the US seem to currently be quite tight one this seems to be a terrible bad deal --- EDIT: Sorry for the rant below, it's just pretty annoying how dishonest non fact based politics has been becoming where I live: furthermore you can stop future subsidies, so if wind energy is as "fake" as he claims this is something RWE would be stuck with not them, even if it drive them bankrupt it wouldn't be a USA problem (and more a German one) so the only way this deal makes sense is if you a) hate wind energy and want it cone irrationally b) know it actually works and as such would "stay around" for sure (or if you really really really care about birds, no way this is true for Trump) (And also practically it already has proven that off shore wind farms can work profitable, so b, isn't really a question. But I guess if you have a president who says all the wind farms in China are fake for show while China produce roughly as much wind energy as all of the EU together then sure you can't except logic). In general the amount of nonsense you hear when it comes to the topic of renewable energies is pretty crazy both in how people "proof how bad it is" .. based on early technology from well over 20+ years ago, systematically ignoring relevant components of a complete solution, pretending certain already in-use technologies don't exist and don't make sense etc. To ignoring issues with whatever technology they favor and often comparing wrongly calculated "non subsidized" renewable prices with "highly subsidized" non renewable prices. Don't get me wrong it also is done the other way around. But at least where I live, that direction of propaganda isn't really relevantly used while the other direction is spread everywhere non stop (while also pretending that any honest calculation is supposedly "faked" because it doesn't fit their world view). |
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| ▲ | glaslong an hour ago | parent [-] | | The art of the deal is historically mostly losing, flailing and bankruptcies |
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| ▲ | xkcd1963 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| And here I'm saying again NAFO peps live in a bubble |
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| ▲ | db48x an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This nonsense again? The firm paid the US government a billion dollars to rent the property that the wind turbines would sit on, then the US withdrew permission for the project. Should the government simply have gypped them and kept the money? |
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| ▲ | glaslong an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Was there a good reason not to build there? It seems at a glance like we should have just built the turbines, not paid off or stiffed them. Since we seem to desperately need more energy, currently expanding with every other short term high polluting source we can. | |
| ▲ | CoastalCoder an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | You might want to reconsider using "gypped" in that way. |
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| ▲ | cloudie78 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Why the flying fuck are we still LARPing with toy projects like this shit? 1.2B gives you a 1-1.5GW nuclear power station that runs at 90% capacity 24/7 365 (minus occasional maintanance and refuling) day or night, wind or no wind. |
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| ▲ | throwaway7356 32 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Nuclear isn't as cheap as you present it. It needs heavy subsidies for insurance and waste disposal. Most nuclear power proposals are just LARPing as "cheap" as they pretend subsidies don't exist. In addition you have to shut nuclear power plants down in summers due to lack of sufficient cooling. That means you need to plan alternative replacement power generation. | |
| ▲ | tmtvl an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | So what you're saying is instead of spending 1.2B to stop a firm from building wind, the government should leave the firm be so they can keep building wind and invest the 1.2B into building a nuclear power plant which will come online when the German firm has built roughly 1,000x the same capacity in wind turbines. |
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| ▲ | firesteelrain 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| US has absurdly large domestic energy resources like gas reserves, coal reserves, uranium, and thermal energy infrastructure. Then, there is the supply chain argument: the specialized turbines, components, vessels and manufacturing chains are manufactured overseas and imported to support Wind. RWE is itself German. It’s good to reduce dependence on foreign supply chains. Fishing and maritime was also cited as a concern. Onshore Wind is used (see New Mexico). Offshore Wind is a harder sell. Gas/nuclear/geothermal is a better investment for the US than Offshore Wind. |
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| ▲ | m4ck_ 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | >It’s good to reduce dependence on foreign supply chains The fact that we're still basically entirely reliant on the middle east and other foreign producers for our domestic fuel supply suggests this isn't really that big of a deal. Even in the middle of a war that is generating massive profits for the oil industry, no one is suggesting they should add refinery capacity or convert existing ones to use domestic oil. This move is about the president's personal vendetta against offshore wind and satisfying his financial backers in the fossil fuel industry. | | |
| ▲ | firesteelrain 24 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I disagree. The US is the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the world. We’re also a net energy exporter. We import some crude because our refineries are set up for it. That’s a long way from being “entirely reliant” on foreign fuel. |
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| ▲ | ch_sm 29 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | While these arguments are valid, you’re missing the forrest for the trees. Renewable energy has better long-term ROI because it doesn’t require constant purchase of fuel. Renewable energy plants also produce far, far less CO2 that goes into the atmosphere and endangers our biosphere (yours and mine). | |
| ▲ | windyoil an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Do you know if it would be easier to get fully domestic supply and manufacturing chains for solar or for wind, if a way is found to prevent corruption undermining setting up fully domestic production? | | |
| ▲ | firesteelrain 5 minutes ago | parent [-] | | For onshore wind, probably wind. For offshore wind, not nearly as clear. The US still lacks a lot of the specialized vessels, ports and manufacturing capacity. Solar has bigger upstream dependence on Asian wafer/cell production. |
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| ▲ | brookst an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > It’s good to reduce dependence on foreign supply chains. Huh? That’s quite a whopper to drop as if it’s an obvious truth. It’s good to diversify supply chains. Eggs-in-one-basket is bad for many reasons, even if it’s your own domestic basket. Trade interdependence is good for competition, reduces risks from disasters, and creates disincentives for war. And the market apparently thinks offshore wind is a good investement for the US, to the point where the government has to pay companies not to do it. | | |
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