Posted on 09/13/2025 9:58:11 AM PDT by dangus
Two months ago something happened that I was hesitant to crow about: the amount of electricity produced by solar and wind projects exceeded the amount produced by nuclear energy. A few months earlier, they outpaced energy produced by burning coal. So wind and solar are now the second largest source of electricity production in the United States, if combined.
I hesitated because the number of planned solar projects in development had suddenly leveled off, just as wind projects had done the year prior. And there was a plausible cause why this might not just be a one-month fluke: Pres. Trump has cut not only federal funding but motivation for transitioning to wind plus solar.
But here's the thing: it no longer matters.
See, solar energy got a well-earned, terrible reputation for being an economic boondoggle because earlier solar technologies cost scores times more money than carbon-emission-based energy sources. But the then the price came down, down, down, down, down, down, at a rate so steady that Moore's Law (regarding the price of microprocessors continually plunging) was superceded by Wright's Law (applied to technology in general... Wright defined his law way back in 1936, but it was far less famous than Moore's Law).
Let me be clear: the people who based solar power and wind power were correct; they were a terrible waste of money. Rather than focusing on a set of applications for which photovoltaic (PV) cells made set which would gradually expand as PV cells got cheaper, we spent billions upon billions of dollars on garbage solar technologies like concentrated solar power, solar water heating, etc., which only stole market share from PV cells.
But as PV cells costs came down, they were adopted for more applications, which brough costs down in a virtuous cycle. PV cells went from calculators to remote electronics to roadside lighting to off-the-grid homes to industrial plants to utility electricity production.
But rather than being beat back by sane cost arguments, government wasters exploited the cynicism generated by people noting how expensive solar energy was, and created the myth that the government must spend trillions to make solar energy affordable. Each and every year, for decades, the government has published projections of PV energy production. And every time, the government foresees a near complete collapse of the production of PV production.
It's like someone in government doesn't get that PV energy isn't a consumable like oil. Each factory doesn't just help create more solar energy; it expands the rate at which solar energy is produced. And as a result, the amount of solar electricity created has doubled on average every three years for several decades. As a result, ten times more solar electricity was produced last year than just nine years earlier.
And that brings me around to why I write this now: I've had a chance to review the information published by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and confirmed that yes, the exponential growth rate is back on track.
Here's what that means: If the PV industry doubles just one more time, (and again remember it's doubled six times in the past 20 years), we'll be creating enough PVs to replace natural gas in just ten more years. We probably won't actually replace natural gas because instead we'll be significantly replacing gasoline, but the point is we are rapidly coming to a total collapse of carbon emissions in the next two decades.
(Petroleum-based fuels will probably persist in niche applications, much like vinyl records, snail mail, fax machines and home coal burners persist.)
For solar energy to become a dominant source of electricity, storage is necessary, which is why utility-scale battery storage is exploding at about 70% per year lately. Prices have come down so far, solar energy is cheap even with the costs of storage. Lithium remains very volatile; it's price is down 85% after an incredible surge peaking in late 2022. At current prices, it's too inexpensive to make recycling economically sensible or to fund huge improvements in extraction technologies, but it's very abundant. And ultimately, it's not consumed by the energy-creating processes. China's environmental-costs-be-damned approach to cheap lithium also undermines US development of lithium resources, so lithium may become a driver of geopolitics, but the notion of running out of it, or chromium (which is used but not consumed in the manufacture of PV panels) is absurd.
Who doesn't want development of solar energy? Simple: China and the Arab nations. You can expect more and more hatred from the Left, too, of the sort that drive Elon Musk to Republicans, as the Left realizes thet their impossible demands can actually be met and there will be no need for a globalist takeover of the economy. Don't fall for their propaganda.
China is a Communist country with no political freedom. I hope all of you Commie lovers move there. Stuff your solar panels.
Yep. Whenever Washington is promoting anything, it’s never about what’s being promoted as much as it is about lining the right pockets with public $.
And mere greed.
They are INTENTIONALLY trying to force people into using an inefficient system of power, so that they can eventually use it to control people by rationing electrical power to only people who meet their 'social credit score' requirements.
You have been consistently wrong I just ignore old coots like you.
There is nothing factually wrong with any of the data I posted. Texas is the leader in US energy because of our solar and wind which we dominate not only the total oower delivered and used market twice what
Florida or California prodice. We also have some of the lowest wholesale and industrial power rates it’s why all the AI and crypto servers are being built here.
China gets things right on infrastructure yeah they are a one party system that doesn’t change the FACT that engineers are in the one party in control of the infrastructure build outs. Cope all you want they are building multiple times the capacity of the USA in energy harvesting machines which is what wind and solar are they harvest 40 to over 100 times the energy to make them. That is conclusively proven by science of you want to be emotional have at it.
Remember again China don’t do climate change they give zero Fs about carbon yet they HAVE not are building out the largest solar and wind deployments the planet has ever seen. They built out SIX TEXAS grids worth of just new solar in six MONTHS time. They didn’t do that because they though omg carbon. They did it because they have engineer’s who can do math and they solved the equations that show solar in a desert is the cheapest form of flowing electrons humans have come up with. The IEA has no less than 5 mathematical studies showing exactly that.
China knows it’s windy somewhere all the time and over a continent sized area it’s sunny too so they built out a super grid to move via 1 million volt DC and AC lines from where it’s windy and sunny to where their megacities are. Again engineers who could careless about climate change. Theye know once your build out that super grid you only have to maintain it and you have forever energy falling from literal heavens and in the air.
I won’t bother listening to you but will set the factual record straight every time. Flat out you are wrong and couldn’t be more wrong if you tired.
Considering how little time that we’ve had industrial scale battery backup? We’ve had 2 major fires in the last year and both facilities were totally wiped out. They are way more prone to fire. And moreover you can’t put that fire out or even control it. It’s a metal fire. C’mon Man!
Wrong in many ways.
China and even Arabs profit from Green energy.
Who makes the solar cells? China!
US has the world largest deposit of coal. If not for the greenies, we could run the whole country on US mined coal!
The so called green energy is the most polluting energy there is. Destroying our environment, farmland, protected species!
The solar cells/windmills deliver their energies exactly when it is not needed!
Do you know, that during the “green energy “ peak operations, the wholesale price of energy is often NEGATIVE! Useless energy, They have to pay somebody to get rid of it!
China is a Communist third word s-hole for 500 million or more. Why don’t you move there you Commie loving bastard. FOAD.
Pumped water storage.
>> China and even Arabs profit from Green energy.
Who makes the solar cells? China! <<
China takes a loss on every solar cell they sell in America because they’re trying to stifle our PV industry.
>> The so called green energy is the most polluting energy there is. Destroying our environment, farmland, protected species! <<
That you make such a categorical statement proves it comes from ideology, not fact.
The vanishing farmland/protected species argument is laughable with regards to solar power. An acre of rooftop could provide area for solar panels that could generate 1 MW. There are 1.2 MILLION acres of rooftop, so we could entirely replace our natural-gas electricity production with solar using only rooftops and zero farmland. It’s just marginally cheaper to use solar “farms” instead of rooftops.
In fact, we could power the entire U.S. with only the number of solar panels you could fit in San Bernadino County!
when has the government been right about anything?...
“C’mon Man”
You sound like Joe Biden.
Which two fires do you refer to? because none of the major fires I find have anything to do with industrial-scale electricity-generating plants. The American one was a battery-recycling plant in Missouri. It matters because it’s positively unreasonable to include Joe Hick’s battery recycling outfit as if it were an industrial-scale electricity-generating plant because the regulation involved is incomparable. Heck, back in the day, it seemed like there was ALWAYS an on-going oil refinery fire.
One little issue with the ground moving: The ground is moving. The things called earthquakes (when the earth moves) are rather unpleasant and often very expensive.
A good example of the type of difficulty I am referring to is the Three Gorges Dam in China, where the volume of water being impounded is so heavy it’s causing earthquakes all around the area.
Intentionally causing the earth to rise and fall seems a little counter productive to me.
Touche on the Biden reference... LOL!
Follow the money...
Billions went into bank accounts of politicians, friends, and relatives....
Social engineering to help spend on MMT.
In my defense, I did say #1 or #2.
The EU is now working over time to shut down nuclear.
From memory, France was getting 80% of its electricity from nuclear a couple decades ago.
Sounds impressive...
Until, you realize that solar and wind have to be 100% backed up by carbon or nuclear.
The financial and environmental cost of battery back up is ridiculous.
Also, the idea that CO2 - 0.04% of our atmosphere - controls our climate, is also ridiculous.
>> Until, you realize that solar and wind have to be 100% backed up by carbon or nuclear. The financial and environmental cost of battery back up is ridiculous. <<
You’re information is out of date.
Your comment is substance free and completely meaningless.
Besides pumping water up-hill into reservoirs, what serious alternative is available?
In the mean time, perhaps we should ask France to manage the USA electric grid?
35 years ago, France got 80% of its electricity from nuclear.
What’s out of date is your assertion that the economic cost of battery backups is ridiculous. It’s the same thing with the rest of the Luddites on this thread: you’re arguing what can’t be done after it’s already been done. You’re making an argument people made 30 years ago... when the cost of battery storage was literally ONE HUNDRED times greater.
In 2018, the government projected we’d reach 1 GWh/yr by 2030. By just 2020, the government doubled that projection. We reached that new, doubled projection by 2024. Remember how everyone on Free Republic insisted Tesla could never make a profit? This means that even AFTER Tesla proved it would be an utterly enormously profitable company, the CHEERleaders for battery energy supply were wrong by a factor of FOUR how quickly utility battery storage would be adopted.
See, what everyone got wrong about what the government got wrong that I refer to in my title wasn’t that the greenies OVERestimated the adoption of renewable energy; it’s that they absurdly, ludicrously, even stupidly UNDERestatimated the adoption.
I say stupidly because they saw their mistakes repeated time and time and time again and kept making the same mistakes; I don’t call the Luddites here stupid... For now, I’ll just call you all Luddites. But at some point, the Luddite position must be abandoned, or it becomes stupid. It’s like you’re standing there claiming that the Wright Brothers’ plane will never fly, while America is bombing the crap out of Germany.
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