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down, down, at a rate so steady that Moore's Law (regarding the price of microprocessors continually plunging) was superceded by Wright's Law (applied to technology in general...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.
It just proves the willful ignorance when you say that “The author forgot to mention that solar and wind power do not produce electricity 24-7.” I did address how they now supply electricity 24-7, even if they produce it erratically.
Why combine wind and solar? Because they’re both renewables. I’m all for nuclear power, by the way. And even after renewables largely (but never entirely) put an end to coal and even natural gas, I do expect nuclear power will be an important element in our energy mix.
>> when has the government been right about anything?... <<
Pretty much never, but the interesting thing is that they keep absurdly UNDERestimating green energy, trying to convince people that without massive government investment, we’ll stay addicted to oil until we run out (which will also never happen).
>> Until, you realize that solar and wind have to be 100% backed up by carbon or nuclear. <<
Oh, even if you were right, what would be wrong with backing renewables up with carbon? (Unfortunately, nuclear’s useless as a backup because you can’t just fire up a nuclear reactor when there’s bad weather... but it’s great for forming a steady baseline of energy supply, greatly reducing the need for stored energy.)
Coal and natural gas plants certainly have a production cost, but it’s relatively small (unlike nuclear) compared to the cost of the fuel. A perfect energy mix would be a baseline of nuclear, mid-day peaks of solar, batteries to delay the peaks until the actual hottest time of the day which is 3PM, or until the office can cut back its energy use at 5PM, persistent wind throughout the day and night with batteries to smooth out fluctuations, and natural gas to smooth out the lumps or provide extra energy in extreme situations.
Tesla profit?
After 15 years in business, Tesla has a 6% net profit in the most recent 4 quarters.
Tesla stock has a 220 PE Ratio (Price to Earnings), which is the highest I have ever seen for a major stock.
Tesla has close to $120 billion in debt.
Within the last month, Elon Musk stated that Tesla's robotic division would be the major profit center for the future.
OMG!!! You’re still trying to argue Tesla can’t be profitable????? Yeah, it has such a high PE ratio because it’s literally the most valuable company on Earth! It’s more valuable than every other auto manufacturer in America combined, including foreign-owned companies!!!! It’s price-to-debt ratio is an unheard of 10:1!!!
Oh, and it’s operating margin is 9%.
Congratulations to Tesla for winning the Stock Market Wheel Chair Race!
MSFT, META (Face Book), and GOOGL, have 2X to 3X more revenue, plus 30% to 40% net income, and pay a dividend.
By the way, $3 billion of the Tesla $6 billion net income comes from Government Carbon Credits.
One final note...
Global spending on Green Energy recently passed $5 trillion.
Most of that money has been paid or loaned by the USA and Europe.
$5 trillion would build 300 nuclear power plants in the USA - including the completely insane cost over runs!
1) Please tell me where you get a nuclear power plant for $2 billion? They canceled one after spending $18 billion on it. Or is $2 billion what Russia spent on Chernobyl?
2) In the original article, I addressed the absurd money-grab. But I also addressed the fact that the cost has fallen 99%. 99%!!!! That’s such an insane price reduction that I get that it’s hard to believe; it sounds like a made-up number, but it’s real. It’s like you’re complaining that $150,000 is too much to pay for a Tesla, so you’re refusing a brand-new Tesla for $1,500.
$5 trillion divided by $17.5 billion = 286.
I generously rounded up because close national scrutiny might actually save a couple billion, here and there.
(2) I do not understand your 1% claim.
Current Tesla Model 3 is priced between $40,000 - $56,000.
If that price range has been reduced 99%, that means the original price range was $4 million - $5.6 million.
I’m comparing what it would be like if Tesla’s price decreased as much as PVs did.
I don’t know where you got the $5 trillion for; I suspect it’s an inflation-adjusted amount for the entirety of global spending on all environmental causes, which would be an absolute ridiculous thing to use for comparison.
U.S. subsidies for renewable energy amounted to $16 billion, which was double the previous year. The U.S. spent several trillion dollars on energy, so those subsidies aren’t so enormous.
Deliberately.
Yes. But the surprise was that the government obscenely hugely UNDERestimated the implementation of green energy.
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