8 ms·

Meanwhile in the US, coal is supposed to be making a comeback, Tesla is close to bankruptcy, solar industry is decimated and we're force-sending smart people ou

by NTDF9 7y ago

Meanwhile in the US, coal is supposed to be making a comeback, Tesla is close to bankruptcy, solar industry is decimated and we're force-sending smart people out of the country when we need them the most to build stuff like this.

DennisP 7y ago
Actually Tesla is not close to bankruptcy. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/31/the-media-is-telling-one-story-about-tesla-facts-tell-another/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/31/the-media-is-telling-on...
- kissickas 7y ago
  As a Tesla shareholder, the problem is, I trust some of "the media." I don't trust cleantechnica. I have read far too many Seeking Alpha articles to even pretend like I am able to parse out these numbers on my own. What am I to do?
  - DennisP 7y ago
    The easy answer is to stop investing in individual stocks and buy index funds. Stock picking is hard enough when you can read financial statements. Media-driven stock picking is rarely successful long-term.
  - marvin 7y ago
    You could always hedge and sell half your shares. There’s not much extra info to be parsed here; the market price reflects all publicly available information. The question is whether you’re comfortable with a high-risk bet, or think you’ve understood something about the risk landscape that most others haven’t :) This is completely plausible.
douglaswlance 7y ago
If you only read click-bait articles, then that worldview would hold. But if you read industry journals and look at the data, you'd see that the complete opposite is true.
- loudmax 7y ago
  The executive branch of the federal government is absolutely committed to "clean" coal, the solar industry has plateaued, and immigration is down. Tesla is struggling, but I agree that "close to bankruptcy" is hyperbole. The GP makes a legitimate point that China's progressive policies are helping to propel the country forward. In the US, progress toward the industries of the future is happening despite government policies, not because of them.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    >In the US, progress toward the industries of the future is happening despite government policies, not because of them. So? In any democracy government is going to lag the population/private sector when it comes to basically everything because you need more agreement before doing anything than you do in a private cooperation or authoritarian government system so the government winds up deadlocked or going back and fourth on an issue until a strong consensus emerges.
    - bryanlarsen 7y ago
      But it's the government's job to ensure that externalities are captured. Without that, the market is going to continue to exploit that rather than finding efficient solutions to minimize those externalities.
  - duxup 7y ago
    The executive branch and even congress to some extent has been committed to clean coal ever since the idea has come about..... And yet coal plants are shutting down and production slowing. Most of that "committed" has been throwing some money at research for political reasons, but I don't think there has been a REAL political effort to push coal for much of it as much as gather some votes with some funding and vocal support .... and just let the chips fall where they may. I think there's a vast range of possibilities when it comes to "support" from elected officials and "control" of a market or such.
mncolinlee 7y ago
No amount of Trump insisting on saving coal will save it at this point. We've hit an inflection point where wind and solar are getting to be cheaper and it's less risk to place a turbine or panel. Barring new coal subsidies or taxes on renewables, coal won't grow in the US. Tesla isn't having a great look on Wall Street, but that's because investors priced them as a tech company instead of a car manufacturer. They're having demand issues, but they'll adjust and markets will adjust the way they price Tesla shares. They still had no trouble raising funds despite serious new direct competition. Solar is making huge international wins from cheaper, non-domestic manufacturers, including a few of the first massive installations to come in cheaper than coal. Immigration is a real issue, of course, but a lot of companies have adjusted by opening R&D offices in Vancouver to be close to the border and the time zone of US tech offices.
- StreamBright 7y ago
  If you are comparing solar and wind to coal you are missing the point by 10.000 miles. Coal is base load energy, wind and solar is for peak. You cannot control when the wind blows and over night there is no solar energy. You cannot store a large amount of energy (at least without massive destruction of land). Combining these, you need base load power plants, options: coal, nuclear. In some countries water could be a small fraction of the base load (I think Austria does that). If you have enough wind and solar you can use them to help out with peak but the same amount of fossil peak load has to be in your system as much as wind you got because something has to counter balance the fluctuation wind means. Options for peak load: wind, solar, oil or gas turbines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_demand
  - icebraining 7y ago
    I'm no expert, but I bet base load is mostly an artifact of having fossil fuels, not a reason to keep them around. When you have cheap storage in the form of coal or oil barrels, it makes sense to just use energy whenever. But that will change - people will change their behaviors and business processes to adapt to the new conditions. Energy-expensive activities will become asynchronous - programmed to run whenever energy is cheap. Guaranteed energy - knowing you'll have a certain amount of kWh to spend at a specific time - will be expensive, and will be mostly used for prioritizing when the production is low. Once your real base load drops enough, you won't need much storage to keep up even when production is abnormally low. Keeping a coal plant for the rare situations in which storage isn't enough, simply won't be economical. A natgas plant is more likely.
floatrock 7y ago
Last year more than 50% of new US generation capacity that came online was renewable. In Q1 of this year it went up to 60% -- https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2019/05/renewables-accounted-for-new-energy-capacity-in-q1/ https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2019/05/renewables-acc.... The current administration is beholden to large coal donors, yes, but all that campaign money is just the final desperate hail-mary of the coal barons. The beancounters who make the decisions see that renewables are now the cheaper option. We've even seen cases where plans for cheap gas peaker plants have been scrapped because doing it with batteries is cheaper.
magduf 7y ago
>we're force-sending smart people out of the country when we need them the most to build stuff like this. What are you referring to here?

by NTDF9 7y ago

DennisP 7y ago

Actually Tesla is not close to bankruptcy. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/31/the-media-is-telling-one-story-about-tesla-facts-tell-another/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/31/the-media-is-telling-on...

kissickas 7y ago
As a Tesla shareholder, the problem is, I trust some of "the media." I don't trust cleantechnica. I have read far too many Seeking Alpha articles to even pretend like I am able to parse out these numbers on my own. What am I to do?
- DennisP 7y ago
  The easy answer is to stop investing in individual stocks and buy index funds. Stock picking is hard enough when you can read financial statements. Media-driven stock picking is rarely successful long-term.
- marvin 7y ago
  You could always hedge and sell half your shares. There’s not much extra info to be parsed here; the market price reflects all publicly available information. The question is whether you’re comfortable with a high-risk bet, or think you’ve understood something about the risk landscape that most others haven’t :) This is completely plausible.

douglaswlance 7y ago

If you only read click-bait articles, then that worldview would hold. But if you read industry journals and look at the data, you'd see that the complete opposite is true.

loudmax 7y ago
The executive branch of the federal government is absolutely committed to "clean" coal, the solar industry has plateaued, and immigration is down. Tesla is struggling, but I agree that "close to bankruptcy" is hyperbole. The GP makes a legitimate point that China's progressive policies are helping to propel the country forward. In the US, progress toward the industries of the future is happening despite government policies, not because of them.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >In the US, progress toward the industries of the future is happening despite government policies, not because of them. So? In any democracy government is going to lag the population/private sector when it comes to basically everything because you need more agreement before doing anything than you do in a private cooperation or authoritarian government system so the government winds up deadlocked or going back and fourth on an issue until a strong consensus emerges.
  - bryanlarsen 7y ago
    But it's the government's job to ensure that externalities are captured. Without that, the market is going to continue to exploit that rather than finding efficient solutions to minimize those externalities.
- duxup 7y ago
  The executive branch and even congress to some extent has been committed to clean coal ever since the idea has come about..... And yet coal plants are shutting down and production slowing. Most of that "committed" has been throwing some money at research for political reasons, but I don't think there has been a REAL political effort to push coal for much of it as much as gather some votes with some funding and vocal support .... and just let the chips fall where they may. I think there's a vast range of possibilities when it comes to "support" from elected officials and "control" of a market or such.

mncolinlee 7y ago

No amount of Trump insisting on saving coal will save it at this point. We've hit an inflection point where wind and solar are getting to be cheaper and it's less risk to place a turbine or panel. Barring new coal subsidies or taxes on renewables, coal won't grow in the US. Tesla isn't having a great look on Wall Street, but that's because investors priced them as a tech company instead of a car manufacturer. They're having demand issues, but they'll adjust and markets will adjust the way they price Tesla shares. They still had no trouble raising funds despite serious new direct competition. Solar is making huge international wins from cheaper, non-domestic manufacturers, including a few of the first massive installations to come in cheaper than coal. Immigration is a real issue, of course, but a lot of companies have adjusted by opening R&D offices in Vancouver to be close to the border and the time zone of US tech offices.

StreamBright 7y ago
If you are comparing solar and wind to coal you are missing the point by 10.000 miles. Coal is base load energy, wind and solar is for peak. You cannot control when the wind blows and over night there is no solar energy. You cannot store a large amount of energy (at least without massive destruction of land). Combining these, you need base load power plants, options: coal, nuclear. In some countries water could be a small fraction of the base load (I think Austria does that). If you have enough wind and solar you can use them to help out with peak but the same amount of fossil peak load has to be in your system as much as wind you got because something has to counter balance the fluctuation wind means. Options for peak load: wind, solar, oil or gas turbines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_demand
- icebraining 7y ago
  I'm no expert, but I bet base load is mostly an artifact of having fossil fuels, not a reason to keep them around. When you have cheap storage in the form of coal or oil barrels, it makes sense to just use energy whenever. But that will change - people will change their behaviors and business processes to adapt to the new conditions. Energy-expensive activities will become asynchronous - programmed to run whenever energy is cheap. Guaranteed energy - knowing you'll have a certain amount of kWh to spend at a specific time - will be expensive, and will be mostly used for prioritizing when the production is low. Once your real base load drops enough, you won't need much storage to keep up even when production is abnormally low. Keeping a coal plant for the rare situations in which storage isn't enough, simply won't be economical. A natgas plant is more likely.

floatrock 7y ago

Last year more than 50% of new US generation capacity that came online was renewable. In Q1 of this year it went up to 60% -- https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2019/05/renewables-accounted-for-new-energy-capacity-in-q1/ https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2019/05/renewables-acc.... The current administration is beholden to large coal donors, yes, but all that campaign money is just the final desperate hail-mary of the coal barons. The beancounters who make the decisions see that renewables are now the cheaper option. We've even seen cases where plans for cheap gas peaker plants have been scrapped because doing it with batteries is cheaper.

magduf 7y ago

>we're force-sending smart people out of the country when we need them the most to build stuff like this. What are you referring to here?