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How renewables are saving Texans billions
- yieldcrv 1y agoI think people misunderstand the aggregate conservative position: They just dont want the state to fund the cause and don’t consider it the state’s role or problem or the state as a solution to a problem that isnt wholly solved by the proposed expensive solution People outside of that group attribute the disagreement to insanity When in reality as soon as an economical and private sector solution is there, republicans are on board I see a way to bridge consensus so maybe I’ll run for office eventually since this is still too abstract for most
- brookst 1y agoNow do oil. How do Repubkicans feel about subsidies for oil?
- yieldcrv 1y agoIf it passes and they benefit from it then they wont avoid being beneficiaries of it and they’ll keep it While if they dont know they are beneficiaries of a policy then they’ll proverbially eat their face by removing it
- sremani 1y ago[flagged]
- DarmokJalad1701 1y ago> the pervasive petrochemicals in the modern world are not easily replaceable Then let's use the finite amount of oil for that, instead of burning it.
- sremani 1y ago[flagged]
- rwyinuse 1y agoRight now China is meeting all of its increasing energy demand by building more renewables (in fact more than rest of the world combined). Their citizen buy electric vehicles at a record rate. Yet I don't see Chinese people starving. Climate change caused by burning fossil fuels is what has the potential to cause a mass starvation, not getting rid of oil where possible. It should be also noted that all fossil fuel is just sun's energy stored in another form, although I can understand some of you Americans may think it was magically created by a god. Why not use that sun's energy directly wherever possible? There will be no need for fossil fuels in energy generation and transporting stuff. Whatever use cases remain are fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and many of those have alternatives too.
- sremani 1y agotake a look at coal consumption in China. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361652086/figure/fig5/AS:1172869224636417@1656645222252/Global-coal-consumption-Graph-showing-peaks-of-world-and-China-coal-consumption-which.png https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361652086/figure/fi...
- defrost 1y agoThat's a lightweight comment given multiple things can be true. The claim you are responding to is contempory, "Right now China is", and concerns "its increasing energy demand" .. a response about total existing use twelve years past is no rebuttal. Rather than direct link to an untitled graph sans context (the June 2022 paper the twelve year 2013 elicited graph is snapshotted from) perhaps link to a time series graph: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-coal-consumption-2000-2025 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-coal-c... and maybe recommend diving into the ongoing series of IEA global energy generation and consumption reports. China's coal consumption is for a purpose, it has a projected wind down, and it represents not just the per capita coal consumption of China's people but also the coal consumption of the world that avails itself of China's solar panel and battery technology. With a small amount of effort you can create a better comment.
- pjc50 1y agoGlobal warming also affects the feasible latitudes for food production.
- Teever 1y agoThe US throws away between 30–40% of its food supply. The US has policies that are outright hostile to mass-transit. The US has policies that produce some of the ugliest and grossly inefficient suburban environments that have ever existed. Sure, oil is a critical part of modern civilization, but we could still have modern civilization, and a hell of a better one at that with better policies that end up using far less oil.
- johnisgood 1y ago> The US throws away between 30–40% of its food supply. Not just the US, sadly. One of the reasons they do it is: transportation costs, and to avoid the attraction of the homeless as it is "bad for business" ("makes us look bad").
- ben_w 1y agoBeyond that, there is also a good reason: farm output is variable, so a systematic policy of aiming for over-production means people don't starve in the years with bad harvests.
- Teever 1y agobuffers in the supply chain don't account for the wastage that goes on in western countries where people let food go bad in their fridge, or farms / grocers throw away cosmetically imperfect food. This doesn't even get into the gross inefficiency of overweight/obesity where people consume extra calories that make them gain weight which requires them to consume extra calories to carry their surplus weight around, or the amount of energy that is expended just to move them around in automobiles because they can't walk or bike even moderately short distances. There's a lot of wastage in how we produce and consume food.
- johnisgood 1y agoI agree, and I think this is something we should definitely focus our attention on.
- ec109685 1y agoHow is this getting out of the way: “In markets like Texas, the wholesale price of electricity is set equal to the price of electricity from the most expensive generator needed to meet demand, often referred to as the marginal generator.”
- adgjlsfhk1 1y agoThis is great for renewable energy. It means that solar plants and batteries can get payed at coal/nuclear rates, and during the middle of the day, fossil fuel plants have to turn off since they can't compete with solar prices.
- moooo99 1y agoI‘m not sure why people are often confused about this. Electricity is at a basic level a commodity. A kWh from solar isn‘t any different than 1 kWh obtained by burning coal. If the current market situation allows for a price of 12ct/kWh, why should I - just because I have the more effective technology - get less than the fossil guy? Generally this is even beneficial because it could increase margins for renewable and grid scale batteries
- energy123 1y agoOne of the roles of the state in a mixed economy is to cautiously intervene when there's market failure. Whether through tax policy or industrial policy. Republicans don't want to stop the market failure because they don't believe there is market failure. It's not only a disagreement in values it's a disagreement about basic scientific and economic facts.
- standardUser 1y ago> When in reality as soon as an economical and private sector solution is there, republicans are on board The leader of the conservative party has claimed that windmills kill whales, cause cancer, are "garbage" and pledged to prevent any being built in his second term.
- eigen 1y ago> They just dont want the state to fund the cause and don’t consider it the state’s role or problem or the state as a solution to a problem that isnt wholly solved by the proposed expensive solution Texas Senate Bill 819 "relating to renewable energy generation facilities; authorizing fees." would have made it the states role to create an expensive solution. > (1) for a solar power facility, ensure that all facility equipment is located at least: (A) 100 feet from any property line, unless the applicant has obtained a written waiver from each owner of property located less than 100 feet from the facility; and (B) 200 feet from any habitable structure, unless the applicant has obtained a written waiver from each owner of the habitable structure; and > (2)for a wind power facility, ensure that all facility equipment is located at least 1,000 feet from the property line of each property that borders the property on which the facility is located, unless the applicant has obtained a written waiver from each owner of property located less than 1,000 feet from the facility Texas Senate Bill 388 "relating to the legislature’s goals for electric generation capacity in this state." would have made it the states role to create an expensive solution. > (a) It is the intent of the legislature that 50 percent of the megawatts of generating capacity installed in the ERCOT power region [this state] after January 1, 2026 [2000], be sourced from dispatchable generation [use natural gas]. are the Texas bill sponsors not part of the aggregate conservative position?
- benrutter 1y agoI think this seems at odds from what I hear from republicans using retoric that's anti-renewable, anti-climate change and pro-oil. Ignoring that though, energy is a market defined by government policy. To give an example, solar assets can't control when they output, so many countries have contracts where solar gets a fixed price. Without that, peak solar times might even have negative pricing. Those are two seperate ways to frame a market, one making renewables profitable and one making them uneconomic. We can shrug and say "make them profitable under the current conditions" but that ignores the fact that fixed prices for output makes energy cheaper and cleaner as a whole. My point is, there is no "true market", its something governments define and control. The question should be what outcomes you want. I'd argue for cheaper, cleaner and more diverse energy, but I'm not in the US.
- bpodgursky 1y agoTexas is only ahead in renewables by certain biased metrics. If you instead measure how much people talk about renewable energy, California comes out far ahead.
- yieldcrv 1y agoIt’s not a contest if the deployments are occurring
- chronic83040 1y ago> It’s not a contest if the deployments are occurring deployments are not occurring in california, that’s for sure
- readthenotes1 1y ago"how much people talk" Is hot air a useful commodity?
- steveklabnik 1y agoI believe your parent was making a sarcastic comment, and you two agree.
- envoked 1y agoI feel like Washington state doesn’t get enough credit. 72%+ from renewables and water reservoirs are the original grid scale battery.
- WaxProlix 1y agoERCOT has done a great job of setting up incentives, getting out of the way, and letting markets solve their problems. Working with CAISO and then going to set up batteries in ERCOT was such a breath of fresh air for an old team of mine.
- whatever1 1y agoAnd tax payers pay for their F ups and then some additional bonuses to the gas traders of BP when Texas freezes. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-27/bp-emerges-as-another-big-winner-from-the-texas-freeze https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-27/bp-emerge...
- WaxProlix 1y agoThat's largely true, but on the flipside at least some of the rush of batteries into Texas to do ancillary services and provide redundancy are a result of greedy capitalists seeing the profits a few hundred MWh can get you in Texas (at taxpayer expense!) and rushing in to get a piece of the pie. So, markets!
- bee_rider 1y agoWait, how does it work? If the government is using taxpayer money to buy services… that’s not really a free market solution in the conventional sense, right? Of course if we have to pretend it is to get Texas to do it… fine I guess.
- WaxProlix 1y agoNa, the utility payers actually pay it, though taxpayers pay for some of the infrastructure and administration, and given to some service providers in the form of tax breaks I think. The circles of that venn diagram are close to an overlap though.
- bz_bz_bz 1y agoAside from shutting down some compressor stations that gas companies failed to properly register as essential equipment, ERCOT had almost nothing to do with NG prices. Gas and power are intertwined but still very separate markets. Natural gas would have gone even higher had ERCOT not shed load, so if you want to make reductionist statements about complex issues, you could say that ERCOT actually took away from the bonuses of BP gas traders who were long.
- AnotherGoodName 1y agoThe best thing happening right now are the grid scale batteries. They make the companies that build them rich through better arbitration of power prices at the same time they vastly lower power prices for everyone. No more peaks of power costing ridiculous amounts (and troughs of negative power prices). You can be anti green for all it matters on this one. The batteries are massively profitable. They are coming on mass everywhere and there’s no stopping them. https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/fiscal-notes/infrastructure/2024/battery-store/ https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/fiscal-notes/infrastru...
- freddie_mercury 1y agoMy understanding was that the companies aren't getting rich because competition has saturated the market and revenues from energy arbitrage have plummeted in 2025 because everyone needs to discharge during the same limited window. "Vermillion said, adding that most battery operators in Texas earn the bulk of their revenue during a handful of extreme weather days, so “there might be 15 days over the year that matter for capturing revenue.” https://www.ess-news.com/2025/05/15/is-texas-battery-landscape-really-saturated/ https://www.ess-news.com/2025/05/15/is-texas-battery-landsca...
- jl6 1y agoThere’s still a fortune to be made by whoever can crack seasonal storage. This is the ur-problem of humanity: to pay for the winter using the summer.
- bestouff 1y agoWe're getting there. https://www.euronews.com/green/2025/06/15/sand-batteries-could-be-key-breakthrough-in-storing-solar-and-wind-energy-year-round https://www.euronews.com/green/2025/06/15/sand-batteries-cou...
- ffsm8 1y agoThat's about storing heat, not electricity. While related insofar some electricity inevitably gets converted back into heating, I don't think its really relevant to this discussion which is explicitly about electricity.
- ProllyInfamous 1y agoTexas needs more (any?) pumped-storage hydro (a non-chemical, gravity-fed battery) to store all this renewable energy. TVA (similar in size to ERCOT, mostly within Tennessee) is about to begin its second such facility, after Raccoon Mountain [0]. Run-of-the-river facilities exist (including two in TVA's jurisdiction), which are capable of pumping water "up" the dam (for later use during peak loads) — perhaps LCRA might explore the feasibility of this? Regardless of how the energy is stored, it might also (eventually) make sense to join Eastern/Western interconnects (and thereby "store" the energy outside of Texas). But I know ego/"Texus"/pride mentality exists (having grown up in Austin), so I won't hold my breath on accepting Federal regulations... [0] wikipedia.org/wiki/Raccoon_Mountain_Pumped-Storage_Plant
- epistasis 1y agoWhy would pumped storage be better than the massive amounts of batteries being added right now? Batteries scale small, scale big, can be put where there's already transmission, can be put at either sides of grid congestion to lower that congestion, can regulate frequency, deliver reactive power, and be moved to new locations if the grid changes and they could be better deployed elsewhere. Literally a Swiss Army knife that can grow to whatever size is needed, and they can be thrown up in months as opposed to years. I'm not sure if hydro could compete on price any more, either. Batteries are so cheap.
- typewithrhythm 1y agoI don't really know if there is somewhere in Texas that works geographically; but the idea is if you have a good spot you essentially get an arbitrarily large store for the price of one dam. At some point you get limited by fill/discharge rate, but the cost of storage in a big pumped hydro is still pretty cheap.
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- sidewndr46 1y ago
- gregwebs 1y agoTexas is one of the best climates in the US for renewables but in locations with less sun and wind the math will be different. That math includes batteries for load shifting of which Texas is installing a lot. As renewable generation increases past a certain level grid stability does require additional effort and that’s a lot more difficult to price in. In Texas their grid is isolated from the rest of the US. This may create a lower ceiling on renewables since they can’t send excess generation anywhere other than their own batteries .
- skippyboxedhero 1y agoWrong because the underlying assumption is that we are moving from a system where energy can be brought on as required to an equivalent system. One of the big issues with renewables that the author is, I can only assume, is deliberately eliding is that energy cannot be brought on as required. Even in Texas, you still need non-renewables to fill the gap and you still need to recover the costs of running those assets in the price...Texas is the absolute best case scenario, and it isn't working (as the comments show, it is quite easy to see why: people are obsessed with politics and reality matters less than your political enemies being wrong, companies have also realized that the subsidies in this area are incredible if you tell politicians they are right). The same thing is happening with battery operators. You also see the same thing in other countries that invested heavily in renewables (UK is one example, they are mothballed a lot of non-renewable sources ten years ago, the government had to introduce massive subsidies for retail consumers because electricity prices are so high due to the need to recover costs of the remaining non-renewable sources when the wind happens to stop blowing): it has to increase the cost of energy because you have to pay for renewables and pay for the battery operators to do nothing and pay for the gas operators to do nothing.
- defrost 1y ago> Texas is the absolute best case scenario, Better examples around the globe and within North America are non isolated grids - Texas is in a weak position to share it's excess and to get back energy from wind blowing in other states.
- antupis 1y agoThe issues with Texas and the UK are that their grids are relatively isolated. Like here in Finland, we have a bigger share of renewables than the UK or Texas, but electricity is still cheaper than UK and pretty much the same as in Texas.
- skippyboxedhero 1y agoThe UK is not an isolated grid, massive amounts of electricity are exported/imported with Europe with all the benefits/costs that come with that (this was an issue, for example, when electricity prices went up in the UK and the UK began exporting huge amounts of energy to Europe...this was effectively why the UK had to introduce a retail subsidy, because EU nations did the same which increased their effective demand for energy). And the difference is that Finland has nuclear...that is it, which provides the dispatchable demand. It is extremely challenging to replicate this in many other countries because of the planning issues (the UK is building Hinkley, the cost for this is tens of billions, the funny story here is that the government decided not to proceed with this ten years ago because electricity prices were too low...can't think what has changed in the meantime? total mystery...right?).
- acyou 1y ago[flagged]
- bob1029 1y agoI moved from ERCOT to MISO/Entergy (still in Texas) and my electricity costs have dropped by nearly 50%. The part that is really shocking to me is the cost to maintain transmission infrastructure is dramatically higher in this area too (power lines in the forest). I think it's hard to compete with a certain combination of fuel mix and fully amortized 20th century plants.
- ZeroGravitas 1y agoAs an aside: the blog author is using ChatGPT to asses the factual claims made by his commenters in a similar way to the Twitter trend of asking @grok to fact check tweets. Interesting times.
- tim333 1y agoI wish the UK could do something like that - our costs seem to be way higher than Texas.