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Despite what's happening in the USA, renewables are winning globally
- WillPostForFood 1y agoThe featured image in the article is looks like an ecological nightmare. https://thebulletin.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-Solar-Farm_2185482692-1-1536x863.jpg.optimal.jpg https://thebulletin.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImag...
- zdragnar 1y agoOn the one hand, there are some benefits to the ground cover that aren't possible in wide open plains. On the other, a bad hailstorm means a lot of glass and scraps to pick up.
- sigwinch 1y agoPanels can endure hail as well as cars and roofs, so we’re talking catastrophic hail; where we’ve seen economic losses as bad as tornadoes. So, I’d worry about wind wrecking and broadly casting those slivers. Rather than pick them up, maybe consider further crushing them into the ground. While that’s not good for farmland, the area under the plume of a coal plant is already broadly contaminated.
- PeakKS 1y agoWow you're right, a massive coal plant would be much more ecologically friendly.
- sigwinch 1y agoNah, burning an entire field of panels produces less heavy metal contamination than a day of coal.
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoI've only heard a couple of things on the topic, but there is research into multi-use of land for large scale solar with existing agriculture. https://cleanenergycouncil.org.au/news-resources/new-guide-showcases-the-potential-of-agrisolar https://cleanenergycouncil.org.au/news-resources/new-guide-s...
- aaronbrethorst 1y agoThe most remarkable details about solar panels I've heard recently came from the environmentalist Bill McKibben[1] on a podcast[2]: I was standing in a cornfield in Illinois this time last summer, with a farmer who grew corn for ethanol and was converting much of his fields to solar arrays. He said, I can grow in this acre, and he pointed to an acre in a good farmerly way, he said, in this acre, I can grow enough ethanol to run my Ford F-150 pickup, most beloved vehicle in the American iconography. It’ll run 25,000 miles off the ethanol I can grow on an acre in a year. If I cover that same acre with solar panels, then I can produce enough electrons to run my Ford F-150 Lightning, the EV version of the same truck, I can run that not 25,000 miles, but 700,000 miles. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_McKibben https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_McKibben [2] https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/why-is-this-happening/discussing-comes-sun-bill-mckibben-podcast-transcript-rcna232365 https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/why-is-this-happening/di...
- dreamcompiler 1y agoNot to mention that the cornfield has to be essentially torn down and rebuilt every year, while the panels will just sit there quietly working for at least 20 years with very little maintenance.
- kragen 1y agoWow, that's astounding. Thanks.
- hunterpayne 1y agoYea, but it says more about how bad corn biofuels are than how good solar is. Also, Iowa is too far north for solar to do much good in the fight against AGW. If you want solar, move to Mexico (or even New Mexico) where it actually makes environmental sense.
- kragen 1y agoGenerating solar power in Mexico won't keep Iowans from warming their homes with natural gas and powering their F-150s with petroleum, so solar panels in Iowa are needed for the fight against AGW.
- hshdhdhehd 1y agoAs does: * Picture of a city * Picture of ploughed fields (was wooded preciously) * Picture of any other type of power generation plant
- grues-dinner 1y ago> Picture of ploughed fields We've cleared nature for farms for so long that the fields feel like nature that should be preserved. Not content with cutting down the forests, now even the hedgerows are in the way. Compared to what was there before (often forest), a gigantic monocrop industrial field is about as ecologically friendly as a car park. And the car park won't dump fertiliser into the water courses either.
- hunterpayne 1y agoThe industrial park also takes a tiny fraction of the amount of land as does growing food. Even better, it allows enough food to be grown on a fraction of the land. So on balance, that powerplant allows far more land to be returned to a natural state. Ironic but true. Its why we shouldn't allow the scientifically illiterate to make decisions about this type of thing.
- hshdhdhehd 1y agoCan full scale solar make a dent in the land available in any country for food? And how does it compare to urban sprawl? (Although suburbs may have the benefit of solar on the roof powering the house below pretty well). Another option is of course put the solar where you cant for whatever reason grow food. Hopefully there is enough shitty land to so that.
- grues-dinner 1y agoIn any country? Yes. For example, Luxembourg (1200km² of farmland, 677,000 people). In most countries: not really. And not to the extent that meat farming does, which is land-use broadly considered to be acceptable. One cow needs from under 1 to to 8 acres depending on how good the land is, and grazed land is roughly double cropland in the US. One cow produces roughly 10 people's beef intake in the US. Not to mention much of the cropland is already used for biofuel: diverting 60 million acres of arable land for energy is already a thing the US does. That 60 million acres of solar could produce 5 times current US electrical consumption. One acre of solar makes roughly 30 US households (not people) of energy. Say 5-10 if you also need to cover current fossil fuel heating and transport. And obviously the energy mix won't be 100% solar. So, on the face of it, it doesn't seem that solar power is an especially inefficient or wasteful use of land in most cases compared to other uses generally considered reasonable. And it also doesn't (further) damage land like intensive farming does. Whereas clearing natural land for solar could be more damaging. Solar on roofs is not great in terms of coverage and is inefficient in terms of operational costs. Yes, the land was already used, so it's better then nothing and you can probably more or less recoup the house, so it's economical for the people who live there and the more the better. But you will still need to power denser housing and increasingly-electrified industry and transport. Urban sprawl in the US is big, but still the US is only 3% urban. Even the UK, which is much denser is 8%. Farmland is far and away the biggest land user in most places.
- dvrj101 1y agoespecially this one : https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:834/format:webp/1*A7cLjUH6zHrS4q8G6SJphA.jpeg https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:834/format:webp/1*A7cL... - https://medium.com/appalachian-studies-fall-2017-projects/mountaintop-removal-mining-in-west-virginia-a4093b857a58 https://medium.com/appalachian-studies-fall-2017-projects/mo... - https://e360.yale.edu/features/a-troubling-look-at-the-human-toll-of-mountaintop-removal-mining https://e360.yale.edu/features/a-troubling-look-at-the-human...
- Gigachad 1y agoFrom what I’ve seen, solar panels end up being quite good for plant life since they provide partial shade from the sun. Basically a shade cloth that’s productive on its own.
- zdragnar 1y agoDuh? The US has a lot of easy and cheap access to fossil fuels. With Russia cut off, solar is a really easy part of the equation for a lot of countries. Here in the US, I'd expect we wouldn't be adding much new coal or nat gas either if it weren't for all the data centers going up everywhere. The amount of electricity going into the Internet and AI is wild.
- softwaredoug 1y agoNat gas, yes. Coal is largely keeping existing plants going. I’m doubtful we’ll see anything like we saw when 50% of US power in the early 2000s was coal.
- Hammerhead12321 1y ago> The amount of electricity going into the Internet and AI is wild. I know these things use a lot, but relative to the national usage is it a significant number? I’ve read this statement a few times but the amount is never quantified to something that makes sense. Like, how much has electricity usage increased in the last two years and can be directly attributed to data centers?
- Nursie 1y agoBitcoin famously uses as much as a mid-sized country like the netherlands now. Wouldn't surprise me if AI use follows.
- bruce511 1y agoUm, the Netherlands is not a mid-sized country. Areawise its smaller than West Virginia. Population is around 17 million. (Contrasted to a world population of 8 billion ish.) If bitcoin is using the same as 17 million people, that'd really not that much in relation to the overall population.
- Nursie 1y ago> Um, the Netherlands is not a mid-sized country. The Netherlands is entry 71 in a list of countries by population, making it very 'mid' indeed. You're comparing it to the USA, which is the third most populous nation on earth, of course it's significantly smaller! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen... But hey, let's look at some better figures, estimated energy use is now in the region of 200TWh - https://www.statista.com/statistics/881472/worldwide-bitcoin-energy-consumption/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/881472/worldwide-bitcoin... Which puts it somewhere around an Egypt or a Malaysia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici... > If bitcoin is using the same as 17 million people, that'd really not that much in relation to the overall population. That's a value judgement and you'll notice I've been careful not to put any into my comments.
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoThe US is choosing to make itself increasingly redundant. Increasing speed whilst in Reverse gear whilst talking as if they're highway cruising in 5th. It's nice to know that the rest of the world is still pushing forwards, up a steep hill, in first gear. I hope it can continue, and the hill shrinks.
- zdragnar 1y agoNot the rest of the world, but China. 80% of all panels come from there, and they want to keep it that way. It'll lead to sone interesting and unpleasant political fights in the future, I suspect.
- bytesandbits 1y agoUS is the only country besides China with significant solar panel manufacturing (although much much much lower). It's not that.
- softwaredoug 1y agoThey also lead the world in emissions and what the US does / doesn’t do won’t be a major driver. Our carbon peaked in 2007 It’s more an issue of US ability to compete in an emerging market IMO. https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-1999/?srsltid=AfmBOoruESUlM2QdO2gMuQm3elLKMJT5VQ1ks90GevamwPdiHh9vUAV9 https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide...
- ciconia 1y agoThe US is today the biggest exporter of refined petrol products. It also consumes products manufactured elsewhere, including China. China is in some ways the world's factory.
- adrr 1y agoIf we exported even more manufacturing abroad we can keep dropping CO2. We could stop smelting steel, making fertilizer, and making cement in the US to drop us 15% to 20% lower. Though we’ll still lead the world in CO2 per capita though of major countries.
- softwaredoug 1y ago> “The IEA has, consistently over the last couple of decades, way underestimated how fast renewables are growing,” said Robert Brecha, a senior climate and energy adviser at Climate Analytics, > The policy outlook for renewables in the United States is so bleak that the IEA lowered the country’s renewable capacity growth expectations by 50 percent compared to last year’s projections. Maybe room for optimism they are underestimating what non govt supported solar growth would be in the US?
- hshdhdhehd 1y agoCapitalism aligns with being green, leaving right wing narrative-driven policy in a very confused state.
- intermerda 1y agoAmerican conservatives have long stopped pretending to have any policy other than bowing to their King.
- geraneum 1y agoApart from the obvious, another aspect of renewables that I hope will make the world a better place is the potential to be fucking free from oil and gas. Imagine the geopolitical impact of that. But, here’s a lesson from WW2. Unless we can pack the energy produced by renewables into tanks, jets, aircraft carriers and such effectively (cost, scale, etc.) nothing is gonna get meaningfully better there.
- whatsupdog 1y ago[flagged]
- kentm 1y agoI think you missed geraneum’s point. They’re saying that the military is still going to need oil even if industry decarbonizes
- bawolff 1y agoIts probably also going to trigger a bunch of wars in the short term. Wars tend to happen when power dynamics change. Either someone is on the rise and thinks they can get more or someone is on the decline and can no longer hold on to what they used to have. I think the middle east is going to be a blood bath once the oil stops making bank. But its not just them, when oil goes away it changes the power dynamics across the world.
- grues-dinner 1y agoTheoretically, with enough cheap renewable energy, synthetic hydrocarbons could fuel the war machine. It would need possibly big, vulnerable plants to refine, but so does jet fuel and diesel now. Adding that much electrical capacity is a civilisational task, but an electrical "JP-8 at home" plant in theory is a good security asset, especially for countries with poor oil supply.
- jopsen 1y agoMany countries have some oil and if the civilian economy didn't drink so much -- there probably be plenty to make jet fuel, etc.
- ggm 1y agoWinning here, means "are able to supply power at a price, which makes their backers money without having to invest in mines and wells" If you hold assets which embody mines and wells, you are concerned at this point you're going to have a stranded asset. Strategically, you need the market to endure and so decisions of short term pain like dropping pricing, become important so you can stop people fleeing to other forms of energy. But, if the pricing has to drop below your cost of extraction and processing, there's a limit to how far you can go. Well, that point, for some forms of energy, was reached some time ago. I think when the Saudi Arabian government started seriously diversifying their economy, it was a pretty strong signal. Even in my home state (Queensland, Australia: Liberal/National right wing government, backed by coal and mining interests) the commercial realities of owning coal fired power stations has reared it's head, and the state government is making market interventions to prop up coal. It also fixes pricing decisions in state to return a significant profit to the state government with that coal price backed energy supply, which I believe is not dissimilar to Ontario. (happy to be corrected) -People are voting with their feed for rooftop domestic solar and batteries, and the pricing spiral continues. They could do what the other (Labor) states are doing and get with renewables. They just cancelled pumped hydro, wind and solar deployments on pretty thin logic, but they can't stop the private sector and the move there is pretty clear: It's just cheaper as a path to profit, to sell electricity based on renewables right now. If you don't own a giant hole in the ground of coal generation, you get your money back faster building anything else BUT coal fired power now.
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoIronically "The Sunshine State".
- ggm 1y agoWhen Labor flipped the licence plate tagline to "the smart state" in 2001 a lot of people thought it was a poor attempt at humour. Apparently the "the sunshine state" was brought back by popular acclaim, but I can't say I felt consulted or cared.
- shmerl 1y agoLuddites can't stop progress. But they'll try to slow it down.
- FranzFerdiNaN 1y agoThe luddites were 100% correct though. They saw that machines werent the problem per se, but the fact that labor wasnt getting their share anymore. And we're seeing it time and time again. Labor invents new machines and methods, and capital takes all the profit.
- energy123 1y agoThe real world doesn't fit into these trite categories and explanations this easily.
- AlexandrB 1y agoHere's a counterpoint: https://brawlstreetjournal.substack.com/p/dead-man-walking https://brawlstreetjournal.substack.com/p/dead-man-walking > According to a recent study by the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, annual investment in the energy, industry, building, and transport sectors would have to more than double if current energy policies were to continue: from an average of around €82 billion between 2020 and 2024 to somewhere between €113 billion to €316 billion in 2035. Early transition models had projected a fraction of that. We'll see, but I don't know what to believe anymore. In particular, Germany's deindustrialization is unmistakeable and expensive energy may be the culprit.
- rayiner 1y agoGermany has dropped from 76% of US GDP per capita in 2015 to only 61% today. If AI turns out to be economically valuable the EU fixation on non-nuclear renewables may have turned out to be a very costly error.
- gritzko 1y agoFrance is 60% nuclear
- ta20240528 1y ago> Germany has dropped from 76% of US GDP per capita in 2015 to only 61% today. Largely because the USA added $6 trillion to their GDP via fantasy 'hedonic' and 'imputed' components.
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- OKRainbowKid 1y agoCorrelation is not causation.
- oezi 1y agoLet me understand the AI argument you are making: Are you saying that if AI is valuable (which is likely) then not having cheap electricity is going to be downside? I would have two objections: - Data center operation and construction is only a fraction of the value creation. If Europe is behind on the AI race it won't matter where the data centers are because the profits are going to go to US companies (as with Google and Facebook so far). - What makes you think that Nuclear would help in any way to have cheap energy? Nuclear has become by far the most expensive energy generation method. Building new nuclear is unfeasible in the west.
- cheunste 1y agoI can tell you one area in renewables that's NOT winning. Offshore. In the industry, there was some talk about how GE is pulling out of the offshore wind turbine market. Sucks to be wind farms that were built using those GE turbines.
- at-fates-hands 1y agoAlso not winning: ‘World’s largest’ solar plant in Calif closing – $1.6 billion Ivanpah casts a shadow on DOE loans – ‘Federal data concluded the plant killed roughly 6,000 birds a year’ The 386-megawatt plant lagged in producing promised electricity levels and faced criticism from environmental groups like the Sierra Club because of its associated bird deaths. While estimates vary, some federal data concluded that the plant killed roughly 6,000 birds a year flying into concentrated beams of sunlight. https://www.climatedepot.com/2025/02/05/worlds-largest-solar-plant-in-calif-closing-ivanpah-funded-with-1-6-billion-casts-a-shadow-on-doe-loans-federal-data-concluded-the-plant-killed-roughly-6000-birds-a-year/ https://www.climatedepot.com/2025/02/05/worlds-largest-solar...
- idontwantthis 1y agoDo you understand the difference between solar thermal and photovoltaic?
- at-fates-hands 1y agoYou missed the point. It doesn't matter if they used Plutonium solar panels. It was over hyped and made tons of promises and then massively underdelivered and now has to be decommissioned, at a huge cost to tax payers.
- idontwantthis 1y agoThe point is that it’s as relevant to a conversation about photovoltaics as hydrogen is to a conversation about EVs.
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- pyuser583 1y agoIsn't US a massive producer of renewables?
- adventured 1y agoYes, this thead is filled with propaganda. The US is by a dramatic margin the world's #2 producer of solar. The US is by a very dramatic margin the world's #2 producer of wind. None of which takes anything away from China's remarkable production. In solar the US = #3 + #4 + #5 combined. In wind the US = #3 + #4 + #5 + #6 combined.
- danny_codes 1y agoPresumably commenters are talking about the fact that the current US administration has taken an anti-renewables position and cut funding for renewable energy projects. With a hostile federal policy, it somewhat calls into question whether the US can sustain it's progress in renewable deployment. Personally though I think we will continue to make progress, just slower than before.
- parineum 1y agoWhere renewables make economic sense, government policy and political ideology don't matter. Texas has been installing a ton of renewables. The influence of the government is vastly overstated/overassumed.
- rsynnott 1y agoI mean, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/trump-officials-drop-major-solar-power-project-in-another-renewable-energy-attack https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/trump-offici...
- parineum 1y agoThat's one project. It's a big project but I bet that the private installations that will happen in the period it would have taken to build that will be significantly more megawatts. I'm not saying that Trump isn't cancelling things, I'm saying that the projects he can cancel aren't a significant portion of the market. Renewables don't really need government help anymore. Storage does though.
- classified 1y agoDespite all the tech, the US are so incredibly backwards, in so many ways, that I'm wondering how they're not literally still burning witches.
- heiltrump 1y ago[flagged]
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- intermerda 1y agoYes, Biden's Inflation Reduction Act had tons of provisions to help out renewables in general and solar energy in particular. Most of them were in form of tax credits which I'm sure helped Texas a lot. Many of Biden's policies helped out red states quite a lot. Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill (ugh..) has already rolled back most of those policies. Additionally DOE and EPA have announced termination of many projects, canceled previously approved funding, banned words such as "climate change", among tons of measures aimed at curbing the progress made. You, of course, knew that and were being disingenuous. Or you didn't know what and are simply ignorant.
- ViewTrick1002 1y agoDespite all the noise renewables make up 90% of new capacity in the US. We are witnessing the complete transformation of the grid to renewables. The question is if it takes 10 years or 20 years depending on how quickly we deploy incentives to phase out existing capacity. https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2025/10/solar-and-wind-make-up-new-us-electricity-capacity-so-far-this-year/ https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2025/10/solar-and-wind...
- softwaredoug 1y agoIt's true, but will that 90% hold after the expirations of the credits, etc for solar?
- ViewTrick1002 1y agoRenewables have been the unsubsidized cheapest energy source for a while now. Recently unsubsidized renewables and storage started undercutting fossil fuels in major markets around the world. This is what is so interesting with renewable energy. They are the first energy source since the advent of fossil fuels lowering the price floor of energy globally. Removing the credits will like I said only shift the implementation period due to using tax money to tilt the scale in one way or the other.
- ZeroGravitas 1y agoRenewables are winning in the USA too. A few tens of billions in handouts to Trump's crony capitalist pals and general regulatory and legislative chaos (in renewables specifically but in everything else too) isn't going to change that.
- thefz 1y agoBecause drum roll the USAs are not the world.
- silexia 1y agoYou cannot trust the numbers out of China and Russia, I would be surprised if this were true when you see the actual numbers. Beyond that, an increase in CO2 globally seems like it would be countered by an increase in plant mass taking it up?
- asacrowflies 1y agoAre we really repeating 40 year old nonsense to try and debunk climate change??? Everything old is new again
- bithead 1y agoSolar at least is a much faster way to add capacity to the grid than coal or natural gas, particularly residential rooftop solar. In a competition with China for AI predominance, trump shot the USA in the foot by deep sixing renewal incentives.
- fdschoeneman 1y agoThis piece would be more useful if it explained what it means by winning. Early on, it seems to define winning as the amount of taxpayer subsidies going towards it, at least in the US; but then it talks about the growth in the rest of the world without showing, at least before I stopped reading, how much of that growth is driven by tax and regulatory incentives.
- neko_ranger 1y agoAny article saying China is leader in renewables gets the big doubt.