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> Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement posted on X that Americans deserve an energy system built on common sense and not one dependent on "costly
by saagarjha 2mo ago
> Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement posted on X that Americans deserve an energy system built on common sense and not one dependent on "costly subsidies".
I agree. This is why we are building offshore wind and not subsidizing fossil fuels, right?
- jeltz 2mo agoAll kinds of power generation are typically heavily subdized in some way. I do not think this "common sense" strategy exists.
- eastbound 2mo agoThat’s a perverse incentive against ecology, case in point. Hear me out. We take citizen’s money to subsidize energy so they can get their energy for cheaper (at marginal level - while still paying the subsidy’s taxes) so they can undertake industrial/residential projects that we wouldn’t do with less energy. In a word, we incentive people to consume more (in a consumerist sense), which is bad for ecology, because we can’t afford them, and neither can the Earth. Of course, leaving aside how petroleum is subsidized [through the department of defense]. While ecologists usually are in favor of subsidies, subsidies incentive people to consume more, which exhausts our Earth. We should develop less, i.e. we should develop in accordance with a higher facial cost of energy, which sometimes implies having a smaller home and fewer industries, which is what would happen if we didn’t sponsor solar or wind energy [or coal or fossil].
- master-lincoln 2mo agowon't happen with capitalism which has an emphasis on economic growth forever...
- victorbjorklund 2mo agoDoes the env work better in a communist country like North Korea? Or in the Soviet Union? Or are we gonna do no true Scotsman and say Soviet was always capitalist and had no connection to communism?
- microgpt 2mo ago[flagged]
- master-lincoln 2mo agoAbsolutely irrelevant derailing. No claim was made about communist countries...
- carlosjobim 2mo agoEconomic growth also comes from getting more for less. A company can increase their profits by growing and increasing both what they spend and what they earn. But a company can also increase their profits by reducing what they spend without decreasing what they earn. Almost all companies are constantly trying to do this.
- giglamesh 2mo agoOften (usually?) by requiring workers to do more for less pay. Automation will eventually solve this problem, but because of the need to increase profits, finding an alternative way for companies to economically support human life the way they traditionally have through employment will be a tough nut to crack.
- carlosjobim 2mo agoBy any and every means available, but not mostly by whipping workers harder.
- DANmode 2mo agohttps://wtfhappenedin1971.com https://wtfhappenedin1971.com (Hint: it actually happened in ‘61…)
- eastbound 2mo agoThat’s an error. Most capitalists are against government intervention. It’s EU socialists who want to raise poor people to the level of consumerism of rich ones. Not capitalists. Capitalists would be happy to let them be poor. In the EU, it’s trying to help-and-attract poor people by millions which strains the Earth. In the US it’s a special breed of capitalism where the state colludes with rich people to subsidize the big corporations at the detriment of nature and citizen.
- TeMPOraL 2mo agoIndeed. Energy is at the core of everything we do. Make it more expensive, you immediately make some people go hungry, and then you also make everything else in the economy a tad more expensive, slowing things down, and as market readjusts and contracts, this makes even more people go hungry. There's a really strong incentive to keep energy generation cheap, because pretty much every social and political issue is downstream of it.
- TacticalCoder 2mo agoYes. "The economy is energy, energy is the economy". China understood this and is not just betting on both solar and nuclear like mad, they're also burning coal (so that the EU btw can cosplay being green, while offloading the production of many things it consumes to China). As a result energy prices in China are something like 7x cheaper than in Germany. Those with lots of energy saw their GDP growth in the 21st century while those like the EU, with ultra pricey energy (due to stupid decisions like closing nuclear power plants only to then reopen them) saw hardly any GDP growth, inflation-adjusted in USD, in the 21st century. No GDP growth means ever more poor people and ever more indebted governments. I'm all for transitioning away from fuel and coal, but do it pragmatically. We don't need communists (that'd be the "green" parties [1]) who want to make the lives of everybody miserable taking decisions related to energy. [1] green people who, like watermelons, are only green on the outside and then bright extremist red on the inside
- Danox 2mo agoThis is just another area where the Chinese, Japanese, Korean will move ahead and stay ahead? Is this what it means when you have more engineers in your government than lawyers? They seem to be open towards any good idea if it works they don’t dismiss it out of hand because some existing industry might have to compete against the new technology coming in. Going into the future, multiple energy sources will power future civilizations, multiple battery technologies will store energy what is wrong with multiple solutions as long as you make provisions not to completely destroy the environment you live in.
- triceratops 2mo ago
- i5heu 2mo ago"common sense" is common sense because it is not "specialised sense" or "expert sense" So if politicians base their decisions on "common sense", they confess to not being able to use experts that refine their knowledge and position about a topic. A "common sense" strategy is therefore what is most popular and on the basis of the understanding of laymen without deeper understanding or knowledge.
- scotty79 2mo agoCommon sense is the sense of commoners. The entirity of science if a fight against common sense. In Poland the closest phrase to "common sense" is "na chłopski rozum" which means "according to villager's mind/smarts".
- dspillett 2mo agoA significant part of science is plucking the true bits from common sense. A fair chunk of what we call medicine is folk remedies that stood up to rigorous testing.
- teamonkey 2mo agoYes, but the testing bit is what makes it a scientifically-proven method and not a folk remedy. There are also a lot of folk remedies that have been disproven as medicine. They too were ‘common sense.’
- ToucanLoucan 2mo ago> There are also a lot of folk remedies that have been disproven as medicine. They too were ‘common sense.’ "You know what they call alternative medicine that works? Medicine." - Tim Minchin
- perpetuallunch 2mo agoModern medicine is dominated by very new ideas and technologies. Gene therapies, targeted cancer treatments, blood pressure medication, antibiotics, surgery, joint replacements, sterile practices, vaccines, hormone replacement therapies.
- kklisura 2mo agoJust like "first principles", "common sense" differs from man to man.
- PowerElectronix 2mo agoThere are too many interested parties involved in the energy sector. The only common sense I can think of is solar+storage at the single building level and interconnected through smart grids with neighbours. But that leaves out the government and all those interested parties so we're never ever getting that.
- jtbayly 2mo agoAnd in the winter in the North people are just supposed to freeze?
- WillAdams 2mo agoSupplement w/ geothermal?
- seb1204 2mo agoYes, this
- perpetuallunch 2mo agoGeothermal works in enough areas (geographies) for it to be an entertaining talking point in niche forums like this one. But not much else. Earth is an incredibly poor heat conductor, as evidenced by the fact that you don’t have to dig very far, maybe a foot or four, and it’s a fairly constant 14 degrees C, and yet the core is molten lava (rock) and has been that way for billions of years predominantly from latent heat from the planets formation. So you have to be very careful with heat exchange, lest you exceed the ability of the earth to conduct heat through the rock surrounding the boreholes. Drilling deep boreholes is difficult as the rock becomes more like plasticine as it approaches temperatures where usefully higher temperatures occur.
- defrost 2mo ago"Artificial" geothermal works well enough to store energy from sunlight months for use during colder months. Artificial in the sense of using solar energy (direct or electric) to heat mass insulated by earth and later extracting that heat to use (directly in district heating, or indirectly via heat -> electric conversion).
- verandaguy 2mo agoIt probably comes from the recognition that energy access being a common good, a tax-collecting government should work for its constituents in helping provide energy at a reasonable cost, especially if the subsidies support an improvement to the technology behind it. Subsidies aren't universally a bad thing. This is silly thinking.
- Zenst 2mo agoSubsidies (via tax or lack thereof) on aeroplane fuel is one that really does get overlooked. Yet on the other hand, use a few gallons in a car and you're demonised as a climate villain in name and taxes. Nobody factors in life of the car, the cost to dispose and replace the batteries in electric cars, or the whole aspect that cars made today are less serviceable than cars of old that its gone from being able to rebuild the car in your garage to waiting for spare parts from a dealer as it's all just replace or scrap today. So much focus on the short term, without focus on the larger picture and impact.
- basilgohar 2mo agoThis is more true in the US due to costs of labor vs. parts and a whole culture of profitability at all costs. Compared to other countries, repairability is higher where labor is cheaper and people are more price conscious. We're at late stage capitalism where any chance of lost profits is seen as criminal.
- dathinab 2mo ago- calculate in all building cost, side cost, post-lifetime cost, accident risk cost etc. i.e. "all cost" - calculate expected total produced electricity which can be used - divide one by another - if one if majorly cheaper and chose it then that is the "common sense" strategy of choosing what works best yes the "all cost" part is tricky to estimate. yes you don't choose a "single technology and only use it", resilience always works best with redundancy and diversity. still you can run the number, you can estimate error bars, and sometimes this gives already clear answers. Like a technology being quite expensive even if you lose the lowest (unrealistic cheap) bar for all costs? Then that is a bad technology and it doesn't matter that you have very wide error bars as you are already looking at the optimal choice. ---- EDIT: Me going of on a tangent, maybe ignore :/ Some technologies complement each other well (like most like solar + wind + some gravity storage, as both can have uneven output, but (at live where I live) extremely windy days are often reduced sunny and extremely sunny days often not so windy, and gravity storage can handle "dunkelflauten" sufficiently (and is has already been build and is in use(!), not some hypothetical tech like some people pretend it is)). But also some technology works against each other, e.g. non _fully_ subsidized nuclear sells a roughly constant power output at a constant (and quite high! if not highly subsidized) cost. But if other electricity can "sometimes" produce supper cheap electricity for some hours, days or even weeks then nuclear can not compete _at all_ during this times, makes losses and need to increase the yearly average price to compensate. Which makes it even less competitive. Hence in a actual "dynamic/free" energy market nuclear makes no sense even if you ignore long term waste storage or risk for contaminating essential parts of your country risks. Still a _fully_ subsidized nuclear base power level might work if you can't generate enough electricity in average through other means. Still this IMHO makes it somewhat of a "only if there is no other solution, not competing on the free marked" choice, i.e. a bad choice you might have to do but might be able to fully avoid (e.g. by using hydro power). Oh and please stop brown coal, especially low quality brown coal. In all categories of health damage, environmental damage, climate damage it has _horrible_ scores both during mining and usage even for modern versions with filters etc. Sure it looks cheap on paper, but it's maybe THE worst kind of power source there is. Especially if run on low quality coal and without modern filter technology. Brown coal should be a "never choose this no matter what" choice.
- louiereederson 2mo agoWhile they pay a subsidy: > RWE said that it will now reinvest the sum
- rayiner 2mo agoIt's even dumber than that. Someone built a wind farm near Trump's golf course in Scotland and now he hates wind farms: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo. He thinks they're ugly and noisy.
- prox 2mo agoIf this is true, this is the person some folks think is fit to lead a nation. One little thing not suiting his whim of the day? Lets hate something that helps with energy production. Welcome the world of transactional opportunism.
- rayiner 2mo ago[flagged]
- anonreplier 2mo agoHmm does this "aesthetic" include shrinking national parks?
- ChoGGi 2mo agoBirds get confused when they have to much greenery, you need more land strip-mined for coal to keep them safe while migrating.
- dofm 2mo agoThis is absolutely true. He has been angrily obsessed about this for years, and since he is a malignant narcissist with an ever greater need for narcissistic supply, his irritation has been manipulated by powerful lobbyists that tell him his instincts are brilliant and correct.
- deepsquirrelnet 2mo agoPeople called Don and irrational hate of windmills. Name a more iconic duo...
- shevy-java 2mo agoIt's even more hilarious than that because all nuclear energy is heavily subsidized by taxpayers already. People such as Doug just lie strategically. No surprise in that current government of liars.
- jeltz 2mo agoAll forms of power generation are heavily subsidized. Anyone complaining about a particular form being subsidzed is a dishonest liar. I am personally for building nuclear and compulimenting it with some wind and hydro, but that is not related to what things are subsidized but because nuclear and hydro has worked really well here in Sweden providing reliable power and while wind has a spottier record I think diversification is good.
- Danox 2mo agoI’m for Thorium research and development. The Chinese again seem to be moving ahead once again, they seem to be open to ideas that work. In the past when America was more of a can-do country the Chinese or Russian development of Thorium reactors (Oak Ridge tech) would have been a Sputnik moment. Today the reaction is pretty much silence and the same goes for useful infrastructure ie the rail system is pretty much 1950s technology across the United States. Is this the result of government by lobby?
- ghtbircshotbe 2mo agoAnd don't forget ethanol, probably the least efficient form of energy ever discovered
- usrnm 2mo agoWhat are you talking about, it powers a lot of people I know
- ghtbircshotbe 2mo agoDoes it do it efficiently though?
- rob74 2mo agoIt saves energy by making them feel warmer in the winter. If they overdo it and freeze to death, it saves even more energy.
- qingcharles 2mo agoIt's an anti-freeze. Ask the people that survived the Titanic in the water :)
- JohnTHaller 2mo agoAnd is a horrible use of land compared to solar.
- Marciplan 2mo agoInferior Secretary
- Kim_Bruning 2mo ago> not one dependent on "costly subsidies". While paying out 1.2 billion dollars.
- timacles 2mo agoOut country is ran by bunch of Lionel Hutz clones
- gyanchawdhary 2mo ago[flagged]
- josh_p 2mo ago[flagged]
- gyanchawdhary 2mo ago[flagged]
- jermaustin1 2mo agoMy guy, your account is nearly 10 years old, but your karma is only 36, and you are active on here... there is a reason. You are derisive, and abrasive, and your comments (specifically the ones that get downvoted to hell) are low-effort, and "troll-y". You seem like you've been successful in life, you didn't get that way being low-effort, so let's apply that level of effort toward this community that has brought so many people together for their love of technology.
- gyanchawdhary 2mo agoyou make some fair points .. and I respect you for making them openly (and taking the time to do so!) .. also that ur a real person standing behind your words .. and that carries more weight with me than karma ever will :) I can be abrasive .. but Id rather own my words including the unpopular ones .. than hide behind a pseudonym or tailor them for approval .. either way .. you seem like a good human. respect!
- tialaramex 2mo agoTo be fair offshore wind is relatively expensive. A brand new wind farm is probably cheaper than burning methane because Trump started another pointless war, but it's closer than for like Solar PV. Of course "common sense" ought to probably include "Not cooking ourselves".
- kwanbix 2mo agoIt might be more expensive to build/run, but is cheaper on the environment.
- SlightlyLeftPad 2mo ago> they say the noise causes cancer [1] I mean it’s common sense [1]: https://www.c-span.org/clip/white-house-event/user-clip-trump-windmills-cause-cancer/4789848 https://www.c-span.org/clip/white-house-event/user-clip-trum...
- montagg 2mo agoLying bullshitters all. These people are not interested in coherent policy. They say whatever they want to justify it, we know it, and they know we know it. It’s an intentional expression of domination. Just another thing to prosecute and rebuild.
- toomuchtodo 2mo agoAt least they’ll be out of office or age out eventually, we’ll just collectively as US taxpayers with a federal income tax burden (top ~40% of income earners, bottom ~60% have no federal income tax liability) have to pay back hundreds of billions of dollars in excess debt incurred because of this governance failure mode we experienced (or default on the debt, which is also an option). My hot take is: be ready to move fast when the winds shift and we can get back to building instead of harm reduction. ("Progress occurs one funeral at a time." -- Max Planck)
- Enginerrrd 2mo agoI’m not endorsing the current administration’s policy, nor do I think it would succeed, but I find this comment really perplexing since this action is PRECISELY in line with the 2025 National Security Strategy. [1] Also, for further insights on some of the unstated policy, I recommend reading the project 2025 document as well. [2] Perhaps by “coherent policy” you meant “sound” or “effective”? But as it stands it certainly is coherent. [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-N... [2] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24088042-project-2025s-mandate-for-leadership-the-conservative-promise/ https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24088042-project-202...
- 1dontknow_ 2mo agoPlease do not forget the /s since there are young people here or those people who arent native English speakers and they might not catch the sarcasm given its an important topic, esp for the wellbeing of our future generations.
- shin_lao 2mo ago[dead]
- pxmpxm 2mo agoIt’s disappointing to see Redditesque room temp iq discourse in the comments. Has anyone mentioned the expected cost per Mwh of this project to get a sense whether this made economic sense, or are we talking Biden admin adjacent vanity political project paid by rate payers? Just for reference, the hopefully-cancelled Empire wind near me had a 20yr PPA of $155mwh, which makes Vogtle (-~$170mwh) look like a steal. More numbers and less foaming at the mouth, please.
- mandeepj 2mo ago> common sense and not one dependent on "costly subsidies". They say one thing and do another! Edit: I meant to say wrapping their stupid acts under the disguise of 'common sense' is a stupid act in itself.
- renegade-otter 2mo agoOkay then - let's stop subsidizing gasoline, yeah?
- epihelix 2mo agoI know it's not what you wanted to start here with this comment. But the silly, tangential, petty bickering in this thread goes a very long way to explain our failure to act to stop the catastrophe we've known was coming since the 80s.
- newfriend 2mo agoThat's exactly what this person wanted to start.
- ShinyLeftPad 2mo agoTo me it's a reasonable point. We tend to forget that subsidies go both ways. Maybe it's a bit too sarcastic but that's about it
- bko 2mo agoI wish there was more context as to what the deal actually was instead of a highlight reel of late 2000s era right wing slogans like "drill baby drill". It's framed as US government giving $1.2b to German company not to build something (which is weird in its own right). But after drilling into it (correct me if I'm wrong): RWE is a large German utility It paid $1.2b for development rights and invested a bunch of money. The US passed policies that made it impossible to develop the plan. So it's essentially a negotiated unwind of government-issued property/development rights. US changed the rules, made the lease ineffective and compensated the leasee. But the deal was that instead of RWE just taking the money they agreed to other development projects related to natural gas (better in my opinion). You might disagree with the policies that made these wind farms impossible or whether the buy out of federal leased land is fair to one party or another. But I wish articles actually cared enough to describe the situation clearly. Questions I would like mentioned in the article in place of Trumps rhetoric about "big ugly windmills" is details about the actual restrictions that made it impossible, history of it, impact, etc.