11 ms·
US Revokes Limits on Power Plants' Climate Pollution
- EgregiousCube 11d agoWorth noting that the limits being revoked have only been in place less than two years.
- ourmandave 11d agoAlso worth noting that they are being revoked.
- AlecSchueler 11d agoWhy is that notable?
- mathisfun123 11d agoBecause how else would you plant the seeds of doubt that this decision is fucked.
- AnimalMuppet 11d agoBecause without noting that, "revoked" sounds like all limits are being removed, rather than that we're back to the 2024 limits.
- lemmetellya 11d ago[dead]
- reactordev 11d agoFull steam ahead towards greenhouse gases, climate change, and +5degree temperatures. Why not?
- bayindirh 11d agoBecause it'll create value. Value which won't bring anything to anyone. I mean, a couple of people can be more richerer, but we and them won't have a planet to spend or enjoy these theoretical riches at the end. So, no biggie.
- reactordev 11d agoLobbyists lies a foot. “We can’t provide more power with these pesky regulations”
- tosapple 11d agodefine 'climate pollution', this is all fine and well until they apply it to nuclear shielding.
- harimau777 11d agoI'm not clear what you mean. While nuclear waste is certainly a thing that could hurt the environment if mismanaged, impacting the climate isn't really a way that it does so. The shielding also seems like an unusual thing to focus on as opposed to the waste itself.
- tosapple 11d ago'shielding', is applied to both the energy extraction process of fission activity AND the remnants. you're definitely not clear on the meaning.
- plorkyeran 11d agoYeah, I'm definitely not clear on what you're trying to mean. How about you actually state your point rather than vaguely alluding to something?
- tosapple 11d ago[dead]
- jeroenhd 11d agoThe USA is already holding the record for greenhouse gas pollution per capita and they elected the lunatic that raved about climate change being a hoax. I'm surprised this didn't happen earlier. The fact these regulations didn't make it through the normal law making progress (senate/house) doomed it before it even took shape. With presidents like Trump undoing everything his predecessor(s) did just to feel powerful, legislation like this is doomed from that start.
- rightnutwingjob 11d agoThere’s no denying Climate Change is a big industrial-complex. And now that the Data Centre Industrial Complex has come along it’s somewhat sidelined the Climate Change Industrial Complex*. Funny how that happens.
- sippingabonedry 11d agoSorry but you can't have EVs everywhere, WA and CA banning natural gas for heat and cooking, WA and OR sabotaging hydro plant output for salmon habitat restoration, while shutting down your most reliable sources of power. The math does not add up. Solar and wind output is not constant or reliable. NIMBYs sabotaged nuclear years ago. It takes how many years to bring a new plant online? A lot of feel-good rules and regs were passed, pushing a massive shift to electric power, with no consideration as to where the additional power would come from. You can't wave your arms like a Peanuts cartoon and have all that extra power appear, which is the logic that was used in passing many of these impractical regulations.
- reactordev 11d agoSolar and wind is extremely reliable. What isn’t reliable is deployment of it. Energy storage is required along with solar farms.
- sippingabonedry 11d agoUntil the sun goes down at night or the wind stops blowing. You ignored the word "output". > Energy storage is required along with solar farms How many batteries are we going to need for that? They literally just figured out how to get the child slaves in the Congo out of the supply chain with a shift to LFP.
- WarmWash 11d agoEnough to store the energy between gaps, plus a buffer? Batteries aren't exactly made from gold. Grid scale batteries especially, where weight and size doesn't matter as much, are totally viable on a mass scale.
- Propelloni 11d agoFear really IS the mindkiller! Stop being afraid and start educating yourself. You are on HN, you are supposed to be smart.
- jmclnx 11d agoNormally I would be concerned, but these days, we are well on our way to 3.5C. All this will do is cancel out progess China and Europe is making on renewals. It is to bad these people do not care how much of a sucky life they are handing their grandchildren. Wait to see what happens when millions of desperate people living south of the 40th parallel start heading north in mass. No wall will stop that.
- sippingabonedry 11d ago> All this will do is cancel out progess China and Europe is making on renewals China brought 50 new coal plants online in 2025 alone but keep telling yourself that.
- layer8 11d agoChina brought 78 gigawatts of new coal power capacity online in 2025, but also 315 gigawatts of solar capacity and 119 gigawatts of wind.
- tonfa 11d agoAnd coal is mostly flat, while electricity demand is going up. https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/09/China-Energy-Transition-Review-2026.pdf https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/09/China-Energy-Tr... (Page 14)
- leonidasrup 11d agoChina mined more coal in 2025 then ever, but burned less in coal plans. Coal is slowly shifting from electricity production to synthetic oil and chemical production. https://www.mining.com/web/chinas-coal-output-hits-record-in-2025-even-as-it-burns-less/ https://www.mining.com/web/chinas-coal-output-hits-record-in... https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-top-coal-region-expand-coal-to-oil-output-energy-security-push-2026-06-12/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-top-coal-regi...
- sippingabonedry 11d ago
- layer8 11d agoAprès nous, le déluge!
- warumdarum 11d agoBecause it stops society falling apart and regressing. Humanity is not some angelic, monolith stoic super species, which is just programmed wrong. Its half-sane monkeys which fall apart in a regression as soon as the surplus bribery stops and then try to sew the bakeries oven apart, so everyone has something to eat. One can not create policies that destroy the thing they want to protect from a crisis to come, by inducing a different crisis by ignoring the material you work with. Trump is your doing, you brought this guy forth, by deindustrializing the west, by making western buisnesses unable to compete. Stop working with idealized paper-cut outs of people- and actually engage, with the species you got. And no, your good intentions and noble goals, do not entitle you to wing it.
- dyauspitr 11d agoAnd when there are cheaper, faster built, renewable sources of energy that the whole world is building out. I don’t think the lost time can be fixed post Trump (if he even gives up power that is).
- amiga386 11d agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_cruelty_is_the_point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_cruelty_is_the_point
- 0xy 11d agoUS energy usage is flat in real terms since 2000 despite skyrocketing population growth. In per capita terms, it's plummeting. China builds hundreds of coal plants a year while they are exempt from scrutiny.
- nxm 11d agoDon't forget India as well
- SanjayMehta 11d agoIndia increased renewables drastically in the last 10-12 years. https://mnre.gov.in/en/year-wise-achievement/ https://mnre.gov.in/en/year-wise-achievement/
- tzs 11d agoIndia emits 30% less total CO2 than the US and 84% less per capita than the US, and is massively expanding renewables. For their population even without the renewables they are using far less than their share of any fair way to allocate whatever we decide we have to limit worldwide emissions to.
- Timon3 11d agoSince 2000, how much production did the US offshore to China? If this trend keeps going for a decade+, China might begin to approach US per-capita emissions.
- Hikikomori 11d agoTheir coal burning isn't going up though.
- tzs 11d agoIt is usage of plants that matters, not number of plants. Most of the new Chinese coal plants mostly have have low capacity factors. They are being built as backups and peakers rather than baseload, designed (or retrofitted in the case of existing plants being upgraded) to be able to cycle up and down to balance wind and solar. Many are idle so much that their owners have financial difficulty keeping them open, and the government has had to start paying them for their idle time so they won't go under. Many are also built to replace existing plants that cannot not yet be replaced with renewables, so are at worst neutral on coal usage and are usually actually more efficient than the old plants so there is a reduction.
- JungleGymSam 11d ago[dead]
- behole 11d ago[flagged]
- tifik 11d agoI think it will be downvoted for being unnecessarily inflamatory.
- bethekidyouwant 11d agoThe 2024 standards required existing coal plants and new gas plants to capture 90 percent of carbon emissions or shut down by 2039. - wow 2039. So this already had no teeth. We can just pass this law again in 2029.
- SomeHacker44 11d agoNot a law. A regulation. If it were a law, it would have required Congress to change. Not that that would likely have stopped this administration.
- fakedang 11d agoThat's because the technology is already there, if plants were willing to run at a bit of a higher OpEx and add some CapEx. Amine scrubbing coupled with decades-old technology like Rotary Packed Beds Reactors can already capture 90% of CO2 at minimum. The UAE's Ruwais facility already does this onsite and uses the captured CO2 for Enhanced Oil Recovery (aka fracking for the last bits of oil in wells). This has the benefit of sequestering CO2 while also not using water for fracking as an option.
- rassimmoc 11d agoI think this is good idea. I am not against combating climate change, but it can't come at the expanse of our economy. If you disagree stop using whatever device you are reading this on.
- berofeev 11d agoDo you have children?
- markvdb 11d agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apr%C3%A8s_moi,_le_d%C3%A9luge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apr%C3%A8s_moi,_le_d%C3%A9luge
- walrus01 11d agoTranslated to American: "fuck you, I got mine"
- Gibbon1 11d agoA thought is that from 'their' perspective the potential loss of power and status on the tip top of things is to them existential. Consider a certain Senator being wheeled into the Senate to vote. Why even subject ones self to that. Because to step down is annihilation. There was another Senator in 2023 being wheeled around the same way. So all of this is performative asserting power in order to punish anyone seen as a threat to the current system.
- thrance 10d agoThere's this idea in leftist thought, that in the end capital only ends up growing its relative power over labourers. Trump's policies, Climate Change, they all make everyone worse off in the absolute, but they end up giving capital more relative power over the rest of us.
- thrance 10d agoAnd it should be noted that "déluge" is more often than not used to refere to the biblical flood, not just any flood.
- mathh 11d agoThis is deeply outrageous and criminal. Every American should be ashamed.
- csto12 11d agoI mean we elected an outrageous criminal into office. I think we are in a post-shame society.
- GreenVulpine 11d agoGood to see some action away from "climate" regulations ruining the energy sector and making everything downstream more expensive. You can't have a booming industrial economy without cheap energy. And no, having strict regulations that just end up moving production offshore doesn't solve anything. It just moves to pollution to China or India or whatever.
- sailfast 11d agoHow does one move power plant pollution offshore to China?
- collinmcnulty 11d agoThis is absurd. The cheapest energy available is solar, which is becoming more true every day. If truly the goal was just to have cheap energy, solar buildout would be a huge component of the strategy.
- efnx 11d agoSo now as a planet we have to curb greenhouse gasses in the US _and_ China or India or whatever.
- dumberquestions 11d agoWe're already paying for and will continue to pay more for the downstream effects of climate change some way or the other, you just refuse to or are unable to look at the bigger picture.
- nxm 11d agoTell China and India to stop building coal plants first, and also ban private jets, and then we can talk.
- dumberquestions 11d agoTaxing carbon will affect everything, including private jets, and China is doing more for solar power than any other place in the world and they're also investing heavily in renewables and nuclear. In any case, the solution to other countries not doing their parts is figuring out ways to incentivise and coordinate better outcomes, not giving up completely, giving up only makes sense if someone is in denial regarding the consequences.
- rayiner 11d agoI don't see the point of trying to redefine "pollution" to include CO2. We have been discussing climate change for decades, but it was only recently that people tried to shoehorn CO2 into category of "pollution." It just takes a category where society has some consensus and then shoehorns some new disputed idea into existing category. It's an end-run around the process of building consensus around the new thing.
- watwut 11d agoThis is ridiculous. There is no redefinition, it was always part of definition. Seriously. The only end run around consensus are lies like "CO2 as polution is a novel thing".
- rayiner 11d ago> There is no redefinition, it was always part of definition. Source?
- wyre 11d agoYou need a source showing you that greenhouses gasses aren't pollution? The thing that is also known as "air pollution"? I want to tell you to stop being a moron, but its against this site's TOS.
- rayiner 11d agoIn the 1990 IPCC report it talks about “greenhouse gasses” and also about “air pollution” but treats those as two distinct things: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/05/ipcc_90_92_assessments_far_full_report.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/05/ipcc_90_92_a.... For example, on page 97, it says “CO2 enrichment” may “enhance plant growth,” but that “enhanced levels of air pollution could also reduce this positive effect.” There’s it’s clearly talking about CO2 and air pollution as two different things that have opposite effects on plant growth. Is the IPCC also “morons?”
- eapressoandcats 11d agoThe good news is the war with Iran has done more to curtail greenhouse gas emissions than basically anything domestically Trump can do. Violently demonstrating the geopolitical liability of relying on Greenhouse Gasses is more compelling than more climate conferences apparently.
- tencentshill 10d agoEmitting it all at once by lighting it on fire isn't great either, but at least it pauses new extraction for some time.
- jmyeet 11d agoFossil fuels are like NFTs. Hear me out. NFTs never made sense. You're buying a short URL on a blockchain in the hopes that it'll somehow retain value. The URL could go bad, it could be pointed at something else, etc. But what NFTs did was induce demand for crypto, particularly Ethereum. That was the point. For a long time I thought we went to war for oil. No, that's backwards. Our oil dependence exists to induce demand for weapons. I will once again refer to the article No one goes to war over a solar panel [1]. So when you see things like pollution limits being lifted on power plants because of data centers, know that the ultimate driving force is the sale of weapons. Let me give a concrete example. If I drill a well in West Texas that produces, say, 1000 barrels per day ("bpd"). It doesn't produce that forever. As the pressure goes down, the daily production goes down. In the industry this is called the decline rate. For the Permian Basin, the decline rate of any oil well is typically 15-20% per year. So in year 2, that well will produce 800-850bpd. In year 3, it'll be ~650-700. In year 4 it'll be 500-550. So if you rely on oil you constantly need to be building new wells to maintain your same production level. For the US, which produces 13-15Mbpd of oil, that means you need to add 2Mbpd of new wells every year just to maintain that level of production. Oil wells, like any form of resource extraction, are excellent wealth concentrators. They make people rich. If I put up 1GW of solar panels then, apart from some cleaning and general maintenance, they're going to produce 1GW of electricity every year (with some variance for sunshine). Nobody gets rich from that. And nobody needs to go to war for that. Which means nobody gets rich from selling weapons to secure that oil. [1]: https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar-panel/ https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar...
- 8note 11d agoIm really not seeing the comparison. nfts were about trying to make inherently not scare things scarce, and to try to get people involved in a ponzi scheme the oil being drilled and mined is exceptionally useful, and people buy it even when you dont need to go to war or get weapons. War would still be happening in the middle east without oil, its a key trade route between Europe and Asia. the oil dependence exists because it lets people get work and labour done without hiring labourers. if you put up 1GW of solar panels, you will definitely get rich off of that, and whenever people start building giant solar farms in borth africa, we will see armed militas conquering each other for control over the profits
- outside1234 11d agoCan’t wait for this to cost us 10 times more in bailing out underwater Florida
- jmward01 11d agoThere are a multitude of arguments against this: - Investing in alternatives has led to massive new industry that is improving the economy of those countries that do it. If your argument is an economic one then jump onto the solar, wind and battery bandwagon. - There are virtually no real short medium or long term gains economically here. Gas is the only thing still competitive with solar/wind and its costs are rising while solar and wind continue to fall. Building new maximum pollution plants would drop that internalized cost but who in their right mind would fund something so obviously DOA? - Obviously the externalized costs of greenhouse gas emissions are deeply undervalued in this move. Even if they are 'fake news' in the US, the rest of the world is finally starting to take them seriously. The US's diminished soft power means it won't be able to easily bully the world into allowing it to pollute without consequence and such an obviously hostile move means it will loose even more of its soft power by taking this position. So on the international level this means we burn a lot of political capital and gain nothing but decades of distrust and anger. - Current events show that energy security is dominated by decoupling from fossil fuels. This weakens the US strategically and continues to set it up to be manipulated by exceptionally hostile actors. - Oh yeah and, of course, climate change is real. This continues the US down the path of being the best buggy whip maker in the world. Worse than that, the US is becoming an obnoxious buggy whip maker who's neighbors are starting to hope fails horribly and will help make that happen as moves like this continue. This is stupid at every scale and in every dimension.
- selectodude 11d agoThe Gulf countries paid handsomely to get Trump in there to keep the United States as the buyer of last resort once the rest of the world goes renewable. Problem is that installing a bunch of sick sons of bitches to do your bidding can backfire when those some morons lose a war to Iran in a matter of months.
- nine_k 11d agoThe current wars in Europe and the Middle East paradoxically push the world towards non-fossil enery like few things did before. Both oil and natural gas prices have skyrocketed on global markets, and will likely rise more, as Ukraine continues to target Russian oil infrastructure, and Houtis continue to stymie Saudi oil exports. Nothing hampers solar, wind, and batteries though; at worst it takes longer to ship the key components from China to Europe around Africa.
- infamia 11d agoThis headline is rather sweeping considering the modest nature of the change, which is merely rolling back regulations to 2024 levels.
- davmar 11d agoyou're comparing years, not standards. i hope you're just foolish and not intentionally disingenuous. "The 2024 standards required existing coal plants and new gas plants to capture 90 percent of carbon emissions or shut down by 2039, which would have reduced carbon pollution by an estimated 1.38 billion metric tons through 2047" Before the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, the federal limits were much weaker—and for existing power plants, there was effectively no operative federal CO₂ limit at all.
- infamia 11d agoMy point is that after a large change, reversion to the mean should not be treated breathlessly, but viewed in a measured manner. > Before the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, the federal limits were much weaker—and for existing power plants, there was effectively no operative federal CO₂ limit at all. This is an exaggeration that stretches credulity, since there have been strict limits for decades around secondary outputs that are required by power plant energy production effectively limiting production and emissions (which is the entire point).
- davmar 11d agoThe 2024 plan would have reduced annual CO₂ emissions by about 533 million metric tons by 2040. That's roughly equivalent to taking half of all U.S. passenger cars and light-duty trucks off the road. With the rollback, that reduction will no longer occur. So, this is significant.
- wat10000 11d agoImagine you’re driving headlong toward a cliff. Someone turns the steering wheel a little, not nearly enough, but it’s a small part of an attempt to steer away from the cliff. Then somebody else comes along and steers back. How measured should the reaction to this be?
- deepfriedchokes 11d agoIf everyone votes, this will be overturned in a couple years.
- userbinator 11d ago[flagged]
- totallymike 11d ago[flagged]
- userbinator 11d agoYou're the idiot for believing the propaganda. The doomers were screaming about this shit decades ago. So many predictions that never actually happened.
- totallymike 11d agoGod you’re just adorable
- Razengan 11d agoYou should go live in the vicinity of an area polluted by a factory or power plant.
- yongjik 11d agoThe real irony is that, despite all this, Trump may accidentally become the greenest US president by driving up the price of oil for the whole world. For years to come. I mean, anyone can say they're for the environment, but are you willing to start a war, lose a midterm, and murder a school full of kids to reduce your carbon footprint? /s
- zaik 11d agoHe should be awarded the FIFA Environment Protection prize.
- ck2 11d agowell, for the next 800 days or can a dictator president do this at all without congress? btw how many gallons of crude oil do you think the Epstein Memorial Ballroom can hold? because we're going to need a new strategic oil reserve, he destroyed the current system by bottoming it out
- debo_ 11d agoRelated: Citizen's Climate Lobby Canada laser talks booklet on planetary boundaries (link at bottom) https://canada.citizensclimatelobby.org/media-release-ccl-canada-launches-planetary-boundaries-laser-talk-booklet/ https://canada.citizensclimatelobby.org/media-release-ccl-ca...
- totallymike 11d ago[flagged]
- nxm 11d agoNothing like trying to be the tough guy on an message board....
- Hikikomori 11d agoFeeling called out huh
- mbgerring 11d agoThis is cope. Oil, gas, and coal are dead, and with them, America’s control over the global financial system, and its political hegemony. America is actively ceding the future to China, and our ruling class have no ideas left other than looting the place as it’s burning to the ground.
- userbinator 11d agoChina became the manufacturing capital of the world because it doesn't have these regulations. It's time we caught up.
- dmix 11d agoChina invested heavily into oil, gas, and coal for energy. Their coal use is still expanding, just like their big investments in solar, wind, and nuclear. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-coal-power-rise-again-2026-reversing-first-in-a-decade-decline-2026-06-24/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-coal-power-ri... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_China > By 2025, coal accounted for approximately 54.6% of China's electricity generation
- mbgerring 11d agoThe linked article doesn’t say what you think it does. It says that China’s use of coal this year is increasing after a multi-year trend of leveling off or decreasing, mainly because China is using coal in place of LNG imports made more expensive due to the U.S. attacks against Iran. The overall trend is very clear — China is expanding both its supply of electricity, and generation from renewable sources, at the same time. Which we should also be doing in the United States.
- dmix 11d agoLeveling off means it's declining as a percentage share of all energy usage... but China's total energy usage has grown massively during that time, and so has investment in coal business which has kept up with demand. See in chart form: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_policy_of_China#/media/File:China-energy-consumption-by-source.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_policy_of_China#/media/... > 2025 also saw China commission 78 GW of new coal power capacity, which is more than India’s net coal power additions over a ten-year period from 2015 to 2024, even though India operates the world’s second-largest coal power fleet. https://globalenergymonitor.org/research/built-peak-coal-power-expansion-runs-out-room-china https://globalenergymonitor.org/research/built-peak-coal-pow... The last time the US built a large new coal operation was 13yrs ago. China has done great things with renewables and nuclear, but that's because they build absolutely everything available, which is why their energy is so much cheaper in China than North America and Europe. Which translates into manufacturing plants being much cheaper to run.
- Grimeton 11d agoI'm so tired of this. Please someone bring back people with critical thinking abilities.
- nxm 11d agoLike the greens in Germany who decided it's best to shut down nuclear power plants?
- bamboozled 11d agoWhat does this have to do with being a fat, dumb, greedy asshole with no brains?
- Timon3 11d agoIt's eerie how often this lie gets repeated here. It wasn't the Greens that decided this for Germany. It was our conservatives, the CDU/CSU. The latter had high-ranking officials literally threaten to step down, unless Germany exits nuclear energy production.
- Grimeton 11d agoThe greens could have stopped it, especially after the invasion started, but they did it anyway. Ideology > common sense.
- Timon3 11d agoHow? Most of the power plants had already been decommissioned! The CDU had years and years to stop it. The Greens only had the option to prolong the lifetime of the last power plants, which they did. Ideology > critical thinking
- tavavex 11d agoThis comment thread shows that, if anything, the Americans want this. If they released exhaust fume inhalers, the majority of the US population would willingly buy one and take hit after hit to disprove the myth of weird, alien things like "caring about the environment" while quietly wheezing about "but China..." to themselves.
- phtrivier 11d agoFrom the wording, it's not clear if the ruling (from 2024) had any impact on power plant running today, or newly built one (it seems like it was mandating carbon capture eventually.) The "good" news is that coal plants are already suboptimal, economically. This is delaying the closure of existing plans, which is just absurd, but completely on brand for the political party that people voted in office, with complete knowledge of what would happen. I suppose they also voted for "cheaper groceries" and "no more endless wars", but that will come any time soon.
- deleted 11d ago[deleted]
- JungleGymSam 11d ago[dead]
- bentt 11d agoCrazy idea: Power Plants could still do the right thing.
- bdangubic 11d agoPower Plants answer to the shareholders, hence…
- bamboozled 11d agoHow “conservative”, revolting people.
- sbseitz 11d agoCertainly this will benefit the citizens!
- tialaramex 11d agoI know HN has lots of American readers, so maybe they can explain. Why aren't the vast majority of America's suburban single family dwellings using rooftop solar? Huge numbers of Americans live in these homes - they're not so much a thing, especially to this degree, in other countries and they seem basically ideal for rooftop solar. Am I missing something here?
- newAccount2025 11d agoIt’s expensive? We were quoted 60k last year. Maybe a scammy company but that’s a lot up front.
- kg 11d agoSome speculative answers based on what I know: 1. A lot of single family dwellings are occupied by renters. In this scenario, the renter has no ability to install rooftop solar, and the owner has no incentive to install rooftop solar because the renter is paying the energy bills. (The same goes for things like installing high-efficiency heat pumps etc.) 2. HOA regulations can block things like rooftop solar depending on where you live. 3. The up-front investment involved in rooftop solar can be prohibitive for many people. Things like tax incentives can help but we've been getting rid of those under the current administration, and tax incentives only go so far if your tax return is 6+ months away.
- kileywm 11d agoThe data that I've seen shows that the barriers to solar adoption for the average American home are high installation cost, low grid power cost, unfavorable net metering agreements for grid interconnect, and even some pushback from neighborhood committees (homeowners association aka HOA). There are exceptions such as Hawaii where grid power is expensive and sunshine abundant, but the US is big, geographically diverse, and because of that adoption varies greatly on regional dynamics.
- ButlerianJihad 11d agoTech workers located in South Africa and nearby regions suffer, because the power grid there is unreliable at best. Therefore, those workers may be required by employers to prove that they have arranged for reliable backup power and network connections in order to stay connected (nearly to the antipodes) and ensure that their performance is competitive with workers located in stable regimes with robust power grids and network backbones. It may seem unfair or unnecessary for US employers to require US employees to have a UPS, solar array, a redundant network connection, etc. But if employers required these things up-front, surely some tech workers could step up to the challenge and perhaps even be distinguished from those who don't get it.
- thelastgallon 11d agoSoon we'll see a Manhattan Project for a coal powered car. Followed by coal powered Fridge and AC.
- thomasjeff1 11d agoWhy keep the planet habitable for these peasants. We have our space stations soon. Let the peasants suffer and die.