- 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.
> - Investing in alternatives has led to massive new industry that is improving the economy of those countries that do it
That's a baseless claim. For example, Germany has invested massively in solar but its electricity prices went up, not down.
> Gas is the only thing still competitive with solar/wind
That's false. Coal power is cheaper than all of those. Solar and wind include costs for expensive battery backups since they are highly volatile.
And to make it clear: Climate change is very bad so coal plants are very bad. But that doesn't mean you can go around and claim that coal isn't cheap compared to things like solar+batteries. The fact that something is good doesn't imply that it is cheap.
This price of electricity is high because gas, which is still expensive, sets the price of electricity most of the time [1].
The levelized cost of electricity for solar (including batteries) and wind is cheaper than coal [2].
> Investing in alternatives has led to massive new industry that is improving the economy of those countries that do it
> That's a baseless claim. For example, Germany has invested massively in solar but its electricity prices went up, not down.
> This price of electricity is high because gas, which is still expensive, sets the price of electricity most of the time [1].
1) Am I missing something or the link you provided contradicts your claim? On a chart #2 in the article you can see Germany has only 24% of the times price of electricity set by gas, 24% is not "most of the time", right?
2) Even if that is true, and electricity prices in Germany are set by the price of gas most of the time, it seems like you didn't address the point in a previous message. If the goal is to have lower prices and the goal(outcome) is what really matters not just the process and renewables is the path to get there then why Germany electricity prices rose at the end? And were not all of those because of this ... because of that ... supposed to be a part of that path(plan)? They did the thing, invested in solar, what have they missed and why?
jmward01 · · focus · HN ↗
- 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.
cubefox · · focus · HN ↗
That's a baseless claim. For example, Germany has invested massively in solar but its electricity prices went up, not down.
> Gas is the only thing still competitive with solar/wind
That's false. Coal power is cheaper than all of those. Solar and wind include costs for expensive battery backups since they are highly volatile.
And to make it clear: Climate change is very bad so coal plants are very bad. But that doesn't mean you can go around and claim that coal isn't cheap compared to things like solar+batteries. The fact that something is good doesn't imply that it is cheap.
importantstuff · · focus · HN ↗
[1] <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-why-does-gas-set-the-price-of-electricity-and-is-there-an-alternative" rel="nofollow">https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-why-does-gas-set-the-price-of... [2] <a href="https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/2024/photovoltaic-plants-with-battery-cheaper-than-conventional-power-plants.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/...
maxnevermind · · focus · HN ↗
> That's a baseless claim. For example, Germany has invested massively in solar but its electricity prices went up, not down.
> This price of electricity is high because gas, which is still expensive, sets the price of electricity most of the time [1].
1) Am I missing something or the link you provided contradicts your claim? On a chart #2 in the article you can see Germany has only 24% of the times price of electricity set by gas, 24% is not "most of the time", right?
2) Even if that is true, and electricity prices in Germany are set by the price of gas most of the time, it seems like you didn't address the point in a previous message. If the goal is to have lower prices and the goal(outcome) is what really matters not just the process and renewables is the path to get there then why Germany electricity prices rose at the end? And were not all of those because of this ... because of that ... supposed to be a part of that path(plan)? They did the thing, invested in solar, what have they missed and why?