- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
“I hate wind,” Trump told the executives over a meal of chopped steak at his Mar-a-Lago Club and resort in Florida, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.
If you’re an American, and you want to stop this, here’s what you need to do:
- Check your voter registration today to make sure it’s still valid — you’ll need to update it if you moved, changed name, or if Republican officials in your state managed to purge your registration
- Volunteer if you have time
- Donate if you can
- Make sure you vote for Democrats up and down the ballot in the fall
Ironically, the offshore wind leases being more readily available was part of the permitting reform Manchin pushed for in the IRA. Many, especially on the left, assumed Biden put it in there as a huge concession to the fossil industry. Which isn’t a totally invalid interpretation, but the wonks at the time were all kind of quietly muttering that the same offshore permitting reform was essential to the success of wind. Manchin probably just had very poor understanding of the policy issues at play. He basically admitted as much in the wake of passing the bill, as I recall. Pretty much the only dark spot in that legislation, and even it had a silver lining.
In the longterm, offshore wind will almost certainly to outcompete offshore oil assuming oil isn’t given wildly preferential treatment (which seems to be what Trump is vowing to do – ignore the free market and ensure oil stays dominant at any cost). Of course, we don’t have time to wait for the free market to sort it out, but it’s still interesting that this is the forecast for the industry.
Wind has had a lot of struggles during the IRA. Mostly because of how bonkers interest rates got, and because all the various green banks and similar funds have been very slow to roll out. I suspect that, like with nuclear, the “grassroots” faux-environmentalist/NIMBY campaigns against wind energy are vastly, vastly overstated and the reality is that it’s just a financial issue. Though it’s definitely true that we have far too many opportunities during approvals for random members of the public to step up and torpedo wind development, whether they be disingenuous actors or not. But unlike nuclear, small and modular wind isn’t vaporware, so there’s every reason to hope the learning curves will start accelerating its usage and soon. And like with most renewables, interconnection queues and costs are still likely the biggest obstacle.
Wind and renewables in general already out-compete oil. If you think about a traditional power plant, the costs can be lumped into 4 categories:
Over the life of the plant, fuel has always been the dominant cost. With renewables, there are no fuel costs. Sure, the other costs might be slightly higher (wind farms are in remote areas, you have many small generators as opposed to a few big ones - solar is still dirt cheap though) but the fuel cost being non-existent easily overrides that.
The biggest travesty is that we basically have renewable energy sold at oil prices, creating insane profit margins for renewables.
Also I have no idea what you mean by the IRA and keep wondering what Ireland has to do with all this.
Solar is vastly cheaper – it costs so little that it becomes hard to model it. Wind works out to ~$32/MWh in the US. Compare that to fossil gas at $5-$30/MWh, depending on the region, and wind is decidedly not out-competing gas. At least not yet. If it continues to get invested in and allowed to deployed, the learning curves on it should be able to bring its price down quite a lot, though.
And yes, those are LCA prices. No one is going to be as simplistic as to just look at one cost center and ignore the other the real costs of energy generation.
Energy is sold at market prices, aside from that which is sold via purchase agreements with utilities that set the prices manually (this happened a lot with coal and ended up being a huge blunder for many utilities who later had to go back and buy out coal plants just to shut them down because they were stupid expensive). Solar being very profitable because fossil energy is pumping up the price is a good thing, not a bad thing – this creates huge market incentives to scale up solar production, which is exactly what is actually happening all over the country right now. There’s no universe in which it is a “travesty” that solar or any renewable has profit potential to deploy right now. We need as much of it deployed as fast as possible. We need it to be profitable enough to get projects off the ground, especially while interest rates are still painfully high and utility interconnection queues are years long and interconnection is often punishingly expensive for no good reason.
This is a discussion about US climate policy. The inflation reduction act is the most important piece of legislation in US history on the subject of climate. Maybe even including the clean air and water acts. I’d encourage you to read up on it.
And I’d encourage you not to use initialisms that are unfamiliar to the vast majority of people on a global forum without explaining them
Americans are the first to complain when it happens the other way around because their worldview is so blinkered!
The IRA is definitely the Irish Republican Army 😂
I was wondering what it had to do with Individual Retirement Accounts.
Being ex British Forces, this always makes me laugh.