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Comment by Ekaros | Hacker News Reader

I'm all for free market competition in energy production. The renewables should get zero subsidies. And nothing like net-metering should be allowed. Let the market select the cost optimal solution. At first we can apply amortized carbon tax over whole lifespan.

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I'm ok with that as long as we stop subsidizing fossil fuels too.

The problem is that there is no such thing as a truly "Free" market, there are a lot of invisible hands tipping many scales.

Also, this sentence didn't make much sense to me:

"on a project it says will help in its efforts to trim carbon emissions by 75% compared to 2005 levels."

Why are we comparing to 2005 levels? Why not something more recent? That's extremely suspicious. Is that before we started moving a bunch of things over from coal to gas?

What are you even referring to when talking about "subsidizing fossil fuels"? Aren't they heavily taxed in the most of the world?

In the U.S., which is among the largest oil producer as of recent years, the fossil fuel industry is heavily subsidized.[1]

[1]https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuels-received-5-9-trill...

I found this same link in just doing some research for my sibling reply, but they mentioned a lot of that $5.9tn is "implicit" (like not counting the health harms) – that feels a bit more iffy to me though.

I looked for some decent (non-partisan) sources on this [1] and was surprised that the number was so "small" in the US (given how large the industry is): $21bn. But about $290bn worldwide, down from $500bn in 2013. So they're on the downward trend which is promising.

Whenever we see the multi trillion dollar numbers, they are counting "implicit" subsidies to me feels a bit more vague. I'm not sure how this compares to renewable energy subsidies. But they work in increasing adoption. I'd be ok with having those sunset too once they reach ubiquity like fossil fuels.

[1]: https://www.brookings.edu/research/reforming-global-fossil-f...

This would be an acceptable solution if we had a carbon tax that fully internalizes the externalities created by pollution. Until then the market will always undervalue renewables.

Renewables are getting massive amounts of subsidies, either directly on construction, or to buy out power for fixed price or grid operator are required to buy power from renewables first.

We have been subsidizing the fossil fuel industry for decenia, so how would that be "free market competition"?

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