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Comment by s1k3s | Hacker News Reader

Please allow me to go political for a second: both US and EU have an insane amount of politicians who support backing down on green energy and going back to coal mining, oil drilling and the like. I hope that at least the people who are intelligent enough to see the progress of green energy won't support that through their votes. We can literally have "free" energy coming from this star around us but instead of using it we're coming up with excuses that keep us from progressing.

That's it </political>

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I don't understand, the USA and EU are adding solar and wind very fast. Financially, it is a no-brainer and getting added in record numbers.

What else do you want?

Sure there are issues over regulations and power lines approval, but those are hopefully going to get solved surely.

I'm not talking about what's happening now (even though there's plenty of criticism to be said about the programs that we run). I'm talking about a new wave of politicians that's coming up in both regions, and they want this to stop.

As long as it’s economical, people will keep adding solar and going green without paying attention to politics.

Case point: Oil and gas industry-loving Texas added 6.5 GW of solar in 2023 alone, more than any other state.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/tex...

Ah gotcha, right now there seems to be a radical group that would oppose their own nose if it twitched the wrong way.

I wouldn't worry, the smart money is on renewables, and nothing is going to stop it. Plus, national security people know it is so important globally.

The thing about money is that energy is a critical sector of the economy of each region, so governments push a lot of public funding towards it. That's why I'm bringing up politics here, otherwise the free market would take care of the issue as always.

Thats temporary. Solar builders stockpiled panels for the rest of the year, and doing installs as fast as they can. The costs are going up: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-solar-builders-br...

Trump saying he’d ban all EVs. Trump saying he would end all wind installations.

At least redirect (some of) govt subsidies for fossils towards renewables to build faster?

You can’t fix some mental models. You can only try to succeed despite them. It’s unfortunate for sure.

If you have a better source of energy then build it. If it's better than the other ones will cease to exist. The "mental model" is entirely immaterial to the "market reality."

Only 1 coal plant in the US is economical to run, and yet an entire industry continues to desperately attempt to continue to exist through various appeals. The market is made up by human rules, they are not physical laws, nor are they a reasonable final arbiter to what is rational.

So it’s not always just simple humans, but also malevolent ones too creating the uphill climb. Such is life.

Coal was being displaced by Natural Gas well before Solar added to the fight. Is the issue that Coal didn't just stop existing one day immediately? With power plant lifetimes of 50 to 100 years why would anyone rationally expect this outcome?

This is not a change you will see in your lifetime clearly. This is clearly a change that _is_ occurring during your life time.

We agree change is occurring. Do we agree there are significant forces intentionally attempting to restrict the rate of change to be slower than it needs to be to achieve a favorable outcome for humanity?

Not significantly. The economics are a tidal wave and any political action is like trying to hold it backward speed it up with a bucket.

Industry and individuals switch quickly when the economics are favorable.

Trillions of dollars stand to be made from Renewables by groups with deep political connections.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/09/foss... ("Far-right fossil fuel allies have launched a stunning and unprecedented campaign pressuring the supreme court to shield fossil fuel companies from litigation that could cost them billions of dollars.")

https://www.budget.senate.gov/chairman/newsroom/press/whiteh...

“Our investigation revealed how Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, API, and the Chamber worked in concert to mislead the public, policymakers, and investors with public promises to reduce emissions and meaningfully contribute to the transition away from oil and gas, while privately seeking to lock in continued fossil fuel production for decades into the future,” wrote Whitehouse and Raskin. “The investigation also demonstrated that the fossil fuel industry continues to knowingly obfuscate the dangers of natural gas, which they have billed as a clean and green fuel. This evidence, combined with the entities’ failure to comply fully with validly issued congressional subpoenas, suggests that further investigation by the executive branch is warranted.”

“Our investigation into the fossil fuel industry calls to mind the historic congressional investigation into deceptive practices of the tobacco industry and its trade associations, which led to investigations and litigation by several state attorneys general and the Department of Justice (DOJ),” they continued. “DOJ is well situated to pursue further investigation and take any appropriate legal action, as it has in similar cases involving the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.”

Perhaps we disagree about the definition of the word "significantly"?

The energy sector is heavily subsidized by governments because it's important. "Market reality" doesn't work here.

If you built solar and energy storage that was capable of powering an entire house for less expense than the grid can do it, people will buy that, subsidies won't matter.

There is a lot of "green washing" that intentionally ignores this outcome because what it really wants to do is capture the subsidies for itself. Which is what I was alluding to originally.

We're going to drill baby, drill. Rightaway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6GiTR--XuM

What transition plans do you recommend for coal producing counties? The issue is that these coal counties get fucked (for a lack of a better words) with coal and without coal. With coal every family suffer generational health problems. But atleast they get to eat and live. Without coal they do not have an economic system to make a living out of it. During the colonial times (here we go) the Bri'ish forced Bengal farmers [0] to cultivate indigo which caused literal famines. They could not produce food crops and colonialist didn't bother to compensate the farmer obviously. Then the farmers got "fucked" over again, when industrial revolution resulted in creation of artificial indigo and farmers struggled to make a transition to another crop. Now, your average WV native is far from a Bengal peasant but idea of policy based restrictions on making a living can be compared. My argument is that broad sweeping policies about establishing how people in particular regions make a living needs to carefully evaluated. Now, I am not for or against coal at all. Coal producing counties are always marginalized and politicians rarely care about them except for election times. For/against coal does very little in terms of coming up with a solution. If you are against coal present a solution on how these counties can transition to making a living without being relocated.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_revolt

There are only 12,000 coal miners in WV. Only 45,000 in the whole US. Obviously there are a large cast of others supporting the miners directly and indirectly (e.g. truck drivers, manufacturers of mining equipment, etc).

There are 341 million other Americans that have an interest in where our energy comes from (and what goes into our atmosphere).

(I'm all for generous support for any American facing major disruption because of macroeconomic changes btw. Getting rural places a fair share of national prosperity is a national problem)

This is a great argument and perhaps the best argument to support the idea of going back to coal. I don't know how to answer this because I'm not an economist, but I'd suggest subsidizing such people from taxation until we reach a green energy goal. Sadly though, politicians don't address this at all.

> both US and EU have an insane amount of politicians who support backing down on green energy and going back to coal mining, oil drilling and the like.

What is an "insane amount?" Is there a spreadsheet or scorecard somewhere that quantifies this?

Kind of. According to polls there are 52% of Americans supporting this. In the EU we have elections this weekend so there's no reason to come up with polls, just follow the results!

1 is an insane amount.

If one is the threshold that we're talking about, then no one should care that there is an insane number opposed. It is a useless statement with no relevance on the world outcomes

You talk about intelligence but then act like a zealot. Don't get me wrong, I have solar panels myself in Spain, but is not Utopia.

Solar panels use a lot of space that could be used for other things like growing food. They make the earth extremely hot as they absorb so much heat from the sun. The political zealots talk about climate change but avoid to talk about that.

It is not excuses, there is very intelligent people working on those problems. Natural gas makes a lot of sense combined with solar and wind because solar only works when the sun is above and wind when the wind blows. You need something for winter and nights. Energy storage is very expensive, and also require lots of energy and raw materials for manufacturing.

For wind mills to make sense you need wind. Lots of countries do not have wind, and also produce heat an noise and kill birds.

In Spain, when the price of the panels and inverters go down, if you have users nearby, it makes sense. In Germany, with half the insolation, it does not.

There is no "free" anything. Everything has its ups and downs.

We need less politicians, lawyers without knowledge of science and engineering.

Of course there's an impact, but the question is "what is impacting us more?"

https://www.energysage.com/about-clean-energy/solar/solar-en...

> They make the earth extremely hot as they absorb so much heat from the sun

What are you smoking? The sun is not sending more light to the places with solar panels. It just absorbs light that is already hitting earth. If anything it makes earth cooler as it absorbs light that would otherwise just hit the ground and make ground hotter.

If the solar panel reflects less sunlight than what would otherwise be there (which seems likely to me) then grandparent is (technically) correct. The energy the panel absorbs eventually turns into heat (although before it becomes heat, it might in the form of electricity be transmitted far away) just like the sunlight energy that a rock absorbs also turns into heat.

The correct response to grandparent is that the magnitude of the increase in heat is small enough to be safely ignored.

It is more like

A. light absorbed by solar panels that eventually turn into heat

B. light absorbed by the ground which pretty much all becomes heat

I'm pretty sure B is much greater than A.

Essentially all of it turns into heat except the part that is (immediately) reflected back into space -- and solar panels are darker than most of the (non-grassy or only sparsely grassy, and the grass is golden, not dark green or on the roof of a building) sites where solar panels are typically sited, which means they reflect less back into space. Ergo, erecting a solar panel adds heat (but again it is negligible compared to the reduction in co2 emissions).

At least in the US, the arguments against solar and wind are usually not out of concern for land area needed for food growth. The opponents tend to use unsubstantiated FUD.

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