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Comment by olddustytrail | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't. Solar is ridiculously cheap and requires no subsidy at all to be profitable.

If this is happening (which frankly I doubt) it's just corruption.

If this were true, then wouldn’t every electricity supplier be building tons of solar, regardless of what the government does?

93% of new energy generation is renewable.

Nobody wants a new coal or nuclear plant in their back yard.

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/12/nx-s1-5319056/trump-clean-ene...

As JumpCrisscross said, they really are. Look at solar deployments across the planet.

They do need planning permission of course and that's where they can be blocked.

I see that now, thanks. So much for all that freedom.

> wouldn’t every electricity supplier be building tons of solar, regardless of what the government does?

They are. And it’s undercutting the owners of pricier plants. Hence Trump using environmental regulation to block more solar.

Land of the free, home of the brave gets funnier and funnier.

Well, not in California where there is both a residential solar mandate assuring new distributed supply and where solar already reaches over 100% of demand at peak; adding new utility-scale solar doesn't make a lot of sense even if it is cheap.

If solar is "ridiculously cheap" (per GGP) and California has abundant supply of it, why does electricity in major cities in California (see e.g. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APUS49B72610) cost several times what it does in Toronto, Ontario (https://www.oeb.ca/consumer-information-and-protection/elect... , and note these prices are in CAD)?

Politics and corruption. The generation cost is low, but the government backed monopoly folds all kinds of distribution, deferred maintenance, fire damage, and political pet projects into the retail price. It sucks.

According to the article Trump is trying to ban new solar developments. Suppliers are building tons of solar but they can't do so if the government makes it illegal.

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