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Comment by jibal | Hacker News Reader

This will change under the policies of the current U.S. administration.

Pretty unlikely. Solar is built on cheap land with low demand, and if the land isn't sold then the power is free so why wouldn't you sell it? No matter how high the taxes are, free money is free money. Aside from making it totally illegal it is very hard to reduce the incentive to sell power.

On top of that the subsidies for solar installations are mostly frontloaded, since the costs are frontloaded. Annual tax breaks are transferrable, so they get sold at the beginning of the project to offset investment cost, lowering interest payments. Even removing tax breaks would not make existing installations less profitable.

You are right it makes sense but that hasn’t stopped them from gutting all sorts of sensible programs both energy-related and otherwise regardless of the stage of investment/development. Have we forgotten about Musk and his mob already?

This administration is openly touting “beautiful clean coal” (doesn’t exist) for powering servers. Renewables are yet another front where people are divided based on politics. It has little to do with efficacy or practicality. I still have family members convinced that offshore wind power is mass-killing whales because of Carlson.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/rein...

> I still have family members convinced that offshore wind power is mass-killing whales because of Carlson

And if they are anything like the people I've talked to, they never once cared about whales (or any sea life) before this. Same with the "wind turbines kills birds" or even "trans women are ruining women's sports". Ahh yes, a whole list of things you've never cared about, made fun of, or derided in the past but now suddenly care about because of some talking head. It's exhausting.

Too true. Until they realized they could use it to bully the trans community the only time they talked about the likes of the WNBA was in service of a punchline for a bad joke.

This exactly. People who I have seen make jokes at the WNBA's expense suddenly caring about the sanctity of the sport... I often wonder if they see the cognitive dissonance, probably not.

College sports should expand into having an Alumni league. Like the WNBA and other W-sports have a suspicious system where the leagues expenses grow very much in line with revenue while player salaries don't.

Colleges already have the facilities to host games so it seems like an easy steal as there's actually a lot of money in (certain) woman's sports (i.e. USMNT and USWNT in soccer have similar revenue but different salaries) but the salaries are low so its an easier target then say the NFL.

Yes, it would be absolutely irrational and indefensible to block people from building solar farms where there is a straightforward commercial case for doing so. Unfortunately, "irrational and indefensible" is exactly what this administration is: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/trump-offici...

I work in the industry. Removing the tax breaks is having a material impact because we look at after tax cash flow. Next year installations are going to reduce meaningfully.

The articles about Solar cost reaching parity with Fossil. Is that before or after taxes?

Taxes are far too complex to figure that our. In the case of other there are a lot of different players and most do things other than oil and so it isn't possible to figure out what tax/subsidy is from oil.

Was wondering if anybody just took raw manufacturing/operating costs, and energy output, and compared. Removing all taxes and subsidies from the equation. If we are going to say Solar is now cheaper, I'd think it would have to be without subsidies.

Accounting is a big issue for renewables because almost all the cost is upfront. You pay a capital cost for X years (say, 30) of electricity. Maintenance is a much smaller fraction of the cost. Therefore the question of profitability depends on all sorts of non-power things: amortization, interest rates, how the tax-deductibility of a capital investment is handled, what future electricity costs are, and so on.

How do you suggest fossil fuel subsidies should be positioned in the equation?

Optimally, I'd like to see both calculated with zero subsidies.

Some people also complain about Solar being front loaded. But a power plant is also paid for up front. I'd like to see life time costs, minus subsidies.

Its probably referring to the price at which solar can sell power. In the middle of the day, its actually effectively $0 (no marginal cost). In nighttime, its infinite cost. Fossil fuels marginal cost is effectively the cost of fuel per MWh.

Federal funding for solar farms will stop but private funding will continue because solar electricity is the the cheapest source right now.

Unless it gets outlawed, which I suspect is something Trump might do or attempt as part of his campaign in favour of fossil fuels and/or to own the libs/China.

I'm also not clear how cheaply the US could make its own PV in the event of arbitrary trade war (let alone hot war) between the USA and China.

(The good news there is that even in such a situation, everyone else in the world can continue to electrify with the panels, inverters, and batteries that the USA doesn't buy, but the linked article obviously isn't about that).

It's more than just funding. There's a lot of regulatory hurdles and desire to use federal lands that will also be killed.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/trump-offici...

>The following month, the president said his administration would not approve solar or wind power projects. “We will not approve wind or farmer destroying Solar,” he posted on Truth Social. “The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!”

Realisitically, solar is dead in America and China is the undisputed worlds #1 solar superpower. The US might hook up a few little projects here or there, but functionally the US is in full retreat on solar, cedeing the industry and technology to China.

The federal government doesn't have to approve solar farms built on private land. Solar is far from dead in the US and there is tons of private land solar farms can and will be built on.

Most the best land for solar farms in the west half of the US is controlled by the federal government. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1f/Ma...

For example, there basically will not be large scale solar in Nevada, Utah, Arizona, etc under this administration. You know, some of the highest value spots.

Nevada, Utah and Arizona are all low population states with little power demand. While power can be shipped that needs power lines and other complexity. There is a lot of solar potential there, but the lack of demand means they are not highest value.

I’m not sure land is the controlling factor. Look at current fuel mix: the upper Midwest is mostly coal, with all its disadvantages. How was it possible for Iowa, South Dakota, and Kansas to choose wind?

Iowa choose wind because 20 years ago it wasn't an issue and someone put in a clause that made building wind an advantage to utilities so they tried. By the time wind became an issue elsewhere there was too much installed in Iowa for anyone to be able to claim it couldn't work and in turn those who made it political have to be quiet about it when they come to Iowa.

Texas also has a lot of wind power because it is so windy and has a huge amount of land.

I am still receiving advertisements from solar companies that want to put panels on farm land. They pay around $3-$4k an acre

Per month or year? And what region?

Per year, midwest.

Like monthly? Yearly?

I'm not the person you're replying to, but if I read the following link correctly, the USA average price to purchase is only $5.5k/acre, and any part of the US cheaper than or including the average price in Nebraska (ranked 17th at $3,884/acre) could well be trading food farmland for solar farm land at that price:

https://acretrader.com/resources/farmland-values/farmland-pr...

In Nebraska, you're talking about food for cattle. The profit per acre is low and so the price is low.

1. The Nebraska price is the 17th highest on that list. Nevada and Montana are both below $1k/acre. I've seen Nevada in person, I can guess why the small amount of possibly-arable land I saw there might be cheap, never been to Montana but the Google street view photos told me the same story.

2. If the profit per acre is low, surely this just means they don't have a better use for the land?

3. Even if you assume they're all idiots who could make more profit if they thought harder about better uses for their land, I'm not clear why the reason for the land being what it is, is supposed to matter?

The point I was trying to get across is that, because animal feed is an inefficient way of making people food, it's a little tendentious to say that we're trading food for energy.

Oh, right; I agree, but that intent wasn't clear.

Well thanks. Now I reviewed what I had in mind for the size of an acre, and it's way smaller than I though (I don't know why I was thinking it was way bigger than an hectare). Also, I always forget the size differences of unused land between continental Europe and the US. :D

High plains Nebraska land can support cattle grazing or maybe a wheat crop, given they receive less than 10” of rain per year.

Nobody is converting irrigated Ogallala aquifer farmland to solar fields, they’re taking marginal land used for grazing and using that for solar fields. Productive farmland can have wind turbines within it, due to the smaller footprint of the turbine tower.

Productive farmland is $10k+ an acre, more if it’s irrigated. The cost of rural land is based on the economic rents/value that can be extracted from the land.

> Nobody is converting irrigated Ogallala aquifer farmland to solar fields

Given the rate at which the aquifer is being depleted, they should. There are some water districts in CA that have encouraged conversion to solar but it's controversial.

https://calmatters.org/commentary/2025/07/california-agricul...

I agree with you 100%, but the unfortunate truth is that irrigated farmland will be farmed until the aquifer runs dry :/

This is for a 20 or 30 year lease. One time payment. 4k is on the high side.

It's a monthly payment.

Just to make sure we're actually in agreement: It's a _total_ of $3-4k paid out monthly over a period of 20-20 years, right?

Downvoted and yet plenty of support for the statement in the responses.

(And I didn't even say in which direction it would change, or exactly what will change.)

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