A year of clean energy milestones | Hacker News Reader

A year of clean energy milestones

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49 pointsspeckx31 comments

I genuinely don't understand why there's no movement to just shove solar panels onto every apartment building subsidizing the initial cost in form of a loan that gets repaid as paying for power bills - the cost wouldn't change or even be lower than current power bills in a lot of european countries.

It really makes no sense to not use solar except in very few exceptions where it's genuinely never sunny and doesn't have that many sunny days, but hey estonia is making it work.

obviously there is some added maintenance like cleaning the panels, but that also applies for general services that residents of buildings already share.

In Germany they allow people to install solar panels on their balconies.

https://cleantechnica.com/2024/12/21/germany-embraces-balkon...

Though last I looked this probably isn't feasible in the US due to differences in our electrical systems or something like that?

in some states they're now allowing to just plug in panels without any permits up to 1.5kw so actually, no. In US specifically it's just lobbying or hurricane safety since panels flying off and creating even more debris is obviously not great.

Which states are allowing it?

Also this hn comment seems to confirm it's not a tech problem just a policy one!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43007271

Specifically, Utah. I don't know if it's allowed yet in another state.

In my state a law to allow such is working through the legislature right now.

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S8512/amendm...

https://www.brightsaver.org/ is the US advocacy group advocating for balcony solar in the US.

More US States Are Promoting Balcony Solar - https://cleantechnica.com/2025/12/01/more-us-states-are-prom... - December 1st, 2025 ("Earlier this year, Utah became the first state in the US to pass legislation allowing people to purchase balcony solar equipment. In other states, there are laws on the books that make balcony solar illegal, but according to The Guardian that is about to change. Bills have been introduced in the legislatures in New York and Pennsylvania that would allow people to add balcony solar to their homes. Vermont, Maryland, and New Hampshire are expected to follow soon as well.")

Pennsylvania [HB 1971]: https://www.palegis.us/legislation/bills/2025/hb1971 | https://www.pahouse.com/Pielli/InTheNews/NewsRelease/?id=140...

That's Communism and we can't have that. Hell, can't even agree that people would pay for the universal health insurance (via tax), and you now propose that government subsidize electricity? Funny joke :) .

By the way, energy generation is only 1/4 to 1/3 of all emissions on average, so transitioning the fraction of that fraction to a lesser amount of emissions (since there a ton of emissions in manufacturing, transporting and installing solar panels) is nice and cool, but not very efficient to combat climate change.

“There’s a more perfect way to fix the problem…”

Yes, there always is. 40 years later…

Global commercial aviation is about 3% of all emissions”. Reducing that 25-30% to 15-20% is significant.

it's not about climate change, it's about providing a better service at lower cost and better longevity: no aging above ground or underground wires, no massive distribution centers, decentralized grid at time of war (ukraine is switching to solar), benefits are astonishing the further you dive into it.

several apartment buildings can also be linked together to handle maintenance and share peak power capability as well.

It's cause you get better returns in centralized installations.

For example, NREL estimates that centralized installations cost half as much as commercial rooftop, and a third of residential (https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-research-analysis/solar-in...) on a per-watt basis.

Now normally, in a commercial or residential installation, as an owner you don't need to pay for cost of property. But as a utility (or government, or whatever), if you need to offer loans to get these installed, then those loans act a lot like property acquisition costs.

There are definitely factors that can tip things in favour of such an approach (for example, if your land acquisition fees are particularly high for whatever reason, or you really really want a distributed grid), but I suspect that it's this fundamental aspect that keeps utilities from trying to push residential solar.

I think there is a lot of profit to be made for maintenance, initial installation and being the one to provide the loan.

But you're right, utility companies already own the land and have a monopoly - introducing something that would make it pretty easy to undercut and decentralize the power grid isn't that appealing.

That was very much a thing. Sign a contract, company puts solar on your roof, owns that electricity, and you pay a predetermined price for the next 20 years or so and then the panels are yours.

Except some were a scam, and now the well is poisoned.

https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/solar-lease-everything-you...

Reading through this makes me realize that I wonder what will come after "energy wars"? Like if around ~2040-2050 almost 100% of electricity demand is hopefully renewable, that means a completely new area of power.

Till then, fossil energy has been the strongest dominator on which establishment is holding power - once that's becoming the past - what will happen on the world table?

Of course, mining etc. is part of the answer; but I feel like there is much more flexibility around working around refined material availability, than it is with access to energy to start with. Also, contrary to Energy, almost anything that's mined will stay in recyclable economy - so the dominance/control one country can exercise is limited.

Unfortunately, some of the convertors for électrification depend on minerals which, if not "rare", are unevenly distributed.

That leave plenty of room for "battery wars", "motor wars", Even "solar panel" wars if we need to.

I do not believe Putin and Trump are eying Dumbass and Groenland only because of the scenery - and the general historical lesson of the 2020s is that brute force _is_ worth it.

China only is self sufficient, as far as I understand it.

Europe could use minerals from its soil, if we accepted mining. But we don't want that either, any more. (And given what is about to happen to Groenland, it may be a blessing in disguise not to be too resource-rich. Again: pray the Emperor may ignore you.)

Funnily enough, one of the big reasons for Ukraine invasion was to block our gas extraction, it happened right after Shell did a discovery research on the Donbass, and for many years the occupation had been contained precisely to the two regions where Ukraine had some deposits - Donbass and Black Sea. It's only later mental decline caused him to expand the attack.

And vice versa, while there are some rare earths in the Donbass, they are not very convenient to extract. Trump's mining deal was more like throwing a useless toy to a kid throwing a tantrum. It's notable that no one even remembers that "deal" lately.

If you assume the rosiest scenario: a linear rampdown of _all_ emissions (not just from electricity generation) to zero by 2040, we still blow post our carbon budget to stay below 1.5C warming: 42 Gt/yr * (15 years / 2) = 315 Gt (compared to our "remaining balance" of 170 GtCO2 before >50% of 1.5C warming). Needless to say even this optimistic scenario has no chance of happening.

So the answer is that for your children, wars of imperialism will be replaced by wars for water, arable land, fisheries, etc. along with varying levels of violence that will meet the mass migration of refugees. How bad it will be will depend.

Right, that's what is next :(

This post says: "For the first time, wind and solar supplied more power than coal worldwide, while plug-in vehicles accounted for more than a quarter of new car sales."

This does not mean that wind and solar are replacing coal, oil, or wood, all of which were produced and used in greater volumes in 2025, so far as I can tell.

https://www.coalage.com/departments/closing-notes/global-coa...

All past price declines in energy commodities have lead to increased consumption of other energy (and raw materials) commodities. The production of whale oil declined, but only due to environmental regulation. For more, see: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/464145/more-and-more-and-mor...

It means the replacement process is moving well along, though. Coal is persisting mostly because of the installed base, but new capacity is overwhelmingly renewables.

The rate of growth of coal has declined, but growth continues.

https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-coal-plant-t...

You're right about coal and oil, but wood seems like it's been declining since 2000: https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix.

On coal, from the report they're citing:

> For 2025, global coal demand is projected to reach 8 845 Mt, setting a new record. The increase of around 40 Mt compared with 2024 is very similar to the forecast we made last year. While there were some unusual regional trends, they had the effect of cancelling each other out. The United States posted the largest absolute gain of about 37 Mt, supported by policy measures and higher gas prices.

So nearly the entire 2025 increase came from the US, where the federal government is ordering retiring coal plants to stay open and aggressively blocking all non fossil fuel development. Without this artificial and very temporary boost, I'm not convinced coal demand would have risen last year.

> The production of whale oil declined, but only due to environmental regulation.

I don't think this is an exception, it's an example of what needs to happen. Fossil fuels are bad for the environment and need to be regulated, just like whale oil.

RE: The total mass of wood burned by humans annually continued climbing through 2023. Not sure how to square that with the figures on your link for "traditional biomass".

See: https://jkempenergy.com/2024/12/11/rising-wood-fuel-consumpt...

RE: Whales. I'm all for regulation.

That article says it was higher in 2023 compared to past years like 1961 and 1900, not that it as increased continuously during that time. See page 4 of the PDF at the bottom where "traditional biomass" ("wood, charcoal, agricultural residues and/or animal dung" - https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6...) has been falling since 2000.

It does also say that forestry production, charcoal, and wood pellets have been rising, so I guess I don't know, this is difficult to measure and different sources disagree.

The figure should be dollars per megawatt-hour, not per megawatt.

That is incorrect. The article is referring to the cost of the infrastructure, not the cost of the electricity that infrastructure produces. Power plants are spec'ed by megawatt (peak).

In no way is the capex of any of those options that low, not by orders of magnitude.

Dollars per kilowatt would also make more sense but yes the number are off by about a factor of 1,000. If a 1 GW nuclear power plant cost only $200 per megawatt the entire plant would cost $200,000 which is… completely wrong

Utility scale solar is around $1/W, so even $/kW wouldn't work.

You are right. I checked the source, it is the graph on slide 14 of the Lazard presentation [1]. The graph is the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) in dollars per MWh.

[1] https://www.lazard.com/media/5tlbhyla/lazards-lcoeplus-june-...

Energy is the next Space Race, and Trump has already conceded. The US will run out of oil-rich countries to invade before China runs out of sunlight.

The United States should use Starlink or other means to completely monopolize sunlight.

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