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Comment by jqpabc123 | Hacker News Reader

Renewable energy offers a competitive advantage for any energy intensive activity --- like manufacturing or AI.

China gets it, the USA doesn't.

Good China numbers, but I’d still keep two things in mind.

China is moving very fast on clean power. But total energy is still very fossil-heavy, about 78%: 51.4% coal, about 26.9% other fossil fuels, calculated as the remaining share after coal and non-fossil, and 21.7% non-fossil in 2025, based on official Chinese figures.

The U.S. is about 82% fossil overall, so roughly comparable to China’s ~78%, just in a different way. Much less coal now, around 8%, but a lot of oil and gas: petroleum about 38%, natural gas about 36%, according to EIA’s 2024 summary.

For electricity, China was around 11% solar and 11% wind in 2025, according to China’s 2025 Statistical Communiqué. The U.S. was around 9% solar, including rooftop and other small-scale solar, and around 10% wind in 2025, according to EIA.

Nuclear is a major difference in the electricity mix: about 18% of U.S. electricity generation versus roughly 5% in China, based on EIA and China’s 2025 Statistical Communiqué.

And yes, EIA is not a typo for IEA EIA is the U.S. Energy Information Administration, whereas IEA is the International Energy Agency.

Even so, the article says it grew 8% YOY in the US. The best is to hope that this is an unstoppable trend so that even politicians won't be able to reverse it.

Imagine how much faster it would be growing if the U.S. government wasn’t paying companies billions to not produce wind energy

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/climate/offshore-wind-gas...

or delaying standard approvals

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/climate/wind-solar-projec...

Or forcing unprofitable coal power plants to remain operating against their owners' wishes. https://www.energy.gov/documents/doe-order-no-202-26-19-scha...

It’s already irreversible, but it’s just disappointing to see how the U.S. administration has chosen to actively fight against it, while other countries like China are embracing reality.

It’s actually funny if you don’t think about it too hard. The U.S. president is trying to make us more reliant on fossil fuels, while starting a war in Iran that’s led to the global fossil fuel market to be negatively impacted, forcing most Americans to pay more for fossil fuels. Who could have seen that coming? We’re doing great!

> the U.S. administration has chosen to actively fight against it

the biggest producer of renewables is Texas, by a longshot. and the state of california just created insane NEM laws that favor the pockets of pg&e (and are shit for the environment) and as a result solar home installations have cratered.

> the biggest producer of renewables is Texas

That doesn't refute the point at all.

no, but renewables do speak for themselves in dollars and cents, even if they dont have subsidy. now should petrochem subsidies end too? probably yes.

> renewables do speak for themselves in dollars and cents

Yes. But administration opposition can change that math, as they have with the tariffs.

they're not going to. solar and wind producers in texas are rich republicans.

From the CalISO graphs, there doesn't seem to be a shortage of solar power for most of the day. It doesn't seem reasonable to incentivise production in the same way as it was when that wasn't the case.

I think NEM 3.0 incentivises storage now? Which seems to be what the (California) grid is looking for.

Both NEM 2.0 and 3.0 have serious issues, but for different reasons. NEM 2.0 was basically a early adopter's rich person's subsidy that heavily distorted the market, and NEM 3.0 does not have nearly enough subsidies to justify the cost unless you pay cash up front for a large system. (For the record, I am on NEM 3.0 and got such a system).

At the end of the day, the best case scenario is large scale renewable / battery storage to bring costs down as much as possible, and for those of us who want battery backup / solar can choose to invest in it, but it shouldn't be "the" solution.

i thought the new NEM screws the homeowner because the city sells electricity at market price and buys electricity back strictly at the worst possible price, even if you're producing at peak demand.

Texas barely scrapes into the top ten red states by percentage of wind and solar, despite its ideal geography.

Texas produces more wind and solar than any other state, what are you talking about?

Not by percentage. They're just bigger and generate more electricity total.

So you could flip the stat and say they produce more fossil energy than any other state.

I can't quickly find 2025 stats but in recent years they've been 50% higher than the next state in both coal and gas fired electricity (in absolute terms).

Wikipedia has tables sortable by column by source by total and percentage from 2022 to get a rough idea:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electri...

Texas was 33% or so wind plus solar last year. There are 6 states who had a higher percentage just from wind 3 years ago.

Absolute values matter more IMO. Any time people use % or per capita, it means they live in a city. I see this quite often, and it's just a way to skew rhetoric.

Just my opinion.

That's fine, but that means the absolute value of all the coal and gas they burn matters more too.

"No One Could Have Predicted This!" - Nation where this happens all the time

Even so, the article says it grew 8% YOY in the US.

Versus 35% YOY in China.

China gets it, the USA doesn't.

The best is to hope that this is an unstoppable trend

The trend is the USA choosing politics over reality as China becomes unstoppable.

https://carboncredits.com/china-adds-power-7x-more-than-the-...

The US isn't choosing "politics"

It's "choosing" short term profits because its leadership (and its voters) have given up on long term stable trade and planning, and instead embraced oligarchy and rentier capitalism.

You can't parasitize solar and wind. There's few to no middlemen. No way to monopolize it. So it must be discouraged while you extract the last few years of wealth out of the assets you already control.

Never underestimate the capacity of shitty people to shoot themselves and others in the foot.

The USA get's it. Trump doesn't. Texas is a the leader in wind and solar in the US.

Compare generation stats for yesterday between 2021 and 2026 on the Texas grid (ERCOT)

* 2021 - https://www.gridstatus.io/live/ercot?date=2021-06-03

* 2026 - https://www.gridstatus.io/live/ercot?date=2026-06-03

Also, the Californian grid (CAISO) shows where everyone is headed with a huge deployment of batteries:

* 2021 - https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso?date=2021-06-03

* 2026 - https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso?date=2026-06-03

All of that combined is peanuts compared to what's happening in China. Not to mention that all the panels and most of the wind turbines are produced in China. It's not just a question of installing them, it's having the industry and technical know how to make them that really matters.

https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-...

Does the USA really get it? I'd like to believe that, but honestly, I hear a lot of hatin' on anything related to renewable or 'green' energy, not just from Trump.

My earlier comment was too ambiguous. Those that spend money on generating capacity in the US get it.

> As of April 1, 2026, renewable energy’s share of total US utility-scale (>1 MW) generating capacity was 33.6%. EIA projects this to grow to 36.6% by March 31, 2027. Utility-scale solar will add 42,626.1 MW, expanding its share from 12.8% to 15.7%, while wind will grow by 14,157.4 MW (including 4,155.0 MW of offshore wind), increasing from 13.0% to 13.6%. The mix of other renewables (hydropower, biomass, and geothermal) will add 297.1 MW.

> The capacity of battery storage was 42 GW at the end of 2025 and is expected to double and reach 85 GW by the end of 2027.

In terms of the general population or politicians, some more than others. This is also with an administration that is irrationally hostile to renewables.

1. https://electrek.co/2026/05/26/renewables-installed-capacity...

Spoken with such authority!

Indeed. Steel mills, aluminum smelters and glass factories really adore the intermittent nature of renewables.

Smelters in Australia are leaning on the fossil-friendly politicians to stop getting in the way of renewables because they can't compete with global prices unless they use renewables.

Unlike in the USA --- they obviously look beyond the rhetoric to grasp the fact that renewables help lower energy costs even if their industry doesn't fully depend on them.

Yes, that probably explains why US imports of steel and aluminum continue to grow, even with a 25% tariff.

US manufacturers and consumers just love the added cost --- aka, inflation.

https://www.steel.org/2026/03/steel-imports-up-4-6-in-januar...

Germany screwed themselves.

The world screwed itself by not investing in renewables earlier. Germany paid a high price for being early, but we all should be thankful for Germany creating an economy of scale and bringing cost down.

And while the extreme right wing propaganda claims that Germany is doomed because of the Energiewende for the last 20 years or so, it is somehow still the third largest economy.

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