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Comment by willio58 | Hacker News Reader

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!

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> 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.

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.

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.

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

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