Up to the locals in the US. Depends what their pain threshold is for falling behind and looking a bit behind the times. I think FOMO is going to be a big driver in a few years. This is not a left vs right topic. It's a money topic. And my impression of the US is that they love getting stuff on the cheap. Solar energy should be such a thing and it's getting painfully obvious that the US is paying a steep price where the rest of the world isn't. If I'm reading the situation correct, that is already annoying the hell out of a lot of traditionally republican leading states and not because they are tree-huggers.
The right question to ask is whether places like Mexico are going to politely wait for the US to get its act together or whether they'll just go ahead and start electrifying their country and industry and reducing their cost levels. The current isolationist policy works both ways. Very sunny place, Mexico. Great place for solar and batteries. And once you have those, Chines EVs produced locally might work very well. And they can export those further south.
Mexico could start producing synfuels with abundant solar energy and exporting them to the US, but that is far from the course plotted by President Sheinbaum, even though (or perhaps because) her doctorate is in the use of energy. Instead she's doubling down on oil drilling.
It's going to be more expensive than the fuel the US digs up for quite some time. Synthetic fuels don't really make economic sense without the massive subsidies the US uses to keep e.g. it's agriculture going. There is a lot of discussion around aviation fuels currently. Targets for SAF boil down to mixing in a small percentage of bio fuels with regular fuel. This smooths out the 10x or so price difference of SAF to regular fuel a bit. But it also means it's not all that effective as a way to reduce emissions because only a tiny percentage of the fuel is "clean". And of course producing SAF isn't all that clean either. For example, agriculture is carbon intensive.
The US importing synthetic fuels is not going to be a huge market for economic reasons. There's no logical reason for tax payers to pay Mexicans to make really expensive fuel for them. Just so they can pretend battery electric doesn't work north of the border.
Synthetic fuel at scale is just really expensive. And battery electric is going to take a sledge hammer to any misguided plans around that topic. It's going to get progressively more awkward to build a case for that. All those things where people still hang on to the believe that "surely batteries will never work here" are going to melt away over time. Batteries are going to get a lot cheaper and better over the next decades. And they are pretty good already.
In California, grid-tied rooftop solar was putting energy prices into the negative so often that they reconfigured the NEM to discourage export back to the grid and encourage battery storage.
Batteries are the invisible change in the power business. They don't take up much land area. They're not visible to the public. Just being able to charge batteries during low power cost periods changes the whole economics of the industry.
Whether battery banks should be allowed to sell back to the grid is a tough question.
Texas says no.[2]
It's potentially "dispatchable" power, but only until the battery runs down.
And it's messing with our utilities in BC because we were buying the daytime oversupply in California and selling the hydro generated power back at night. They've had to adjust plans as battery storage comes online.
Already does in some cases but the utility companies have fought back and they can buy laws and regulations to slow down the process and protect profits.
Up to the locals in the US. Depends what their pain threshold is for falling behind and looking a bit behind the times. I think FOMO is going to be a big driver in a few years. This is not a left vs right topic. It's a money topic. And my impression of the US is that they love getting stuff on the cheap. Solar energy should be such a thing and it's getting painfully obvious that the US is paying a steep price where the rest of the world isn't. If I'm reading the situation correct, that is already annoying the hell out of a lot of traditionally republican leading states and not because they are tree-huggers.
The right question to ask is whether places like Mexico are going to politely wait for the US to get its act together or whether they'll just go ahead and start electrifying their country and industry and reducing their cost levels. The current isolationist policy works both ways. Very sunny place, Mexico. Great place for solar and batteries. And once you have those, Chines EVs produced locally might work very well. And they can export those further south.
Mexico could start producing synfuels with abundant solar energy and exporting them to the US, but that is far from the course plotted by President Sheinbaum, even though (or perhaps because) her doctorate is in the use of energy. Instead she's doubling down on oil drilling.
It's going to be more expensive than the fuel the US digs up for quite some time. Synthetic fuels don't really make economic sense without the massive subsidies the US uses to keep e.g. it's agriculture going. There is a lot of discussion around aviation fuels currently. Targets for SAF boil down to mixing in a small percentage of bio fuels with regular fuel. This smooths out the 10x or so price difference of SAF to regular fuel a bit. But it also means it's not all that effective as a way to reduce emissions because only a tiny percentage of the fuel is "clean". And of course producing SAF isn't all that clean either. For example, agriculture is carbon intensive.
The US importing synthetic fuels is not going to be a huge market for economic reasons. There's no logical reason for tax payers to pay Mexicans to make really expensive fuel for them. Just so they can pretend battery electric doesn't work north of the border.
Synthetic fuel at scale is just really expensive. And battery electric is going to take a sledge hammer to any misguided plans around that topic. It's going to get progressively more awkward to build a case for that. All those things where people still hang on to the believe that "surely batteries will never work here" are going to melt away over time. Batteries are going to get a lot cheaper and better over the next decades. And they are pretty good already.
1 reply →
In California, grid-tied rooftop solar was putting energy prices into the negative so often that they reconfigured the NEM to discourage export back to the grid and encourage battery storage.
It seems to have worked, too.[1]
Batteries are the invisible change in the power business. They don't take up much land area. They're not visible to the public. Just being able to charge batteries during low power cost periods changes the whole economics of the industry.
Whether battery banks should be allowed to sell back to the grid is a tough question. Texas says no.[2] It's potentially "dispatchable" power, but only until the battery runs down.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-10-17/califor...
[2] https://www.ercot.com/mktrules/keypriorities/bes/ktc8
And it's messing with our utilities in BC because we were buying the daytime oversupply in California and selling the hydro generated power back at night. They've had to adjust plans as battery storage comes online.
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/us-electricity-2025...
Already does in some cases but the utility companies have fought back and they can buy laws and regulations to slow down the process and protect profits.