Comment by toomuchtodo
19 hours ago
> While the Trump administration has been hostile to renewable energy, there’s only so much it can do to fight the economics. A recent analysis of planned projects indicates that the US will see another 43 GW of solar capacity added in 2026—far more than the 27 GW added in 2025. That will be joined by 12 GW of wind power, with over 10 percent of that coming from two of the offshore wind projects that the administration has repeatedly failed to block. The largest wind farm yet built in the US, a 3.6 GW monster in New Mexico, is also expected to begin operations in 2026.
Hopecore. Onward. The horrors persist, but so do we.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205
https://web.archive.org/web/20260225073026/https://www.eia.g...
Those offshore wind farms are getting completed mostly because they were so deep into development when Trump tried to cancel them, with a ton of sunk costs. So the companies were able to make the decision to go forward because the extra costs of delays and lawsuits were still cheaper than abandoning the build entirely.
Future offshore wind farms now need to add in the expected costs and project risks of this sort of illegal government action when they make the decision at the early stage.
Trump is likely to have delayed off shore wind in the US by at least 4 years, and may be many more. This will cost ratepayers a lot, and set the US behind most other countries in the world.
Agreed on solar and batteries being mostly unstoppable, though. The Trump administration has not yet figured how to misuse the courts to block those. Their better influence is through PUCs and utility execs, that are likely to bend to the will of Trump.
I hear you, I'm just saying we keep grinding forward. This admin has less than 3 years to go. Nothing stops this freight train, even if they try to slow it down. You can't fix stupid, you can just keep turning the gears to grind it down.
> Trump is likely to have delayed off shore wind in the US by at least 4 years, and may be many more. This will cost ratepayers a lot, and set the US behind most other countries in the world.
Democracy has unfortunate failure scenarios, make a note for history books and system design lessons. The electorate should learn to vote better next time. Existing coal plants will get run into the ground (they only supplied 16% of power in the US in 2024, and that number will decline forever), and there are only two gas turbine manufacturers in the world; their backlog is 5-7 years. As the US exports more LNG, that will force domestic prices up, pushing up electricity prices of generation from fossil gas. Renewables and battery storage will be the only option.
As of this comment, the world is very close to 1TW/year of solar PV deployment, and this will not slow down:
https://ember-energy.org/focus-areas/clean-electricity/
https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/global-solar-install...
> Democracy has unfortunate failure scenarios, make a note for history books and system design lessons. Vote better next time.
Major problems with the US system have been known for a long time. It's been regarded as basically obsolete for over a century now, by the kind of people who study this stuff.
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Your comments make me hopeful. Thank you.
Those ember energy reports are excellent!
The US is mostly hurting itself here, our portion of emissions is mostly historical now, and if we have more expensive and less reliably energy because we are dumping money into decrepit coal generators rather than cheaper renewables, that will only limit the US's economic growth even more, and make the US a smaller chunk of emissions overall.
I have a very rosy view of the future of energy for the world, especially for Africa which can be completely revolutionized with solar and batteries. But for the US, it's dark days. We need to stop hitting ourselves, but as long as hitting ourselves and hurting our economy is owning the libs, part of our body politic is going to keep on doing it.
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