Comment by epistasis
12 hours ago
There's an important distinction here, between "banned" and "has far cheaper alternatives".
Things can appear banned even when they aren't merely because there is a new technology that's better and cheaper and it's a big investment so people go with the cheaper option.
Nobody is building new coal in the US because it's so expensive, not because there's an outright ban. Now, part of the reason it's more expensive than in the past is that using once-through water for cooling raises the cost of disposing of waste heat. And now, modern and much more efficient natural gas combined cycle plant is the obvious choice because not only is the fuel cheaper per kWh, but you also need to spend a lot less on waste heat disposal.
So is coal banned? No. Did some environmental regulations have an impact on just how bad of an idea coal is these days? Sure, but let's talk about the tradeoffs here, it's not a ban and framing it is a ban leads to bad solutions to real regulatory problems.
You can just look at examples in the article. For example "Lithium-Ion Cell Manufacturing"
> Cell manufacturing uses NMP solvent for electrode coating, handles flammable electrolytes, and requires formation cycling that generates heat and gases. Tesla chose Reno for the Gigafactory specifically because of California's permitting environment.
EPA tried to heavily restrict these outright in 2024 [1] and California has air/environmental rules that made it nearly impossible to develop large battery factories in California, which is why Tesla chose Reno in 2014. An alternative didn't exist at the time and now a decade later Tesla recently filed a patent this year for Dry electrode processing [2]
So basically California lost a decade of possible lithium factories
[1] https://www.sgs.com/en-ca/news/2024/06/safeguards-9624-us-ep...
[2] https://www.benzinga.com/markets/tech/26/02/50290319/elon-mu...
That's a good story to consider.
Given the labor challenges in California due to high housing costs, which selectively pushes out those willing to work for lower wages, I am always surprised when manufacturers choose the state at all. Throwing additional challenges doesn't make it any easier.
It's like the death sentence in CA. The minority who wanted to abolish it couldn't get enough votes, so the actual process was systemically altered until it became too cost-prohibitive.
*This is not a post in support of death penalty, just how CA politicians have figured out ways to legally get what they want even if it directly contradicts the will of the people.
if you own a factory and the legislators make your factory illegal, that's a ban. "well you can just upgrade" is no consolation. one day your factory is allowed, the next day it's not.
Why mince words?
I was advocating specifically against mincing words so that appropriate remedies can be pursued. "Unbanning" coal isn't going to make coal appear again!
If there's a specific regulation on one aspect of a factory, as you describe, then "unbanning" the factory isn't going to help either, one must specifically unban that which was banned.
Mincing words would be saying "Factories doing X are banned" when in fact an existing Factory doing X with negative externality Y had negative externality Y priced or regulated.
That's exactly what we shouldn't be mincing, if we want to address the problems and make better decisions.
i rest my case
3 replies →