Comment by r3trohack3r
16 hours ago
Pretty sure they’re interested in collapsing the cost of domestic energy production in a way that’s resilient to adversarial supply chain risk since energy production is the base of the economic pyramid - energy availability is upstream of nearly all economic output.
They have spent immense effort blocking huge amounts of domestic solar and wind production, even paying off developers to simply not build planned power plants.
Didn’t know there were significant domestic supply chains for wind, solar, and battery tech. Thought a lions share of that was ultimately coming from China.
Have any sources I can learn from?
There aren't, and there certainly won't be if we keep blocking the industry at every turn. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point but I don't see how this is relevant. Blocking a developer that wants to buy wind turbines from another country and install them in the US does not make domestic energy cheaper or make domestic supply chains more resilient. It's a one-time import, once it's installed the wind is domestic and free, the most reliable possible supply chain, much more than domestic oil or gas.
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If you install solar panels, you have 10 years or more of lifetime to develop your domestic supply chain for replacements. This doesn't sound like a problem.
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The IRA had enormous incentives to develop on shore renewable manufacturing. All of that was gutted in the BBB. Many of those burgeoning companies may have died in the interim as they saw that funding dry up, and realized they were working in an uphill regulatory environment.
I thought a lot of manufactured goods come from China. Including many of the tools and equipment for drilling oil. Is oil not a secure energy supply either then?
The incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act greatly increased US domestic battery production capacity. It went from 7 GWh per year in 2023 to 70 GWh per year in early 2026 and is expected to reach 1400 GWh per year by the end of the decade.
Domestic solar cell manufacturing was also growing rapidly, although I believe that may have slowed due to Trump.
I don't know about wind turbine production because I can't convince the !@#$%&?ing search engine to tell me about manufacturing rather than installation.
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When you have a supply chain failure on solar or wind power, you stop adding capacity. When you have a supply chain failure on oil and gas, you stop generating power. These are not the same problem.
We can build capacity to manufacturer renewable power domestically. But I suspect this administration is more interested in protecting the business interest of those that gave them the largest campaign donations than they are in long term energy sustainability.
> When you have a supply chain failure on oil and gas, you stop generating power.
Only if all oil and gas > energy production has one single point of failure.
In reality it’s much more distributed than that.
They're interested in protecting the profits of industries that line their pockets. It's the most corrupt administration in US history and it isn't even close. Theres some far right ideology mixed in. Particularly from Stephen Miller, but mostly it's grift and graft
Saying solar power is dependent on China because panels come from China is like saying fracking is dependent on China because some pumps and drilling equipment come from China.