Comment by buckle8017
3 days ago
Fossil fuels remain more cost effective.
The US isn't a centrally planned economy (sort of) so the more economical option wins.
3 days ago
Fossil fuels remain more cost effective.
The US isn't a centrally planned economy (sort of) so the more economical option wins.
For a very very long time, fracking was not economical, and only through massive government investment did it become cost effective.
Same goes for renewables, and electrolyzers. All evidence points to a future with renewable energy costing a small fraction of fossil fuels, and electrolyzers being cheaper than hydrogen from gas. But the future needs to be built. We can either lose out and buy the tech from others, or be leaders and reap the early rewards.
Where solar in particular really drops the cost of electricity is towards the end and beyond its design lifetime of 25-30 years. That's how a bunch of the costs are calculated and it's turning out systems are continuing to produce significantly beyond that. Paired with inflation, this makes old systems produce extremely low cost electricity.
It's not about tech now, it's just commodity install base making sure to ride the adoption curve at a healthy pace which people are more than happy to do just because of greed.
The US is centrally planned to some degree, just in different ways and by different interests.
I suspect the interests/actions of lobbyists for certain companies/sectors had significant influence on things like taxes, and is a type of central planning.
It's different than most central planned economies because there are two entities operating in parallel (a quasi-private corporate state in addition to the usual government state), but I'd say it's still centralized/planned, even if it's not the state/government doing the planning.
Fossil fuel being heavily subsidised kind of undermines both of your points.
Heavily directly subsidized and then additionally "subsidized" through massive military expenditures as well.
Not to mention indirectly subsidised by ignoring the externalities imposed on the health of ourselves and our environment.
Mostly because the carbon dioxide emission is not properly reflected in the fossil fuel pricing.
Basically, every single person on earth is subsiding the big oil by bearing the consequence/cost of the higher CO2 concentration.
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No they don’t. They remain subsidized. Solar surpassed fossil fuels in efficiency ages ago, and I don’t even LIKE solar. Fossil fuels have no redeeming qualities in the major energy sectors anymore, aside from ONE: the plants are VERY cheap to build.
Solar farms are even cheaper to build!
Surely the redeeming feature is that they are already here...
I thought the same thing, but actually, no. Fossil fuel plants are expensive to run. "That they are already here" is an argument for plants which are more advanced and thus, much more expensive to build, but much cheaper to maintain.
Which fossil fuel plants are cheap to build? Cheap compared to what?
>solar surpassed fossil fuels in efficiency
What does this even mean? What inputs and outputs are you comparing to get an apples-to-apples comparison between efficiency between fossil fuels and solar?
It's talking about the economic inputs required to create a unit of energy. Literally all you have to fathom is "can we add up what it takes to make a watt of energy from coal, vs. from solar power vs. some other plant, amortized over the lifetime of said plant?"
"Solar surpassed fossil fuels in efficiency ages ago"
You are going to have to explain this. Because there is no measurement of efficiency in which solar PV in Minnesota in efficient in any way. To produce a watt of electricity using natural gas actually produces less CO2 than a watt from solar that far north. So it isn't even more environmentally friendly. And its far more expensive. It uses far more energy. So I have no idea at all what you are referring to. Cap Ex perhaps or cap cost...if that's what you mean, you have no idea what you are talking about.
> to produce a watt of electricity using natural gas actually produces less CO2 than a watt from solar that far north.
For the next watt, you need more natural gas which co-releases more CO2 .. or you can just use the same solar panel again - with its fixed up front CO2 cost already "paid for"
Over 25 or 30 years a panel keeps producing w/out additional CO2 release, during that same period natural gas extraction and consumption continue releasing CO2.
1 reply →
> To produce a watt of electricity using natural gas actually produces less CO2 than a watt from solar that far north
What about the watt after that? I still got the solar panel for that next watt, and with natural gas I have... well I don't have anything, I need more natural gas!
What the bloody hell are you taking about. Minnesota is further south than the UK. Southern Minnesota is the same latitude as the Mediterranean coast.
Learn some facts before spouting bs.
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Like it or not every, non-failed-state, modern economy is a centrally-planned one. The economy never lives in a vacuum, it's always a product of the institutions that govern them (regulations, subsidies, taxes, etc.) Something is always “the most cost-effective option” because the institutions made it so.
well, just to add to that: you cant even have any kind of economy at scale without some central authority to enforce property rights or contract law etc anyways...
Solar and wind energy have been more economical than fossil fuel on a cost per unit energy basis for quite some time. The reasons we're still so tied to fossil fuel are largely political, not economic.
Technology Connections goes into this in exhaustive detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM
Also, you may not have heard that the Trump administration is actively stonewalling green energy projects, regardless of their economic prospects: https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2026/06/29/87...
You are confusing capacity costs (capital outlay) with utilization costs (what you actually pay per watt). Its true that renewables have a very low cap cost. They are also several times the utilization cost. That's why electricity in CA is 2-3x what it was just 10 years ago. And energy prices are basically the same as 10 years ago.
PS LCOE is a BS stat used to confuse those that don't understand energy markets, not a real market calculation that anyone pays.
> They are also several times the utilization cost
Prove it.
> electricity in CA is 2-3x what it was just 10 years ago.
That has nothing to do with the cost of generation. The reason costs have gone up are 1/wildfire mitigation and liability, 2/replacement of aging grid infrastructure (plus a geographically diverse state - replacing infrastructure in mountains is costly), 3/rising demand and new fixed infrastructure cost (which is subsumed into everyone's bills), and 4/decommissioning of power plants (San Onofre and Diablo Canyon were both mothballed and haven't been replaced).
Also, California utilities are heavily regulated. Utility rates have to be approved by the government, making the rate-setting process highly politicized. For a very long time the regulators refused to let the utilities raise rates even though it was necessary. Eventually, though, that became unsustainable. The result was that instead of raising rates a percentage point or two per year, all of a sudden there was a real threat of the system going completely bankrupt and so prices shot up dramatically.
If you really want to understand the energy markets in CA, there's no better source than the Los Angeles Times. Or what's left of it, anyway.
> LCOE is a BS stat used to confuse those that don't understand energy markets
Let me get my popcorn while you explain it to us ignoramuses.
1 reply →
>That's why electricity in CA is 2-3x what it was just 10 years ago
No, CA electrical cost is about paying for PG&E's insurance liabilities and subsidizing the living situation in places which are de facto uninhabitable on account of wildfires.
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If you're not accounting for all the wildfire smoke costing billions of dollars maybe your calculations for cost effectiveness have some adjustments to be made
Yeah I can see your problem
> owned by farmer cooperatives
No way for a Corp to benefit=communism
lol