The elimination of green energy incentives is going to have a big negative effect on the economy. Those billions of dollars not only were going to new businesses and jobs, but they were joined with loans from banks and commitments from customers with the expectation that the government would be funding the remainder. This means private industry and banks will be shouldering the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars, which, as any astute person should know by now, later gets shouldered by the average citizen in rate hikes, stock market plunges, increased inflation, etc. There goes your job and 401k and here comes more expensive products.
Aside from the direct negative effects: we lose even more to foreign countries who now have even more runway to gain expertise in green energy and sell to everyone else investing in it. Nobody but the 3rd world is increasing investments in coal/oil and there's no money we could make there anyway. So there goes any money we could've made on energy internationally.
Either this country is intentionally being tanked, or we're in the stupidest timeline.
The largest competitor to US renewables, would be China. They have been rolling back their subsidies for years. [1]
China, India, Russia, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia (off the top of my head, and a quick google to add a few I missed [2]) have all increased investments into coal since 2020.
The renewable industry in the US was wrought with companies seizing as many renewable credits and subsidies as they can, while providing as little as possible to show for them. If this moves the industry as a whole to focus on projects that are not just marginal at best, we should start to see better traction on projects that actually matter.
We have long been told that renewables are cheaper in every way that matters, so let's see the economics of that play out.
China has been rolling back subsidies because they won solar panels. No other country is even remotely close to market strength as China here and obviously for Chinese it makes sense to reduce incentives but does that make sense for the US which has 1% of this market power?
> Between January and May, China added 198 GW of solar and 46 GW of wind, enough to generate as much electricity as Indonesia or Turkey [1]
China "won solar panels" because they subsidised the production to the point that their companies could sell panels cheaper than they cost to make, and then these companies were allowed to dump them below cost into the western markets to destroy all the local innovation. Germany and the US in particular just sat back and watched that happen.
However, market share doesn't really translate into the economics of large scale generation. The projects that are marginal (or negative) in the US and rest of the world for that matter, are costed using whatever the cheapest panels or materials available are. Whether they are local or not does not matter. You are conflating two unrelated things here (local manufacturing capability and power generation e.g. actually deploying renewables).
China meeting arbitrary targets is also beside the point. They are building a tonne of solar and wind, but they are also building more coal too. (Refer to my previous comment in how they along with many other G7 and developed nations are investing more in coal than they were in 2020).
GP made some specific claims which were demonstratably false. The points you raise here aren't particularly related to those.
they're building that coal in the role of gas peaker plants - backup power. It will probably never be used at any significant % of capacity, as the solar and battery revolution continues to astound in its speed.
> We have long been told that renewables are cheaper in every way that matters, so let's see the economics of that play out.
Renewables are cheaper now than they used to be. Why? The same reason anything is cheaper the longer you make it: technological improvement, economies of scale, production efficiency, increased # customers, reduced capex, amortized r&d, etc.
"the economics of that" aren't black and white. Just because something is expensive today doesn't mean it will be expensive tomorrow. But if something cheaper exists today, and nobody invests in the expensive thing (because "the market" doesn't see immediate cash gains in it), then the expensive thing never has the opportunity to become cheap.
> The renewable industry in the US was wrought with companies seizing as many renewable credits and subsidies as they can, while providing as little as possible to show for them.
The "show" is long-term. That's the whole point of all green energy: it's expensive at the beginning, and then becomes increasingly cheaper over time, to the point you start saving money, and then you keep saving money. But to ever get to that point, you have to invest big at the start. That's what the subsidies are for!
China has a massive and cheap labor force and decades of manufacturing expertise. That makes their products/services cheap and advanced. Unless we literally take over Mexico, we don't have the labor. And unless we start investing now, we'll never have the expertise. Without subsidies, we will never get on renewables, and we will always pay more for energy. Since the whole future of the world is dependent on energy, it might be a good idea for us to invest in it!
>But if something cheaper exists today, and nobody invests in the expensive thing
I think you are talking past me. The green bodies have constantly touted how we already reached the inflection point where renewables are cheaper than coal, nuclear, etc. The quiet part that isn't spoken aloud is that these renewables were only economically positive with substantial subsidies and credits. You can't have an honest conversation when the water is mudied to such an extent.
Except this isn't the case. GP talks about how removing the incentives is "going to have a big negative impact on the economy" due to all these green projects no longer being viable. Indeed, whether they were subsidised or not in the past doesn't matter... but it's also not relevant to this discussion either.
What evidence is there of governments being more successful at picking winners than the market?
Governments should stay out of the winner-picking business, which they do with money from the public purse, and allow individuals and enterprise to use their own money to have a go at picking winners themselves.
If industry and banks find investment in any particular field unpalatable without Government incentive, then those investments were unpalatable to start with.
Industry and banks will find something better to do with their money.
By all means, have government get out of the way so the economy can get on with it.
I'm more in favour of tax incentivised encouragement, lowering the barriers to entry, and more so when there are proven benefits to the economy and society, and less in favour of government backed loans and direct cash injection.
What evidence is there those with capital/the market are making the best engineering and science based decisions and not just juicing their portfolio because they’ll be dead when shit hits the fan?
Did you know if you run a business (carry on an enterprise) the majority of the costs of doing business are tax deductible.
That's another term subsidised.
I'd argue fossil fuel industry subsidies are a net benefit to society as they help enable cheap reliable energy.
Whereas renewable subsidies are a net negative because they don't. Everywhere more renewables have gone electricity has become more expensive and less reliable, completely antithetical to strong industrial development.
Also, renewables seem to be driven forward largely due to a psychological contagion that a climate apocalypse is nigh, which is turning out to be completely toxic, especially to the minds of the next generations.
> Everywhere more renewables have gone electricity has become more expensive and less reliable, completely antithetical to strong industrial development.
Have you heard of Washington state? 75% renewable energy and 10th percentile for the cost per kWh.
Washington is a bit of a special case given that most of their electricity comes from vast hydroelectric resources constructed almost a century ago. That situation doesn’t generalize to other places. It is disingenuous to imply that this is an example relevant to modern energy policy.
Sure, I'll bite. Will they invest in more coal and gas instead? And help cook the planet? You post as if you don't know what it's about, but of course you do. Disingenuous and contemptible.
Any green energy project that isn't nuclear is a waste of money and resources. Nuclear is now being pursued in earnest by the tech industry itself. There's no problem here.
> Any green energy project that isn't nuclear is a waste of money and resources.
Nuclear's cost/megawatt is significantly higher than most other options. If anybody is reaching for nuclear it is because they are using up all available capacity through other means. Nobody picks nuclear for cost reasons.
Data centers are a pretty good match for nuclear because they run 24/7 and use a fairly constant amount of power. Solar is cheap in terms of amortized price per kWh but then you need some other solution to supply power at night or when it's cloudy, and the price of that has to be paid on top of the cost of solar.
Meanwhile nuclear costs what it does in significant part because the number of new plants is low which requires the cost of designing new reactors etc. to be amortized over fewer plants. But if you build more of them that changes.
I suspect that in the US nuclear is being pursued by the tech industry due to the current administration, if Biden were still in the White House, the tech industry would be pushing for offshore wind and solar panels.
Nuclear is expensive and requires red tape and a long time to bring online, but the real benefit is that it can deliver power consistently all day, unlike wind and solar. I think the ideal future includes all of these plus better storage capabilities.
Aside from the direct negative effects: we lose even more to foreign countries who now have even more runway to gain expertise in green energy and sell to everyone else investing in it. Nobody but the 3rd world is increasing investments in coal/oil and there's no money we could make there anyway. So there goes any money we could've made on energy internationally.
Either this country is intentionally being tanked, or we're in the stupidest timeline.