For the first time ever, solar is set to generate more electricity than coal in the power market managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Nobody is building new coal power plants in the state, but developers are adding more solar there than anywhere else in the country. As a result of those diverging trajectories, the federal government expects ERCOT will receive 78 billion kilowatt-hours from solar in 2026, and just 60 from coal.
This trend does have seasonal variations. Last year, solar output beat coal on a monthly basis from March through August, and this year it is expected to do so from March through December, per the US Energy Information Administration at the Department of Energy.
No one has ideology, morality or conscience, the millisecond renewables are cheaper, they will take over.
Happened recently in conservative Romania
Did you know that during the 18th and 19th century industrial revolution in Britain, coal never became cheaper than water power? All those new steam engines were used to make deeper mines more viable and to increase production. But water power remained cheaper throughout. But water power came with a downside. Available water power tended to be located in rural areas. The smaller population in these small towns consequently had a lot of labor bargaining power. Industrialists instead wanted access to the labor markets of the major cities, cities brimming over with new urban poor desperate for any scrap of work they could get. Cheaper labor overcame cheaper power. A coal plant could be put anywhere, while a water mill could only be positioned on high-flowing streams.
Renewables are cheaper, but we’ve been here before. There’s more to this than just energy cost.
well said
that being said, china subsidized solar panel production heavily for 20 years until they became economically self-sustaining. so there was a large amount of ideology involved i’d say.
so this mostly applies to the buyers of solar panels.
economists were calling for the US to do that the whole time, too, for exactly the reason that eventually something becomes the cheaper way to do something and then everyone does it. every era of innovation has been kicked off by public investment into technology that hasn’t a profit right now but someday will.
the government is supposed to take a 10-30 outlook on things and act accordingly because corporations never will. they only ever look 4 months into the future.
but then, if you’ve been alive long enough, you probably recognize that if the government can’t, or doesn’t, take that long term view then the government is useless at protecting you from business and that business is just fucking you over for blood money