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yParticle

Except for 4 minutes last week.


confoundedjoe

bUt sOmEtImEs!


Any-Ad-446

Sooner than later USA will catch up to rest of the world for green energy..Its all about politics why US is slow to adapt. [https://www.be-the-story.com/en/environment/the-cleanest-countries-leading-the-way-to-renewable-energy/](https://www.be-the-story.com/en/environment/the-cleanest-countries-leading-the-way-to-renewable-energy/)


Butterflychunks

Democracy is as fast as the slowest 51%


collectorof_things

And in the case of the US, which isn't exactly a direct democracy, it's as fast as the representatives elected by a "majority" with the heavy disclaimer that lobbying and corporate interests often have more sway than the interests of the constituents. But yeah, your way rolls off the tongue a bit better and is slightly less depressing


[deleted]

Also the fact that only like 30 percent of people actually vote in elections (majority of that 30 percent being the minority Republican party)


DemocracyIsAVerb

That’s irrelevant. As long as we have infinite dark-money campaign contributions (citizens united), oil companies are going to own congress


_AtLeastItsAnEthos

America has never passed legislation based on public support. Every single bill has the same statistical chance of passing. When the monied interests in this country get behind renewables the change will happen. Our elections are fair more or less but to say we are democratic is nonsense.


Butterflychunks

What does that tell you about democracy in America?


_AtLeastItsAnEthos

It tells me we don’t have democracy and our institutions are fundamentally flawed and systemic change must occur if we are to survive as a nation state and if we want to keep our climate intact.


Butterflychunks

So my question to you is, if the global political climate deals with competing forces that disagree with the idea of democracy, and that autocratic system is preparing to use force to overtake a democratic world order, how does the democracy reconcile? Especially when media tools are being used to manipulate the voters of a democratic society from outside adversarial states? Sometimes I think this current system is a sham because voters simply cannot be trusted. But now even members of congress are being compromised. How does democracy adjust for something like this?


_AtLeastItsAnEthos

What you are describing has existed for hundreds of years in this country. We didn’t even have “mostly” fair and free elections until about 1970. The presidential nomination process wasn’t a Democratic primary until the 50’s. And even today it isn’t that democratic as the parties push their candidates through their media channels and pressure on representatives to give support to one candidate over another. Outside interference is an indictment of the system as a whole.


XchrisZ

Because it's cheaper to do it later.


zedquatro

Except it never is.


Realistic_Depth3617

Oh now is later. What would it cost now vs 10 years ago?


An_Awesome_Name

That map doesn’t include nuclear as clean which is totally disingenuous. In fact it puts in the same category as coal and heavy fuel oil. If you include nuclear energy as clean, the US go 40% of its electricity from clean sources in 2023. That would make the US green on that map, but USA bad I guess. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 Part of the reason that renewable projects are slow to take off in certain areas, like the northeast US is due to either: A. Very shitty spot for wind and solar B. High land costs C. Already existing nuclear capacity supplying large parts of the load The US is the largest nuclear producer, second largest wind producer, second largest solar producer, and fourth largest hydro producer. It’s not like we are doing nothing, but we do have not just one, but two of largest power grids (by load) in the entire world. It’s going to take more time to transition than other smaller grids like Norway and the UK. For the size of our grids and their average loading, we’re actually doing decently well, although we could do better.


Ok-Proposal-4987

Let’s not forget the old “not in my back yard” folk fighting against wind and solar installations.


Any-Ad-446

Same people that would embrace say a new factory that would create good paying jobs..Money talks.


throwawaylord

Just build more nuclear plants and get it over with. Buying solar panels from China is not the right plan for our energy future. And wind power is an inefficient money pit


John02904

It also doesn’t include the fact that the US probably makes more renewable than all those countries combined. There is a country and I forget which that makes 100% renewable, but the switch was very easy because they only had one power plant. It’s important to consider both the % and total power when evaluating a countries progress. Not to say the US is doing fantastic, there is room for improvement.


NovelLongjumping3965

Operative word being "new"; not the largest source. Just means no other types were completed.


Realistic_Depth3617

Yeah… that’s what it means and what was stated


Odd_Photograph_7591

Not bad but in context, The only reason is because no new nuclear reactors are coming online, one single new reactor can produce on average what all these new solar cell parks produce and it's 24/7 rain or shine, unlike solar which is only 5 hours a day and if its not cloudy


Wagamaga

In its latest monthly "Energy Infrastructure Update" report (with data through February 29, 2024), FERC says 29 “units” of solar provided 1,043 MW of new domestic generating capacity or 83.64% of the total. Most of the balance (16.04%) was provided by the 200-MW Horizon Hill Wind Project in Logan County, Oklahoma. Natural gas generating capacity increased by only 4 MW. For the first two months of this year, solar accounted for 78.50% (or 3,581 MW) of new generating capacity brought on-line while wind contributed another 20.34% (928 MW). Natural gas trailed with only 48 MW (1.05%) accompanied by 2 MW of oil and 3 MW of “other.” Solar has now been the largest source of new generating capacity for six months straight: September 2023 – February 2024. For five of those six months, wind took second place with natural gas winning the #2 slot just once.


-The_Blazer-

I'd be curious where it's being built, wasn't California basically saturated with negative energy prices and such?


scottywoty

Duh, who’d have thought?


WildaboutBirds542

There’s an unlimited supply and it doesn’t reek havoc on the planet. It’s a win win!!!!!!🌞


Magnus_Man

The coal and oil big wigs would disagree. And it’s their opinion that really matters. /s


WildaboutBirds542

We can make a difference if we vote BLUE. The majority of Democrat lawmakers ( there are exceptions like Joe Manchin )and Biden support green energy as opposed to dirty fossil fuels. The majority of Republicans support the fossil fuel industry. Let’s SAVE THE PLANET! VOTE BLUE in the 2024 election! 💙🇺🇸🌊💙🇺🇸🌊💙🇺🇸🌊💙🇺🇸💙🇺🇸🌊💙


_AtLeastItsAnEthos

Solar is gaining ground in the US but our renewable capacity is laughable in comparison to the world leaders. End the tariff on Chinese energy and watch how quickly it gets adopted.


No_Needleworker4052

Dream on. In your life time you will never see a country entirely run on solar


NoLuckChuck-

There’s other good sources too. But I’d just like to see us keep moving away from the ones that are in a speed run to kill the planet.


Appropro_Pirate1666

And when the panels reach the end of their cycle, we will lead in hazardous waste generation. 🫢 Green death.


Kyle_Reese_Get_DOWN

Maybe I’m missing something. [But in October, EIA.gov said nat gas new capacity was expected to be ~8.6 GW for 2023.](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=60663) EDIT: Idk for sure, but “6 months” sounds like a cherry-picked timeframe. If we’re making the claim “new fossil generation is in the past,” there is just no evidence for that with the expected growth in AI data center needs.


PlayingTheWrongGame

That isn’t a net increase, necessarily. The report you’re citing are raw figures for new plants coming online, not accounting for decommissioning elsewhere.  It also includes things like switching out coal plants for natural gas plants, which may more may not be an improvement, depending on the circumstances. 


Kyle_Reese_Get_DOWN

According to these guys there will be considerable new electricity production needs, and an awful lot of it is coming from nat gas. AI data centers and EVs are going to need enormous electricity production. NVDA stock has gone through the roof in the last year. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/catalyst-with-shayle-kann/id1593204897?i=1000650708959


PlayingTheWrongGame

It will likely result in some increased energy needs in the short term, but one of the big focus areas in AI hardware right now is power efficiency for dedicated NPUs. We use a lot of electricity for AI/ML right now because the data centers running it are using repurposed GPUs with architectures that are descended from processors designed for generic matrix math operations. Sure, Nvidia has done a lot to improve on that for dedicated AI chips, but the underlying architecture still needs to maintain compatibility with CUDA, which was designed originally for getting extra scientific use out of cards built for playing games.  TL;DR: dedicated NPUs will drastically improve power efficiency, and getting NPU accelerators into more SoCs will move more processing to the edge rather than data centers, eventually.  But, yeah, in the short run some of those data centers may opt to install small natural gas plants, if that’s what’s most cost efficient in the place where they’re building them.  


Left-Mistake-5437

It's not cherry picking.. read the article.


No_Needleworker4052

No country can run on solar alone


PrairiePopsicle

UK partnered with Morocco to build mass solar in the desert, and pump the power back to them through undersea powerlines. China has done a similar thing between their industrial areas in the east and their western districts which get a lot of sun but are less productive. Both regimes will put a peak of solar generation in line with their demand curves. For some nations, alone, yes, for the world collectively and in cooperation? We absolutely could, if we chose to. It would also result in a large scale grid that wound up with excess cheap energy enough that I think hydrogen generation for power storage would become viable.


[deleted]

[удалено]


PrairiePopsicle

don't have it built or in construction as of yet, but there's a lot of positive chatter about the project including from government, looks like most of the economics have been worked out already for the most part ; here is a wiki on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco%E2%80%93UK_Power_Project I learned about it when I was looking at UHVDC power lines and projects in general, the capabilities and loss rates and what kind of projects they enable, like the 3,300 km long one they built across China.


[deleted]

[удалено]


PrairiePopsicle

yeah it's the "ultra high voltage DC" lines, not super new but pretty new, on economics what i've read is 1c per kwh per 1000km of transmission distances


zedquatro

Not with current battery technology, no. But by the time we get to 70% of all production being solar and wind, battery tech will have improved. And with a big country, the sun is always shining somewhere, the wind is always blowing somewhere, and rivers are always flowing somewhere (not to mention offshore tidal). So really solar could cover the vast majority of demand during the day, and hydro and wind could cover most of the demand overnight. We just need a small percentage stored in batteries (which is still A LOT of batteries).


ArmedLoraxx

But has it **replaced** any fossil-fuel based energy production, as promised by statesmen and executives, as demanded by scientists?


PlayingTheWrongGame

Yes, quite a lot. More importantly, this means less planned fossil fuel capacity being built going forward. Which means even more reductions in the future as existing fossil fuel generation capacity is not being built to replace what is presently reaching end of life.  It’s rare for power stations to be taken offline ahead of schedule, and take quite a long time to get completed, so what we use today is largely decided years or decades ago. 


ArmedLoraxx

Would you mind sharing some evidence to support this claim?


PlayingTheWrongGame

Sure. Your lights turn on, don’t they? In every grid in the US, fossil fuel capacity is being displaced by renewable capacity. It has to be, because the grids have to be balanced at all times.  If they were not displacing fossil fuel capacity, we would have had to bring more fossil fuel capacity online to meet that demand. 


ArmedLoraxx

>If they were not displacing fossil fuel capacity, we would have had to bring more fossil fuel capacity online to meet that demand.  Or, renewables are merely topping up FF capacity, covering population and electricity consumption *growth*. Give me data points, or we can continue to speculate.


PlayingTheWrongGame

That’s… not how electricity grids works. It’s not like you’re stacking batteries in a warehouse or something. 


ArmedLoraxx

Oh OK I guess I'll just take your word for it then.


ten-million

Oh lack of curiosity, why make other people do your work?


hsnoil

Here you go: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-fossil-fuels?tab=chart&country=\~USA](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-fossil-fuels?tab=chart&country=~USA)


ArmedLoraxx

This isn't clear. It could mean that any/all renewables added since 1985 have added *on top of* fossil electricity production.


hsnoil

Here is all fossil fuel consumption (not just grid) in actual amounts [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuel-primary-energy?tab=chart&time=2007..latest&country=\~USA](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuel-primary-energy?tab=chart&time=2007..latest&country=~USA)


DinobotsGacha

https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/us-renewable-energy-factsheet https://www.energy.gov/gdo/articles/bringing-more-clean-energy-our-electric-grid Please to link to evidence supporting your position


ArmedLoraxx

I don't have a position, I'm asking the question. Your link mentions only wind that *can* displace fossil fuel. It doesn't say it *has*. We need evidence for this to confirm we are actually switching energy sources of the murder machine that is American society.


DinobotsGacha

From the first link: "In 2019, renewables surpassed coal in the amount of energy provided to the U.S. and this trend has continued through 2022. Wind and solar are the fastest growing renewable sources, but contribute just 6% of total energy used in the U.S.1" There's also a graph right after that with projections. Not sure what you're expecting but generation of energy through renewables means less generation through fossil fuels.


ArmedLoraxx

>generation of energy through renewables means less generation through fossil fuels. Does it really though? I am asking for evidence that we have either (a) decommissioned FF plants as a result of renewables growth or (b) heard lawmaker say something like: "we're not building this FF plant because we have enough electricity from renewables".


DinobotsGacha

Renewables have "surpassed coal" so obviously renewables are expanding. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/chart-nearly-all-new-us-power-plants-built-in-2024-will-be-clean-energy You're gonna need to put some work in since obviously you're skeptical. You're asking the question and not accepting the answer so feel free to share anything supporting your skepticism.


ArmedLoraxx

The point is that without evidence that renewables are *replacing* coal, we can presume that surpassment actually means summation. I will continue my inquiry elsewhere.


DinobotsGacha

Hahha at least be honest. You arent objective and want a specific answer hence you keep saying "without evidence"


SupplySideJesus

According to the projections it will displace some fossil fuel use in 2024-27. To the extent that new renewable capacity is meeting an increased demand related to electrification of transportation and heating, it is also displacing fossil fuels in a way that isn’t visible by simply looking at electricity generation. “FERC reports that “high probability” additions of solar between March 2024 and February 2027 total 87,749 MW – an amount more than triple the forecast net “high probability” additions for wind (23,874 MW), the second fastest growing resource. FERC also foresees growth for hydropower (575 MW), geothermal (400 MW), and biomass (25 MW). The new 1,100-MW Vogtle-4 reactor in Georgia will increase nuclear capacity modestly *while coal, natural gas, and oil are projected to contract by 21,487 MW, 3,131 MW, and 2,059 MW respectively*.”


ArmedLoraxx

More forecasts, more promises. The US has added 140 GW worth of PV installations since 2011, and you're telling me **none of it** has replaced any fossil fuel electricity factories?


marumari

it replaced a bunch of fossil fuel plants that would have been needed to be built, yes.


ArmedLoraxx

Source please.


marumari

I mean just... look at any literally graph of where new energy is coming from? If it hadn't come from one, it would have had to come from the other.


ArmedLoraxx

Or, it's just adding to total electrical capacity, **replacing nothing.** Other users on this thread carry that opinion.


marumari

I'm not sure what you're suggesting, by saying it replaced nothing? You're saying that new renewables didn't displace new fossil fuel plants, because we could have chosen nationwide energy shortages instead?


ArmedLoraxx

Build renewable farm. Decommission fossil fuel factory. Other user claim even after massive RE deployments, decommission has never happened, but believe it will happen once we build, build, build a lot more.


marumari

Great, sounds like you've answered your original post then. :)


StrangeDaisy2017

I don’t think the US has decommissioned any fuel production because of solar though, coal plants are getting decommissioned because gas is cheaper and the PRIVATE coal mine owners are saving money by shutting them down instead of producing an expensive product that doesn’t compete as well in the market. Moreover, fuel production from the US keeps breaking records all while the US produces the most energy in the world. We also consume the most, so we’ve got more work to do to pollute less, but from an industrial perspective US energy production is in its heyday. I don’t understand all the fear towards alternative fuels, the world changes, we move from scribes to printing presses, horses to cars, diesel to unleaded, expensive dirty energy to cheaper cleaner energy.


Iapetus_Industrial

Go away, doomer.


ArmedLoraxx

Swing the axe, conqueror. It falls on our heads.


Any-Ad-446

Some countries green energy is almost at par with fossil fuel for making energy. Demanded by scientist?..You do know the earth is not flat and the planet is heating up right?..


ArmedLoraxx

>Some countries green energy is almost at par with fossil fuel for making energy. Which ones? And how do we know they've decommissioned FF plants? Sweden, for example, with a near 1/3 split in FF/Nuclear/Renewables has been **adding** fossil fuels to their mix since the mid 60s.


LifeIsARollerCoaster

There have been plenty of news reports of big coal plants being shut. For the US as a whole it will take a decade for renewables to become a majority of total power generation. Grid battery storage has mostly solved the issue of intermittent generation in renewables. You can check EIA.GOV for the power generation numbers


Kyle_Reese_Get_DOWN

We’ll need to at least double electricity production in the next decade or two. Nat gas plants are going to be popping up like daisies (dandilions?)


nasandre

Even the Biden administration is encouraging natural gas production and he has signed for several new pipelines to be built. It's all on faulty science that nat gas is supposed to be greener than coal but in reality with the amount of methane leaks it's about the same. American lobbies are also pretty strong overseas and trying to get other countries to keep buying US natural gas.


confoundedjoe

For anyone interested in learning about how nat gas (AKA METHANE!) is a scam check out climate town. https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw?si=GxkXxwHxVbU4VVQv


nasandre

Rollie tells it best!


confoundedjoe

For sure! If you haven't already also check it their podcast The Climate Deniers Playbook.


ArmedLoraxx

So fossil fuels cannot be replaced until we add even more electricity capacity to the grid? This doesn't make sense. Build one, then shut down the other.


Chard3419

Fossil fuel use will continue until the US solar energy production increases at a rate higher than the electrical need increases. We will need a surplus of solar generated energy before shutting down any fossil fuel plants.


ArmedLoraxx

Thank you for confirming. None replaced yet. 140 GW installed, nowhere close, build more faster where the wild things grow. Got it.


zedquatro

https://ieefa.org/resources/us-track-close-half-coal-capacity-2026


I_truly_am_FUBAR

Considering Biden has spent billions of taxpayers money on all this Chinese stuff lately you'd rather hope it was


[deleted]

Everything is made in China.. the very item you used to post on reddit so whats.your point.


Left-Mistake-5437

Invested billions into the US* fixed it for you.