This can also mean something else for Michigan that the budget is not as big. Meaning Michigan’s factory buildout will faulter.
There is a huge ignorance among some people that tax cuts are good for the US economy. That total ignorance has denied the US an industrial policy for 42 years. It created $32 tr in debt while the ignorant blamed the poor for the deficits.
It was not a transfer of wealth from poor to rich. It stymied the US economy. It was a drain on all US wealth. That is why it was so bleeding ignorant.
We took one for team capitalism. Now central Europe is stuck with the liars.
BTW we know in places like Kentucky there will be less of a factory buildout. The ignorant want less.
But we also know the IRA favors states to a degree that no matter how in the way and ignorant needed the money.
Currently there are two supercharger stations open in Mesquite, NV. One, on the west side of town with 12 stalls, opened almost two years ago. The other, on the east side with 8 stalls, opened about ten months ago.
The entire route between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City has supercharger stations fairly closely spaced.
Yes. The Supreme Court has struck down some actions taken by the federal bureaucracy because they were NOT specifically approved by Congress (i.e. Congress let the bureaucracy decide which was the best step to take next).
This claim gets repeated a lot, but is true? As you build out more intermittent renewables, it seems logical that instead of building more fossil fuel dispatchable generation, the obvious thing to do would be to simply use your existing generation less.
To see if that is indeed what is happening, I looked up electrical generation in the US over the last 10 years. Note this is generation, not capacity.
Over the last 10 years, there was a 177,172 GWh hour increase in utility scale electricity generation. So we know grid capacity was added. If what you are saying is true, then for every new GWh of renewable energy, we should see some proportional increase in fossil fuel generation. Here is the generation broken down by type in GWh of generation:
Non-hydro Renewables 397,362
Fossil Fuel -191,274
Net 206,088
So of the new generation capacity added in the US, it was almost entirely renewables replacing fossil fuels, not renewables in addition to fossil fuels.
Careful. They said it was improper to compare the two by that metric. It doesn’t follow that no other comparisons are possible. FWIW, that sentence was almost verbatim in the IEA report. If you can buy an unlimited amount of a widget for $0.10, or a limited amount of the same widget for $0.05, you can lower your costs by buying as much as you can of the $0.05 widget even if the supply is limited.
The cost of generating electricity from the sun and wind is falling fast and in many areas is now cheaper than gas, oil or coal is an objectively true statement.
And we are again seeing this in the real world data. For example, in 2023 it is projected that Florida will add 25% of all new solar capacity in the United States. However, Florida does not have a renewable energy portfolio standard or a voluntary renewable energy target. They are doing it because it lowers their costs compared to traditional sources.
Not necessarily. They could run their load-following power plants more, to compensate for the extra demand. They could run their peaker plants more often, for instance. That would be costly, but maybe not as costly as building new capacity.
Again, not necessarily. But that isn’t what I was thinking about anyway. I referred to a hypothetical power utility needing to add new capacity. The amount of total capacity is often determined by the highest demand that is expected during extreme weather events, either in the coldest part of the winter or the hottest part of the summer, depending on the local climate. Capacity is gigawatts (power). Your analysis is about GWh (energy).
If all we looked at is GWh of energy, we could make the argument that all we ever need is wind and solar and nothing else. I think you know better. It is the high demand GW of power generated early in the evening after a hot summer day that a utility needs to plan for. Yes, batteries can also be an option, albeit rather expensive. But I have yet to see just how extensively that battery option can be employed.
Building a large amount of renewables does reduce the amount of generation from the fossil plants. The reduction in generation from coal has been replaced by increases from natural gas as well as the new renewables. I have often admitted that.
But this move towards ever-increasing amounts of nondispatchable renewables has its limits.
From 64% to 60%, yes, but what about in absolute terms?
Note: the atmosphere doesn’t really care about percentages, only absolute quantities of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
Using data from the Statistical Review of World Energy and the NOAA CO2 monitoring station in Hawaii…
The yearly CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels in 1995 was 22 billion metric tons. In 2022, world emissions were 34.4 billion tons.
The atmospheric CO2 concentration in 1995 was 361 ppm. Last year’s average was 418 ppm.
All of this talk about “green energy solutions” is nonsense, so long as China and India continue to burn coal in the way they are. Both China and India are trying to bring their poorer populations out of poverty. When those poor people start to earn incomes, many of them start driving motor scooters and cars, which consume gasoline. Or maybe they will get EVs, which will be charged up from the local coal-fired power plant. Yes, EVs are more efficient than ICE vehicles, but generating more electricity from coal still puts a lot of CO2 in the air.
The tipping point is on schedule for 2025. There will be enough alternatives by then and going forward that CO2 production will be dropping.
@waterfell China is the leader in alternative energy. India is now investing heavily as well. Please read posts on this when they arise. The posts have been endless on this topic.
I read all of the energy related posts on METAR, the Renewable Energy board on TMF, as well as other social media sites. Past and current efforts to even slow down the rising CO2 air concentration have been utter failures, and will continue to be utter failures. 34 billion tonnes a year in CO2 emissions, and there is no chance of that changing to any significant extent for the foreseeable future, with the exception of some kind of massive economic upheaval that affects world commerce.
China and India are building green energy solutions as fast as they can. They are investing in EVs which will be charged by green electricity. Maybe you have not heard about all the progress they have made in these areas.
You should look up their non-fossil fuel generated electricity and their EV numbers currently and in their forecasts.