[HN Gopher] A year of clean energy milestones
___________________________________________________________________
A year of clean energy milestones
Author : speckx
Score : 31 points
Date : 2026-01-05 20:13 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (e360.yale.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (e360.yale.edu)
| pfdietz wrote:
| The figure should be dollars per megawatt-hour, not per megawatt.
| halfdeadcat wrote:
| That is incorrect. The article is referring to the cost of the
| infrastructure, not the cost of the electricity that
| infrastructure produces. Power plants are spec'ed by megawatt
| (peak).
| miduil wrote:
| Reading through this makes me realize that I wonder what will
| come after "energy wars"? Like if around ~2040-2050 almost 100%
| of electricity demand is hopefully renewable, that means a
| completely new area of power.
|
| Till then, fossil energy has been the strongest dominator on
| which establishment is holding power - once that's becoming the
| past - what will happen on the world table?
|
| Of course, mining etc. is part of the answer; but I feel like
| there is much more flexibility around working around refined
| material availability, than it is with access to energy to start
| with. Also, contrary to Energy, almost anything that's mined will
| stay in recyclable economy - so the dominance/control one country
| can exercise is limited.
| phtrivier wrote:
| Unfortunately, some of the convertors for electrification
| depend on minerals which, if not "rare", are unevenly
| distributed.
|
| That leave plenty of room for "battery wars", "motor wars",
| Even "solar panel" wars if we need to.
|
| I do not believe Putin and Trump are eying Dumbass and
| Groenland only because of the scenery - and the general
| historical lesson of the 2020s is that brute force _is_ worth
| it.
|
| China only is self sufficient, as far as I understand it.
|
| Europe could use minerals from its soil, if we accepted mining.
| But we don't want that either, any more. (And given what is
| about to happen to Groenland, it may be a blessing in disguise
| not to be too resource-rich. Again: pray the Emperor may ignore
| you.)
| Yizahi wrote:
| Funnily enough, one of the big reasons for Ukraine invasion
| was to block our gas extraction, it happened right after
| Shell did a discovery research on the Donbass, and for many
| years the occupation had been contained precisely to the two
| regions where Ukraine had some deposits - Donbass and Black
| Sea. It's only later mental decline caused him to expand the
| attack.
|
| And vice versa, while there are some rare earths in the
| Donbass, they are not very convenient to extract. Trump's
| mining deal was more like throwing a useless toy to a kid
| throwing a tantrum. It's notable that no one even remembers
| that "deal" lately.
| kibwen wrote:
| Energy is the next Space Race, and Trump has already conceded.
| The US will run out of oil-rich countries to invade before China
| runs out of sunlight.
| bwestergard wrote:
| This post says: "For the first time, wind and solar supplied more
| power than coal worldwide, while plug-in vehicles accounted for
| more than a quarter of new car sales."
|
| This does not mean that wind and solar are replacing coal, oil,
| or wood, all of which were produced and used in greater volumes
| in 2025, so far as I can tell.
|
| https://www.coalage.com/departments/closing-notes/global-coa...
|
| All past price declines in energy commodities have lead to
| increased consumption of other energy (and raw materials)
| commodities. The production of whale oil declined, but only due
| to environmental regulation. For more, see:
| https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/464145/more-and-more-and-mor...
| pfdietz wrote:
| It means the replacement process is moving well along, though.
| Coal is persisting mostly because of the installed base, but
| new capacity is overwhelmingly renewables.
| kachapopopow wrote:
| I genuinely don't understand why there's no movement to just
| shove solar panels onto every apartment building subsidizing the
| initial cost in form of a loan that gets repaid as paying for
| power bills - the cost wouldn't change or even be lower than
| current power bills in a lot of european countries.
|
| It really makes no sense to not use solar except in very few
| exceptions where it's genuinely never sunny and doesn't have that
| many sunny days, but hey estonia is making it work.
|
| obviously there is some added maintenance like cleaning the
| panels, but that also applies for general services that residents
| of buildings already share.
| raybb wrote:
| In Germany they allow people to install solar panels on their
| balconies.
|
| https://cleantechnica.com/2024/12/21/germany-embraces-balkon...
|
| Though last I looked this probably isn't feasible in the US due
| to differences in our electrical systems or something like
| that?
| kachapopopow wrote:
| in some states they're now allowing to just plug in panels
| without any permits up to 1.5kw so actually, no. In US
| specifically it's just lobbying or hurricane safety since
| panels flying off and creating even more debris is obviously
| not great.
| Yizahi wrote:
| That's Communism and we can't have that. Hell, can't even agree
| that people would pay for the universal health insurance (via
| tax), and you now propose that government subsidize
| electricity? Funny joke :) .
|
| By the way, energy generation is only 1/4 to 1/3 of all
| emissions on average, so transitioning the fraction of that
| fraction to a lesser amount of emissions (since there a ton of
| emissions in manufacturing, transporting and installing solar
| panels) is nice and cool, but not very efficient to combat
| climate change.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-01-05 23:00 UTC)