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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

Yes. But that sort of growth wasn't politically feasible in the US. The most economic options at the time were coal and nuclear, both of which were strictly off the table.

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That's sort of my unsaid point - we've made it politically infeasible to build much of anything in the United States. You can see it in everything from a local planning meeting when someone tries to build a fence or house all the way up to transmission lines and power plants. The process itself kills a huge amount of progress by making it a bad use of lifespan to pursue it.

Arguably, that is a feature.

I’m not against coal or nuclear, However, if progress, as it is defined here, includes disregarding the opinion of the minority or does not respect the rules then maybe it is not real progress. Progress must include taking into account the constraints of the rules we have set in place.

We are basically making progress, albeit slowly, in trying to solve the issue in a way that is consistent with law and precedent. This includes a lot of debate and rejection, but over a long enough period of time it can be solved.

> I’m not against coal or nuclear

It's $CURRENT_YEAR, we can safely be against coal.

To fight climate change, the US needs renewable energy, and fast. Ironically, we already have it, the US has 947 GW of renewable generation capacity that is not hooked up to the grid [1]. To put that number into perspective, the US currently has 1.16 TW of generation capacity in total [2]. We could nearly double our generation capacity today if we could just hook it up.

Unfortunately it takes 10 years to build new transmission lines in the US [3]. Changes are going to need to be made to the process, which may include giving more responsibility and agency to FERC to oversee the review process.

[1] https://emp.lbl.gov/utility-scale-solar

[2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...

[3] https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/10/permitting-americ...

Not all of that capacity in the interconnection queues are ready to flip the switch though, correct? Requests can be pre-construction, construction, built/non-operating, and operating [1]

[1] https://www.enverus.com/blog/the-interconnection-queue-an-in...

It’s more that growth just isn’t needed in the US. Nobody is plugging in an EV and not getting power and our population is only growing at ~0.5% per year.

Even with EV’s US electric demand is flat since 2010 while China’s grew 8% in 2023! When things are changing 10+x as fast you need to move faster.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/188521/total-us-electric...

If the price was lower, people would use more. Supply and demand aren't fixed.

A little, but I’m not going to heat my house to 90f in the winter or install floodlights simply because electricity is cheaper.

States have wildly different prices without changing climate and urban normalized consumption that much. https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/ Oregon and Washington have nearly identical per capita electricity usage despite a 10% cost difference etc.

In much of California, electricity prices are high enough that you shouldn't get an EV and you shouldn't electrify your space or water heating because gasoline and natural gas are cheaper per delivered utility.

When my marginal cost of electricity dropped to zero at my single-family home thanks to solar+battery, I dramatically increased my consumption. I got an electric car, two electric laundry units, an induction cooktop, an electric oven, a heat pump pool heater, and am about to switch over to electric space and water heating. I'm using about 4x more electric energy than I did prior to having solar panels, and it's definitely going to keep going up.

Note that the winter off-peak rate in PG&E territory is $0.49541 per kilowatt*hour. That's ludicrously high. The summer on-peak rate is $0.62647. See the tariff sheet: https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHED...

And in case anybody doesn't believe me, check out a Bolt vs an ICE vehicle at current electricity and gasoline costs (about $5/gallon in my area): https://zlnp.net/serve/bolt-vs-ice.png

Any ICE that gets about 35 MPG or better will beat a grid-powered Bolt. So if you don't self-generate in northern CA, get yourself something like a Prius.

Sure, But there's still decreasing utility to you for each additional kilowatt hour of power you consume. At some point, you are maintaining maximum comfort and convenience in the house, have switched everything over to the cheapest energy source, your driving cost is entirely determined by the price of tires. I guess you could operate an aluminum smelter at home... :)

Using a cs metaphor, it's amdahl's law applied to one part of an overall cost and happiness equation. After a while, the other factors dominate and there's no point in using more energy.

That's certainly true, but the grandparent was suggesting that there was little demand elasticity. My personal micro-economic experience leads me to think otherwise.

Nah, definitely is in places that are using nat gas for heating in particular. But I'm sympathetic to the ggp because the trope of "people will just use more" is a little over-broadly applied as an excuse not to improve efficiency. Like, reducing the energy use of your dishwasher doesn't cause much of an uptick in total dish washing.

Your still talking about a ~5x price change resulting in a ~2x change in usage, that’s seriously inelastic demand.

Edit: Never Mind much of the state isn’t stuck with those prices but wow.

Unfortunately $0.20/KWH hasn't been a thing for a long time. Since January 2017, in fact.

Here's a graph that I made: https://zlnp.net/serve/pge_rates/pge-electric-rates-tou.png

Here's the historical data if you want to double check my numbers: https://www.pge.com/tariffs/en/rate-information/electric-rat...

Holy shit that’s insane.

And we're all commenting on an article about how growth is picking up again and we're finding it difficult to rise to the challenge. We've only recently found non-industrial (thus easier to permit and therefore possible to grow in the US) productive uses of electricity like data centers, cars, space heating, etc etc.

There is also hydroelectric, which the US can't grow in anymore because it already tapped all the river locations it could use when the US was industrializing, but China can because it is only fairly recently China had industrialized enough to start tapping its own rivers. Of course, once all the river sites in China are exploited, China's growth in that sector is completely done, so it's almost like a temporary boost more so than a long-term growth factor, for lack of better words.

I always think of it like this - what job would you rather have your kid get into, working in construction, or as a lawyer arguing for or against that construction? One job is both a lot cushier and happens to pay multiples better.

Ah yes, the “diversified services oriented economy” scores another win.

Fascinating. I often look at our society and wonder why we set it up so that most people are wasting their lives doing unnecessary "bullshit jobs" (sensu Graeber) instead of setting it up so that people can spend their time on meaningful non-work. Your comment gives me a new hypothesis: because people think like that.

Supply and demand should correct the situation if we get over-lawyered. Looking at university enrollment rates, it seems that’s exactly what’s happening.

Supply and demand is a concept for when there are buyers and sellers. There is no short term feedback loop for a legal system that gets too bureaucratic/corrupt. That ends up only being visible on a years and decades long scale when the whole country becomes less productive and less trustworthy on the global scale and is outcompeted by other nations with less bureaucracy/corruption.

For example, one might say excess lawyers (either as lawyers or political figures or judges) contribute to excessive liability, which then results in everyone spending extra to cover their ass or simply not taking risks, the consequences of which are only visible in the long term. But supply and demand won’t fix this issue in a sufficiently timely manner.

To be clear, this is not exactly what I think (my thoughts tend to be a bit less mainstream I believe), but it is what seems apparent to me. I’ve not met a lot of people who dream of their children doing menial labor.

Median law school grad makes 5 figures with 6 figures of debt. The lawyers making bank are also working absurd hours to get to that point.

Construction makes less but without all that debt probably not THAT much less, but the job takes a huge toll on the body.

I would not recommend law or construction to my kid

USA became a largest oil producing nation within 15 years.

Wind and solar is an option

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