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Comment by matthewdgreen | Hacker News Reader

The amazing thing is that this should be a slam dunk. Wind, solar and batteries are getting radically cheaper. In the first half of 2024, something like 75% of Europe's electricity was low-carbon (50% renewables, 25% nuclear.) China's at something like 44% low-carbon for the first part of 2024. The tech is getting so much cheaper and it isn't even really about "low carbon" anymore so much as it is about "cheap abundant electricity."

Batteries are down to $66/kWh in China, for actual costed-out BESS projects. https://www.ess-news.com/2024/12/09/powerchina-receives-bids...

The nations that win this race will dominate the future. From a geopolitical perspective you either run this race to a future with abundant energy, or you become a second-tier power.

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If it’s such a great cost savings what encouragement is needed? And if it’s still down the road, why couldn’t it be adopted when it is cheaper?

Big oil.

I know right? I've never heard of large projects needing upfront capital!

American business is very good at financing upfront capital commitments with easy to calculate returns.

Remember the days America demonstrated leadership, where we got to the moon rather than waiting for someone else to figure out how to get costs down or how we lead the effort to solve the hole in the ozone layer? Pepperidge Farms remembers.

So it’s not a cost savings then? It’s more of a scientific achievement with patriotic spirit?

I think you misunderstood what I said. There is value in being first to establish a dominant position as a market leader. Just focusing on costs misses the bigger issue of market domination. It's a missed opportunity UNLESS you believe that oil is the more cost effective solution in the long run. The subsidies are an investment in your country's dominance. That all the competitors believe otherwise might indicate your math may be off. Or the historically close ties between US leaders and Saudia Arabia on both sides of the aisle distorts the decision making.

Industry is funding it, like crazy. You can look up the number of installed solar and wind plants this year, and the number of battery plants. Lots of them in red states like Texas, as well

The biggest problem right now is that the new administration is trying to actively block those goals. They're talking about government tariffs and they've already halted new leases on offshore wind. So this isn't about government subsidizing things, it's government blocking the market from doing what it wants to.

The government isn’t subsidizing solar and wind?

> They're talking about government tariffs

So this has been previously unblocked, but in the past week that’s when the difficulty started?

Utilities get to pass their costs along to ratepayers, so even when the thermal fossil generation is not economical, people who cannot go offgrid or install distributed generation and storage are hung out to dry.

Every coal generator in the US besides the one in Dry Forks, WY is more expensive than new renewables to run, but those costs get pushed to ratepayers so there is no incentive to retire them faster. You can see this up close with IMEA [1] and the City of Naperville (in Illinois) about to extend their agreement to continue to procure coal fired generation with no competitive bids [2] [3]. This enables the prolonged operation of one of the most polluting coal generators in the country, Prairie State Generating Station, in southern IL [4] [5]. Compare this to the City of Chicago, that has switched to 100% renewables using a power purchase agreement for ~70% of their demand and credits for the remainder [6] [7].

So, while the economics of renewables and storage are favorable, you still have twist arms with the courts and policy because of entrenched interests that are not exposed to the costs of prolonged fossil generation. "Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome."

[1] https://www.imea.org/

[2] https://saynotocoal.com/

[3] https://saynotocoal.com/naperville-gets-80-of-its-electricit...

[4] https://pirg.org/illinois/edfund/media-center/new-data-illin...

[5] https://www.gem.wiki/Prairie_State_Energy_Campus

[6] https://grist.org/cities/chicago-renewable-energy-black-diam...

[7] https://swiftcurrentenergy.com/project/double-black-diamond-...

every market passes costs to payers. That doesn’t explain anything.

For the Chicago government, it’s a political project. They are happy to take losses.

Let me just restate the original point made in this thread. Are solar and wind cheaper in these areas where coal is still operating or not?

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/renewables-cheaper-energy-t...

https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Coal...

> This report finds 99 percent of the existing U.S. coal fleet is more expensive to run compared to replacement by new solar or wind. Replacing coal plants with local wind and solar would also save enough to finance nearly 150 gigawatts of four-hour battery storage, over 60 percent of the coal fleet’s capacity, and generate $589 billion in new investment across the U.S. Our report provides policy recommendations to facilitate a just transition through the Coal Cost Crossover.

Lazard LCOE+ 2024 report, PDF - https://www.lazard.com/media/gjyffoqd/lazards-lcoeplus-june-...

New solar plants expected to support most U.S. electric generation growth - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64364 - January 24, 2025

So, if you want to argue these decisions are about politics and ideology, that is a choice. The economics are clear. The report I cite above is ~2 years old, the favorable economics of renewables and batteries has only increased since then due to rapid cost declines of both.

The first link is taking into account government incentives, and doesn’t actually cite any source about cost comparison:

> New Inflation Reduction Act clean energy incentives and financing and potential strengthened U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pollution standards mean the economic risks for existing coal — and the communities that depend upon them economically — will only get worse

The second link is also about the inflation reduction act.

The EIA link is also a market prediction of where investment will be made, which also takes into account subsidies.

Post your best link that makes your point. My conclusion right now is you litter in links to appear authoritative.

Where Coal Is Retiring, and Hanging On, in the U.S. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42975565 - Feb 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/06/climate/coal-... | https://archive.today/Egwuc

> But along with market forces, utilities could also take advantage of changes in environmental regulations to keep coal stations open, especially in coal-friendly states like Wyoming, where two-fifths of U.S. coal is still mined.

> “For an investor-owned monopoly utility, it’s not costing them to keep running the plant, necessarily, it’s costing the ratepayers who are paying for that,” Dr. Solomon said. “Politically, there’s a lot of support for coal in Wyoming and Utah where Rocky Mountain power is operating so I think they just don’t feel a ton of pressure to move to cleaner energy sources.”

Global Cost of Renewables to Continue Falling in 2025 as China Extends Lead - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42976388 - Feb 2025

https://about.bnef.com/blog/global-cost-of-renewables-to-con... | https://archive.today/pJ0lb

> According to a latest report by research provider BloombergNEF (BNEF), new wind and solar farms are already undercutting new coal and gas plants on production cost in almost every market globally.

> “New solar plants, even without subsidies, are within touching distance of new US gas plants. This is remarkable because US gas prices are only a quarter of prevailing gas prices in Europe and Asia. It really raises the bar on what is possible even in the current market, said Amar Vasdev, lead author of the report. “This opens up the likelihood that solar will become even more compelling in the coming years, especially if the US starts exporting liquified natural gas and exposes its protected gas market to global price competition.”

> “China is exporting green energy tech so cheaply that the rest of the world is thinking about erecting barriers to protect their own industries, said Matthias Kimmel, head of Energy Economics at BNEF. “But the overall trend in cost reductions is so strong that nobody, not even President Trump, will be able to halt it.”

The Prairie State Generating Station was a masterfully-executed trap laid by Peabody Energy that ensnared hundreds of municipalities across 5 (6?) states.

They are on the hook for paying off the construction loans (which ended up being something like triple what they were promised) and are on the hook for any operating costs not covered by sales of the generated electricity.

The least bad option all these cities have is to force their residents to buy the electricity it generates. Naperville is lucky enough to be a pretty wealthy city with good bond ratings; relatively speaking its residents are less screwed than many others.

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