Hacker News Reader

Comment by cbradford | Hacker News Reader

Just look at the title.. "Solar executives warn..". Of course they do, their business model is government subsidy. I live in a blue state that has decided to bet on renewables and our electricity rates are skyrocketing. If solar was viable, it would not require forcing tax payers to fund these businesses.

View on HN

> If solar was viable, it would not require forcing tax payers to fund these businesses.

This is not true. Solar and wind are already cheaper than fossil fuel generation for new capacity. Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wind-and-solar-en...

So then removing the subsidies shouldn't be an issue?

It shouldn’t. Trump is using environmental regulation to block projects. It’s crazy seeing the GOP embrace San Francisco’s last decade of policy.

"'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party."

If it was only the subsidies, but it's not.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/us-orders-orsted-ha...

It's not just subsidies, it's also permitting and any other roadblocks they can manage. This isn't just economic or political, it's a weird personal crusade.

Whatever cost it is, I highly doubt it's cheaper to cancel projects that are well underway without recouping any benefits at all, in some cases over the objections of local customers, without an alternative in place with environmental and financial analysis to support it.

Otherwise you're just burning money without an alternative to meet increasing demand (which is likely why costs are increasing and why the additional supply is being built).

If fossil fuels were viable, they would not require the right to put toxic substances into my lungs without compensation.

It doesn't. Solar is ridiculously cheap and requires no subsidy at all to be profitable.

If this is happening (which frankly I doubt) it's just corruption.

If this were true, then wouldn’t every electricity supplier be building tons of solar, regardless of what the government does?

> wouldn’t every electricity supplier be building tons of solar, regardless of what the government does?

They are. And it’s undercutting the owners of pricier plants. Hence Trump using environmental regulation to block more solar.

Land of the free, home of the brave gets funnier and funnier.

93% of new energy generation is renewable.

Nobody wants a new coal or nuclear plant in their back yard.

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/12/nx-s1-5319056/trump-clean-ene...

As JumpCrisscross said, they really are. Look at solar deployments across the planet.

They do need planning permission of course and that's where they can be blocked.

I see that now, thanks. So much for all that freedom.

According to the article Trump is trying to ban new solar developments. Suppliers are building tons of solar but they can't do so if the government makes it illegal.

Well, not in California where there is both a residential solar mandate assuring new distributed supply and where solar already reaches over 100% of demand at peak; adding new utility-scale solar doesn't make a lot of sense even if it is cheap.

If solar is "ridiculously cheap" (per GGP) and California has abundant supply of it, why does electricity in major cities in California (see e.g. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APUS49B72610) cost several times what it does in Toronto, Ontario (https://www.oeb.ca/consumer-information-and-protection/elect... , and note these prices are in CAD)?

Politics and corruption. The generation cost is low, but the government backed monopoly folds all kinds of distribution, deferred maintenance, fire damage, and political pet projects into the retail price. It sucks.

But the Biden administration which introduced the IRA subsidies also jacked up tariffs on solar panels, increasing the price of these projects. Would many of these businesses been viable if neither subsidies nor tariffs had been introduced? Given the declining cost of PVs over time, would they have become viable eventually?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com