You wrote: "Unfortunately, the President and Congress just passed a law that makes it much harder to add new supply." That is arrant nonsense. What they did was to reduce a transfer of funds from ordinary taxpayers like me to the companies that build solar and wind projects, an act that was long overdue, and for which subsidies there is now no justification. Those companies, which are financially savvy, will run the numbers to calculate what the payback period is on their proposed projects, and will proceed with the ones which are justified by their calculations. To claim that will reduce grid reliability is simple fear mongering. The ERCOT grid in particular will need all the power we can get, if the projections of power demand are accurate, and that means all available resources. Naturally the big money behind solar and wind object. There's an old saying: "The person who robs Peter to pay Paul can pretty much always count on support from Paul."
If the federal government would stop all the subsidies then there would be a fairer market but oil and gas have been getting subsidies since 1919. Coal for just as long, nukes wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for federal subsidies in research, construction and operation.
Just because the PTC is a visible and easily understood doesn’t mean that all forms of energy aren’t getting generous subsidies, you just need to look a little harder.
I did a lot of things when I was young that I learned were not good things to do, and stopped doing them. An example specific to the energy field was the "postage stamp" model for funding transmission lines. Just because we used to do something is, in my opinion, insufficient justification for continuing to do so.
After the brutal 2011 freeze, the Texas electric grid was like a pickup truck with a blown tire, stranded on a desolate stretch of highway. There was no jack — no way to lift the system, no real tools to get it rolling again. For a decade, it sat on the shoulder, patched together, vulnerable to every storm.
Then Biden showed up with a toolbox: tax credits, subsidies, and a full-throttle push for renewables. Finally — a jack. The grid got lifted, the tire changed, and the engine roared back to life. Renewables didn’t just move the truck — they got it back on the road.
Now Trump wants to shut down the jack factory. No more tools. No more lifelines. If a storm hits again — and it will — the tire will blow, and with no jack, we’ll be back on the side of the road, watching the lights go out.
You wrote: "Unfortunately, the President and Congress just passed a law that makes it much harder to add new supply." That is arrant nonsense. What they did was to reduce a transfer of funds from ordinary taxpayers like me to the companies that build solar and wind projects, an act that was long overdue, and for which subsidies there is now no justification. Those companies, which are financially savvy, will run the numbers to calculate what the payback period is on their proposed projects, and will proceed with the ones which are justified by their calculations. To claim that will reduce grid reliability is simple fear mongering. The ERCOT grid in particular will need all the power we can get, if the projections of power demand are accurate, and that means all available resources. Naturally the big money behind solar and wind object. There's an old saying: "The person who robs Peter to pay Paul can pretty much always count on support from Paul."
If the federal government would stop all the subsidies then there would be a fairer market but oil and gas have been getting subsidies since 1919. Coal for just as long, nukes wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for federal subsidies in research, construction and operation.
Just because the PTC is a visible and easily understood doesn’t mean that all forms of energy aren’t getting generous subsidies, you just need to look a little harder.
I did a lot of things when I was young that I learned were not good things to do, and stopped doing them. An example specific to the energy field was the "postage stamp" model for funding transmission lines. Just because we used to do something is, in my opinion, insufficient justification for continuing to do so.
After the brutal 2011 freeze, the Texas electric grid was like a pickup truck with a blown tire, stranded on a desolate stretch of highway. There was no jack — no way to lift the system, no real tools to get it rolling again. For a decade, it sat on the shoulder, patched together, vulnerable to every storm.
Then Biden showed up with a toolbox: tax credits, subsidies, and a full-throttle push for renewables. Finally — a jack. The grid got lifted, the tire changed, and the engine roared back to life. Renewables didn’t just move the truck — they got it back on the road.
Now Trump wants to shut down the jack factory. No more tools. No more lifelines. If a storm hits again — and it will — the tire will blow, and with no jack, we’ll be back on the side of the road, watching the lights go out.
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