Pretty sure they’re interested in collapsing the cost of domestic energy production in a way that’s resilient to adversarial supply chain risk since energy production is the base of the economic pyramid - energy availability is upstream of nearly all economic output.
They have spent immense effort blocking huge amounts of domestic solar and wind production, even paying off developers to simply not build planned power plants.
Didn’t know there were significant domestic supply chains for wind, solar, and battery tech. Thought a lions share of that was ultimately coming from China.
There aren't, and there certainly won't be if we keep blocking the industry at every turn. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point but I don't see how this is relevant. Blocking a developer that wants to buy wind turbines from another country and install them in the US does not make domestic energy cheaper or make domestic supply chains more resilient. It's a one-time import, once it's installed the wind is domestic and free, the most reliable possible supply chain, much more than domestic oil or gas.
> Blocking a developer that wants to buy wind turbines from another country and install them in the US does not make domestic energy cheaper or make domestic supply chains more resilient.
On the other hand, there are, what, approximately zero examples of where wind / solar market penetration is worth writing about and electricity has gotten cheaper.
Australian households will be able to access free electricity for three hours every day, in an effort to encourage energy use when excess solar power is being fed into the grid.
The federal government scheme will require retailers to offer free electricity to households for at least three hours in the middle of the day, when there is often more electricity generated than is being used, leading to very cheap or even negative wholesale prices.
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen said the scheme would share around the benefits of solar panels, including to those without panels or who rented their homes.
Which claims: This could save families up to $300 per year off their energy bills, and up to $1,070 if they have solar panels and batteries. Victoria’s Midday Power Saver offer will be available from 1 October 2026.
Oh look, you may save more if you already have solar and batteries. Yet another wealth transfer from the have-nots to the haves. Typical.
If you’re poor you could save up to less than a dollar a day.
I'm also confused, I thought the US was the leader in basically everything, so much so that they were constantly accusing other countries of stealing technology. now, basic manufacturing is a mysterious unknowable box for which we'd need to depend on foreign suppliers.
Seems fairly measured to say that it’s not in the interest of the U.S. to build its economic foundation (energy production) on top of a technology it’s incapable of producing without the assistance of a country that’s been fairly open about its plans to take kinetic action against the US sometime in the next 48 months.
Really a couple of key points. The first is that the US isn't "incapable" of producing renewable energy infrastructure, we've just largely chosen not to for various reasons and are certainly capable of doing so if there was a good reason to.
But the second and more important point is that relying on another country to produce renewable energy technology is not analogous to relying on another country to supply your actual energy. If I bought solar panels from China and tomorrow a US-China war started, my solar panels keep producing energy just fine. I might have imported the panels from China, but that's not where the actual energy is coming from. Sure, eventually I'll need to replace them, but that's not for decades. Assuming a conflict with China lasts long enough to prevent me from ever buying Chinese solar panels again, that's plenty of time to develop US capacity to produce them. And in the meantime, my solar panels keep importing energy from the Sun, which I'm told is very hard to blockade, embargo, or tariff.
Renewable energy tech actually has another major advantage over fossil fuels in a conflict situation. As the current Middle Eastern unpleasantness has demonstrated, fossil fuels are a global commodity and their price everywhere is impacted by restriction on their trade anywhere. Sufficient domestic production of fossil fuels may prevent a country from literally running out in a war, but that's unlikely to actually keep the country's economy healthy. China obviously isn't sitting on top of a fossil fuel producing region the way Iran is, but it seems pretty obvious a US-China war will dramatically impact fossil fuel energy prices given that blockading fossil fuel trade will be an obvious weapon in such a conflict.
When it comes to the impact conflicts have on the price of your energy, you might be better off relying on your Chinese solar panels than American oil. Especially if you can replace them with American solar panels when the time comes. China clearly understands the strategic value of renewable energy, which is why they've invested so much in becoming the major source of that technology.
Just wanted to say thanks for this. You connected two trains of thought I had never put together.
Don’t have a rebuttal.
I’m long on last mile energy production. Solar/battery for domestic, nuclear for industrial, etc. It creates resilience through decentralization. It also is likely to happen organically (no central planning necessary, markets will likely naturally converge here as they drive down prices).
Haven’t spent much time reconciling that with my stance _against_ centralized wind/solar/battery in critical infrastructure in the U.S.
> their price everywhere is impacted by restriction on their trade anywhere.
That’s entirely a human fabrication.
Any country can decide at any time to simple give their fossil fuel reserves away.
Australia does, so I don’t see why any other country can’t do the same.
Also, your plan relies on the power electronics and industrial control systems used in solar / wind deployments not being backdoored, which isn’t a bet I’d be willing to make.
Giving their fossil fuel reserves away isn't exactly solving anything is it though?
They happen to be giving the reserves away to foreign investors and thus driving domestic prices significantly higher then they aught to be.
I saw an amusing analysis which said that Trump will go down in history as the clean energy president. No administration will ever do so much to prove the necessity of having renewable energy.
When one leader can cause a global energy crisis, seems obvious the world will go running towards any solution which can mitigate this in the future.
Did Saudi Arabia wait until it could manufacture oil drills before it started exploiting its oil?
Solar panels are oil drills. The oil is in the sky. If your supplier stops selling you oil drills you have several years to find another supplier or start building your own.
So if something goes wrong between the US and China, the US has 10 years to develop it's own supply. It's not like existing panels and batteries are going to suddenly stop working.
That's fair: as a 3rd party it seems like there's miscommunication leading to impasse, help me understand:
> skeptical of the U.S. being able to develop domestic supply chains for this under current conditions
Right, but, the presupposition there is war, and we have to build it ourselves, presupposes differing conditions. Then there are ameliorations that bridge to your desired conditions mentioned by your interlocutors (stuff still works, 10 year head start)
> “Kinetic action” does imply large swaths of U.S. infrastructure will in fact “suddenly stop working” and need to be rebuilt to maintain capacity
This relies on a maximal reading of the already-maximal "[They have open] plans to take kinetic action against the US [in next 4 years].". I assume they is China, and you are referring to a Taiwan scenario. I haven't seen anyone claim China is going to attack the US in the next 4 years. It is extremely unlikely China ends up knocking out tons of stateside power infrastructure over Taiwan.
If you install solar panels, you have 10 years or more of lifetime to develop your domestic supply chain for replacements. This doesn't sound like a problem.
The IRA had enormous incentives to develop on shore renewable manufacturing. All of that was gutted in the BBB. Many of those burgeoning companies may have died in the interim as they saw that funding dry up, and realized they were working in an uphill regulatory environment.
I thought a lot of manufactured goods come from China. Including many of the tools and equipment for drilling oil. Is oil not a secure energy supply either then?
The incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act greatly increased US domestic battery production capacity. It went from 7 GWh per year in 2023 to 70 GWh per year in early 2026 and is expected to reach 1400 GWh per year by the end of the decade.
Domestic solar cell manufacturing was also growing rapidly, although I believe that may have slowed due to Trump.
I don't know about wind turbine production because I can't convince the !@#$%&?ing search engine to tell me about manufacturing rather than installation.
The sector has also seen its share of oversupply and price drops this year, with surprising reports of a fall below $50/kWh for two-hour battery systems made in China. Nameplate battery manufacturing capacity in China alone reached 2.2 TWh at the end of 2023, almost double the 1.2 TWh of global demand that analyst BloombergNEF (BNEF) is expecting for 2024.
When you have a supply chain failure on solar or wind power, you stop adding capacity. When you have a supply chain failure on oil and gas, you stop generating power. These are not the same problem.
We can build capacity to manufacturer renewable power domestically. But I suspect this administration is more interested in protecting the business interest of those that gave them the largest campaign donations than they are in long term energy sustainability.
They're interested in protecting the profits of industries that line their pockets. It's the most corrupt administration in US history and it isn't even close. Theres some far right ideology mixed in. Particularly from Stephen Miller, but mostly it's grift and graft
Saying solar power is dependent on China because panels come from China is like saying fracking is dependent on China because some pumps and drilling equipment come from China.
Yes, most newspapers are publishing anonymous quotes from government officials without scrutiny; quotes that are later found to have been completely bogus.
We live in an age of constant memetic warfare and a majority of our content distribution channels have been compromised.
I believe the kind of journalism you’re hinting at is practically dead in what many people are referring to when they say “the news.” It’s hard to determine if I agree with your stance though since you didn’t actually define what you meant by news organizations; mind listing a few of your favorite sources of news and trusted commentators? If they’re quite good, it’ll help people find reliable sources of descriptive accuracy!
But a meta point: Most commercial news rooms have become propoganda arms for The Party that churn out low effort AP ticker derivatives, social media gossip, and literal government propaganda from The Party whispered in their ear by an “anonymous source.” The “news rooms” appear devoid of any real journalistic integrity.
I think we are going to see an increasing trend of “true journalists” leaving the legacy news industry to places where they can build direct relationships with their audience, can own their own content distribution channels, and directly monetize those channels. I.E. Substack, YouTube, X, et. al.
> I think we are going to see an increasing trend of “true journalists” leaving the legacy news industry to places where they can build direct relationships with their audience, can own their own content distribution channels, and directly monetize those channels. I.E. Substack, YouTube, X, et. al.
Those independent channels seem far more amenable to "opinion-havers" than "true journalists" (though perhaps the "true journalists" transform into opinion-havers or secondhand-analysts when they change distribution platforms).
> ...churn out low effort AP ticker derivatives, social media gossip, and literal government propaganda from The Party whispered in their ear by an “anonymous source.”
That stuff is cheap. How do you expect someone moving to a place of fewer resources and less security to make a more expensive product?
> The “news rooms” appear devoid of any real journalistic integrity.
> That stuff is cheap. How do you expect someone moving to a place of fewer resources and less security to make a more expensive product?
Investigative journalism is really not that expensive. A lot of it boils down to needing a phone and money for gas. Rather than costs, the much bigger obstacle to good journalism is censorship, much of it coming from company leadership, which doesn't want a bad relationship with advertisers or the government.
> Investigative journalism is really not that expensive. A lot of it boils down to needing a phone and money for gas.
Come on. It investigative journalism takes a lot of time, and in the mean time, the journalist has bills to pay.
An opinion-haver or second-hand news analyst can build a Substack following by picking a theme and pumping out a blog post every couple days, but that's not practical for someone who might only be able put out a story every couple months on varying topics (based on whatever scoops they get).
I suspect the economics of investigative journalism work out better for an individual who is personally invested in their work.
Your scenario is the same for a news company. Investigative journalism takes time. And, in the meantime, you have HR departments, corporate rent, etc., you’re trying to build a media empire and your ROI is being compared against just investing in the S&P 500.
And I don’t think the economics of corporate news make sense. I suspect people buy these news rooms because their ROI comes from manufacturing consent (power and influence) - not monetizing investigative journalism.
> I suspect the economics of investigative journalism work out better for an individual who is personally invested in their work.
> Your scenario is the same for a news company. Investigative journalism takes time. And, in the meantime, you have HR departments, corporate rent, etc., you’re trying to build a media empire and your ROI is being compared against just investing in the S&P 500.
No. In the mean time, you have opinion-havers and other investigative journalists writing articles, maintaining a steady audience. An "individual [investigative journalist] who is personally invested in their work" wouldn't have the steady output to maintain one.
> And I don’t think the economics of corporate news make sense.
The point isn't that it's cheaper to do investigative journalism than opinion pieces. The point was whether it's easier to do IJ independently or as part of a big news corporation. And I firmly believe that big news corps are mostly actively against IJ, so that going independent is the only real way to practice it.
> The point was whether it's easier to do IJ independently or as part of a big news corporation....so that going independent is the only real way to practice it.
I think you're pushing a fantasy. I don't think "going independent" is really viable for a person unless they 1) have pre-existing fame, 2) independent wealth (or a patron), or 3) cut corners with the project in some way.
I believe it’s a mistake for liberal countries to rely on centralized content distribution platforms for consensus - that’s how you end up with consensus being for sale.
AI solves the 2-sigma problem when used correctly.
AI is extremely neurodegenerative when used incorrectly.
The people using it as a research assistant to discover quality sources they can dive into, and as a tutor while working through those resources, are getting smarter.
The people using it as an “oracle made from magic talking sand” are getting dumber.
To be fair, the same thing is true of the web in general, but not to the extreme I’ve been seeing with AI.
I’m predicting the bell curve of IQ is going to flatten quite a bit over the next decade, as people shift two sigma in both directions.
I suspect this is net good for the EV space at this point in history.
Tesla was a virtue signal brand from day one[1]. Their core insight came from Palo Alto et. al. You’d drive through the suburbs and many driveways had two vehicles: a [insert gas guzzling luxury vehicle] and a Prius. One vehicle to signal wealth/status - the other to signal environmental consciousness. But the eco vehicle was a compromise; compared to the jaguar it sat next to, it was a clunker.
Tesla’s GTM strategy was that you could buy a vehicle, without compromise, from them to signal to your social circles how much you cared about the environment. And it worked.
They broke the oil cartels with a direct to consumer sales strategy and kicked off the EV market.
But now that market’s needs are well met. The eco virtue signal crowd has multiple vendors selling decent products to meet their buying preferences.
There is a fairly large untapped market though that won’t convert off of oil. That demographic overlaps well with the 2025 MAGA coalition. And, with Elon’s involvement in that coalition, Tesla EVs are now a new virtue signal for a new demographic.
You have people buying EVs that were rolling coal as recently as 2 years ago.
[1] The brand being built around eco virtue signaling is well documented in early interviews with original founders - a quick search will turn up many direct quotes talking about them driving through California suburbs doing market research and discovering exactly that.
It seems to me it was the Roadster that kick-started Tesla by making electric sexy and desirable - high performance and expensive rather than something low performance bought for ideological/eco reasons. The Tesla model S which followed wasn't cheap either, and also emphasized high performance with the dual motor and plaid options. These seem more like wealth signalling than virtue signalling.
Yes - the originals were luxury cars built for wealthy people to virtue signal environmental consciousness. They were meant to fit in next to the other luxury cars in those driveways - where the Prius did not.
Companies like Monster and Redbull are marketing companies that happen to sell energy drinks.
That is almost certainly not a meaningless demographic they pulled out of thin air. It might not be meaningful to you as a demographic. It might even be offensive to you as a demographic.
But, to the marketing company, that is a concrete “group of humans” that respond well to their product and advertising. It informs how they develop their ads, how they target them, which geographic markets they push hard in, what events they sponsor, etc.
When they define that demographic as the people they’re targeting, and allocate their capital towards targeting them, they see the highest returns they’ve been able to find so far.
I think there is a certain beauty in it. Making an effort to understand how the universe/world/society you were born into actually works, not how you’d like it to work, is kinda key to finding your ikigai I think.
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