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Solar electricity is poised to overtake coal in—of all places—Texas
(www.motherjones.com)
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this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
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No one has ideology, morality or conscience, the millisecond renewables are cheaper, they will take over.
Not true. Trump is actively sabotaging wind as we speak. Trump is doing vice signaling, not economics.
From https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-the-trump-administration-is-paying-nearly-a-billion-dollars-to-abandon-wind-farms :
Renewables are already cheaper*, wind and solar.
*depending on where you are in the world.
Did you know that during the 18th and 19th century industrial revolution in Britain, coal never became cheaper than water power? All those new steam engines were used to make deeper mines more viable and to increase production. But water power remained cheaper throughout. But water power came with a downside. Available water power tended to be located in rural areas. The smaller population in these small towns consequently had a lot of labor bargaining power. Industrialists instead wanted access to the labor markets of the major cities, cities brimming over with new urban poor desperate for any scrap of work they could get. Cheaper labor overcame cheaper power. A coal plant could be put anywhere, while a water mill could only be positioned on high-flowing streams.
Renewables are cheaper, but we've been here before. There's more to this than just energy cost.
yeah, IIRC, in 2000, renewable oil from rape seed was still cheaper than fossil oil. however renewable oil was banned politically sothat there's no food vs fuel debate tearing society apart. the question really is more complicated than simply the cost.
that being said, solar panels can be put anywhere, including near big cities, and transporting electricity over distances has also gotten easier in the last 200 years, so that's not an argument for coal anymore.
Do you have any source for that? I find it difficult to believe that the only reason for using steam over water mills was the dastardly exploitation by capitalists.
This actually is the case. See Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming by Andreas Malm. I saw this argument featured in a video by "Our Changing Climate" that I can't seem to locate now. But I believe this book was the main source for the video. Coal never actually dropped in price during the industrial revolution. The new tech was just used to expand production. And it makes sense when you consider that for these industrialists, labor and equipment costs were probably a much bigger part of their budget than the bill from their coal supplier. Even today, with all our automation, labor remains the biggest expense of most businesses. And it's not like they just ran out of water mill capacity. They were still building dams in the UK well into the twentieth century. And ultimately, cheap urban labor combined with expensive coal power beat out expensive rural labor combined with cheap water power.
I have no reason to doubt that it was an element, but it seems to me that density of power and being able to place that power wherever it is needed (mines being a good example as you said) were likely a bigger consideration that just wanting to skimp on labour costs. If not why did steam power set off such an explosion of industrialisation?.
Water mills only produced a set amount of power that could be increased orders of magnitude by coal and steam.
well said
that being said, china subsidized solar panel production heavily for 20 years until they became economically self-sustaining. so there was a large amount of ideology involved i'd say.
so this mostly applies to the buyers of solar panels.
That one probably isn’t really ideology so much as strategic necessity. To my understanding, China is a major energy importer, with a dependence on fossil fuels coming in via the South China Sea. They’re in an exceptionally vulnerable position because a blockade wouldn’t be particularly difficult to implement there (at least, if their opponent is the US), so any degree of energy independence they can give themselves is imperative.
They've also maintained a hundred-year plan since at least the 90s.
At any given moment, their strategic policy is looking so far ahead that everyone in the government will be dead and their grandkids will be old by the time it comes to term.
US politics can't seem to past the four-year election cycle. Biden tried with the Green New Deal, Build Back Better, and CHIPS, but you see where those landed. Severely diminished bills that narrowly passed and were among the first things on the chopping block when his successor entered office.
And yet people call it a grift because it would have taken at least 8-10 years to see the results even if it hadn't been dismantled.
The amount of systemic change that needs to happen in the political and economic landscape realistically cannot happen in under four years from start to finish. It will require long-term investments in infrastructure projects that take years to build, which means at some point voters are gonna have to be patient and stop flipping sides whenever conditions don't materially improve overnight.
In other words, we're fucked...
yeah the US really needs to learn (possibly the hard way) that there needs to be a political plan for the industry. in the 20th century apparently it could do fine without that, but that just doesn't work anymore. you can't have efficient industry without a long-term plan.
Yup, I agree wholeheartedly. Major industries, especially ones that provide basic necessities and utilities (and I'm including web access in that, because let's be honest), should all be considered public services anyway and should be provided for with tax dollars and centralized planning accountable to the constituencies.
i'll include:
all at the communal level, responsible to the citizens
I agree, but I'd also include heating (whether natural gas or otherwise) and internet access. Maybe even cell service
economists were calling for the US to do that the whole time, too, for exactly the reason that eventually something becomes the cheaper way to do something and then everyone does it. every era of innovation has been kicked off by public investment into technology that hasn't a profit right now but someday will.
the government is supposed to take a 10-30 outlook on things and act accordingly because corporations never will. they only ever look 4 months into the future.
but then, if you've been alive long enough, you probably recognize that if the government can't, or doesn't, take that long term view then the government is useless at protecting you from business and that business is just fucking you over for blood money
Happened recently in conservative Romania
Electricity doesn't fertilize crops or generate plastics or chemical feedstocks or fly you across the Atlantic in six hours.
Having free renewable electricity in a world of 8+ billion people and dwindling fossil fuels is like running your fridge for free, but it's empty.
ehh, the actual technology where liquid oil / fuels are required are like 3% of all total energy consumption. the rest 97% can be electrified, and actually, using electricity is in many cases even simpler than using coal. for example in steel production. it's easier to do with electricity than coal because coal contains sulfur and that introduces impurities into your chemical process. meanwhile electrolysis is simple and clean.
Uh...electricity makes fertilizers, runs water pumps for sprinklers and refines all the fuel.