[mekdoonggi]

Norway has abundant hydropower. But like you've mentioned, this transition will happen in Australia and US, it might just take longer due to incentives.

Particularly for the Southern US, I feel that the costs will continue to drop until the transition will be very sudden, and there will be a rude awakening of sorts.

[wil421]

What are the returns for a landowner leasing a solar farm vs passively growing pines? My state has a lot of land to use and a good portion of the rural part is pine. Some landowners harvest pine trees on unused land.

[adregan]

For pines, not great. Timber farming was so heavily encourage for so many years that there is a glut and prices have stayed about the same in real dollars for decades.

Solar panel leases are so long (50 years on top of the decade to interconnect), so they come with additional negatives as you are often signing up the next generation for a relationship that they had no say in.

[small_scombrus]

> What are the returns for a landowner leasing a solar farm

Depending on what you're doing with your land, you can multi-use solar farm + grazing, or solar farm + some crops which increases it's value.

[adefu]

A rude awakening?

[mekdoonggi]

As in, the rest of the world transitions with economical EV's, panels, and batteries from China while the US protects its auto market.

The rude awakening is when US customers used to buying $60k gas guzzlers are able to buy a $20k EV.

[seanmcdirmid]

The US would lose its superpower status before that happens, the awakening won’t be so drastic because we would have already started sliding into being a much poorer country than we are today. It’s already started at any rate.

[mekdoonggi]

I should say, a surprise for anyone who is completely unaware of the developments around the world, which a lot of people in the US are.

I don't this requires the loss of "superpower" status really. Already, if you dropped all EV, solar, battery tariffs in Florida, I think people there would be blindsided by how fast things start to take over.

[seanmcdirmid]

I guess, but I doubt it would even happen before American unambiguously lost its #1 status. They simply won't allow those products into the states until they acknowledge that they actually need them.

At least the rest of the world is going to get richer in the meantime.

[tonyedgecombe]

A surprising and unpleasant discovery that one is mistaken.