[r3trohack3r]

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.

[burkaman]

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.

[r3trohack3r]

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.

Have any sources I can learn from?

[burkaman]

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.

[nandomrumber]

> 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.

[the_why_of_y]

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.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-03/energy-retailers-offe...

[nandomrumber]

Free electricity in the middle of the day.

That’ll come in handy for the, actually way too many people, who are home during the middle of the day.

And how does that help people who already have solar? Free electricity in the middle of the day doesn’t really help them.

And, actually, has this been implemented yet? It’s been 6 months since it was announced.

[convolvatron]

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.

[r3trohack3r]

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.

Help me understand.

[rainsford]

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.

[r3trohack3r]

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.

Will think about this for a while, thanks!

[nandomrumber]

> 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.

[3eb7988a1663]

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.

[triceratops]

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.

[amanaplanacanal]

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.

[r3trohack3r]

Fair point. But, simultaneously:

* I’m skeptical of the U.S. being able to develop domestic supply chains for this under current conditions

* “Kinetic action” does imply large swaths of U.S. infrastructure will in fact “suddenly stop working” and need to be rebuilt to maintain capacity

[amanaplanacanal]

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.

[triceratops]

More like 25 years.

[3eb7988a1663]

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.

[triceratops]

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?

[tzs]

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.

[hunterpayne]

1400 GWh of Li-ion batteries would require consuming the entire planets known Li reserves plus a bit more.

[defrost]

Got a citation from mining monthly for that?

Meanwhile, on the supply side:

  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.

~ https://www.ess-news.com/2025/01/02/the-battery-boom-of-2024...

That's 2,200 GWh produced in China in 2023.

For past / present / future data on Lithium-ion battery manufacturing capabilities, see: Lithium-ion battery manufacturing capacity, 2022-2030 from the IEA - https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/lithium-ion-b...

[bmitch3020]

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.

[nandomrumber]

> When you have a supply chain failure on oil and gas, you stop generating power.

Only if all oil and gas > energy production has one single point of failure.

In reality it’s much more distributed than that.

[breakyerself]

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

[triceratops]

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.