[SoftTalker]

This is more from a lot of coal power plants being converted to gas over the past 20 years than solar overtaking the outputs of those power plants. Coal output shrinking, solar output rising, the lines have crossed.

Coal is unpopular in all but a few areas where coal mining is still a part of the local econonmy. I used to work near a coal plant and every day I'd go out to my car and it would have little black particles all over it. Nobody likes that, no matter what the President says.

[Retric]

Total electricity produced by coal + gas is down over the last 20 years. Total electricity production is up, the difference is from wind and solar.

This administration swapped to actively suppressing Wind and Solar via tariffs etc, and yet the trends continued because the underlying economic reality heavily favors battery backed solar.

[rtkwe]

I think that's part of what's notable about this. The administration hasn't been able to reverse the trend despite putting a massive thumb on the scale against projects like offshore wind and tariffs on solar panel imports.

There's probably a delay in the effects though since projects started before they took office are probably starting to thin out and finish up. We'd have to look into the permitting of new projects or wait for to see how big the decline in new capacity turns out to be in a couple years.

[tedggh]

A lot of comes from state initiatives too. Texas being conservative also happens to be very pro solar. I’m in the business and we have some great projects there. The US military is also pushing solar at their facilities. Then you have many private-state partnerships like tolls investing a lot in solar. The outlook in general is pretty positive in the US, a lot more than what people would think.

[wavemode]

Anyone who still even views this as a conservative/liberal issue, is someone who is in the pocket of the fossil fuel lobby. Solar is simply a very cheap and realiable way to generate electricity. Much cheaper than gas and coal nowadays. Pure economic incentive is going to continue to drive its adoption.

[pornel]

As someone from another continent, I giggle when I see doomsday-prepping anti-govmint fiercely-independent cowboys hating EVs and loving gas.

Gas has a 6-month shelf-life, and is attached to a whole geopolitically volatile military-industrial complex. Meanwhile an EV + solar can be actually self-sufficient and last for a decade or two. A realistic Mad Max would have been EV battles over solar panels.

[glenstein]

I also recall a New York times article from many moons ago suggesting that a lot of Texas oil wealth got repurposed into a large-scale wind energy infrastructure, but my info might be out of date.

[rtkwe]

True though one of the major things they have been able to do because it's mostly in the federal purview is killing offshore wind.

[gimmeThaBeet]

It's sort a "broken clock right twice a day" thing, but I agree with not doing offshore wind in the US. The divergence immediately follows in that I wish they would just push onshore wind.

It's sort of a circular issue, it's madly expensive because we haven't built a lot and aren't super good at it, and we don't get much of it built because we aren't great at it and it always is ludicrously expensive.

The US has a uniquely underdeveloped maritime sector, we don't build a lot of the massive turbines you use offshore. You drive through central and west texas, it feels like there might be more wind turbines than people. We've kind of already made the decision based on what works.

[_carbyau_]

I think the idea of offshore wind is nice. There is a lot of ocean out there and by putting the "ugly" (I don't mind them.) turbines out of sight we get the best of both worlds.

But the realities of the idea - the engineering - is problematic.

The ocean is a harsh environment and maintaining something deliberately put out of the way in a harsher environment is far more expensive.

[leonidasrup]

Tariffs on solar panel imports should stimulate domestic solar panel production, but only when they are high enough and applied long enough to justify investments into new solar panel manufacturing facilities.

[SoftTalker]

Like you can't avoid gravity, you can't avoid economic reality. Not in the long term anyway.

[KennyBlanken]

It's especially notable because there isn't just the thumb against offshore wind, solar panel tariffs, and even EVs. Chinese EVs can't be imported because of tariffs and many conservative states a pretending that EV drivers "don't pay their fair share because they don't buy gas" - except most gas taxes haven't been adjusted in multiple decades and don't even begin to pay for the cost of maintaining roads. Fuel taxes are a tiny portion of any state revenue.

There has always been a massive thumb on the scale in the form of tax breaks, direct subsidies (billions a year alone on this), land leasing, etc for fossil fuels and their use. Favorable public policy. And what the IMF calls implicit subsidies - the cost of impact on the climate/environment and people's health.

When a refinery is pumping out pollution and everyone in the area is getting sicker than people in similar areas - that costs us as insurance ratepayers and taxpayers.

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-hidden-ways-the-g...

https://www.imf.org/en/topics/climate-change/energy-subsidie...

...to name a few. A simple google search will turn up dozens more.

And yet what is the first critique of solar and wind by right wingers? "It's only cheaper because of all my tax dollars going to subsidizing them."

Federal, state, and local subsidies for green energy and EVs are a drop in the bucket.

[dpkirchner]

Unfortunately this is one of the few cases where both sides are close to the same -- they both chose to heavily tariff foreign EVs. Something to remember when Democrats talk about climate change.

[tialaramex]

It's the same in the UK. The CfD "subsidy" mechanism for solar power results in the solar farms paying us money almost every day - including today - but you will still see right wing politicians vow to eliminate this "subsidy".

[jasondigitized]

The invisible hand of the market will always win

[coryrc]

The numbers for 2014-2024: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/table.php?t=epa_03_01...

I doubted what you wrote, but everything you said is correct (for the last 10 years, at least). Over the time period, natural gas increased 740 TWh/year (to 1870) and coal decreased 940 TWh/year (to 650). Electricity production is up ~7%, but that's quite low compared to the growth of everything else.

> This administration swapped to actively suppressing Wind and Solar via tariffs etc

Biden's administration put on solar tariffs, but of course I'll grant the current administration is fucking up everything else possible.

[Retric]

Plenty of blame to go around, my understanding of the timeline is:

Trumps first administration put in solar Tariffs with China (25%), Biden administration increased them with China (50%), 2nd Trump administration increased those and applied solar Tariffs to other countries. Though honestly I’ve largely stopped paying attention at this point.

Solar adoption increased through all of that.

[pfdietz]

A new coal-fired power plant hasn't come online in the US since 2013, IIRC.

[3eb7988a1663]

Biden also put out a bunch of incentives in the IRA to encourage domestic solar panel production.

[mbgerring]

It’s also from focused efforts to close coal plants, and rapid, massive deployment of solar in the last 20 years, and new technology emerging (better batteries and dispatch technologies) to make solar into a 24/7 resource.

For whatever reason, there’s a strong motivation for people to dismiss the gigantic global effort to transition the energy system away from fossil fuels, and claim that all that effort isn’t really doing anything. Thankfully, this is not true — determined people can change things for the better.

[KennyBlanken]

> It’s also from focused efforts to close coal plants,

For many years coal has been more expensive than solar and wind. That's why utilities are decommissioning the plants.

[mbgerring]

It’s true, and the strategy of climate activists in the early 2000s and 2010s was to do everything they could to make coal and other fossil fuels as expensive as possible: by reducing access to capital, increasing the cost of legal and regulatory hurdles, sometime delaying projects through physical blockades, etc etc.

[amanaplanacanal]

It would be nice if we could get industries to pay for the pollution they cause, but I'll take what I can get.

[ZeroGravitas]

Some utilities didn't have direct market pressures to close coal because they were regulated and the regulator allowed them to recover costs plus a profit on top.

[ToucanLoucan]

> For whatever reason, there’s a strong motivation for people to dismiss the gigantic global effort to transition the energy system away from fossil fuels, and claim that all that effort isn’t really doing anything.

Because renewable energy is Communism, or something.

But seriously: $$$$. The Fossil Fuel industry, before it finally dies, will make big Tobacco look downright merciful. The owners of these companies and their media co-conspirators should be tried in the Hague for what they have done to our planet just to keep making fucking money.

[jwr]

> The Fossil Fuel industry, before it finally dies, will make big Tobacco look downright merciful.

This should not be surprising when one realizes that this industry is the biggest industry that humanity ever created (in terms of monetary value). Nothing ever is or was bigger than energy from fossil fuels. Predictably, those who profit from this, behave like selfish [...] and fight tooth and nail to keep their profits.

[pfdietz]

Energy is 10% of global GDP, about $10 T a year.

I remember this when anyone complains large scale use of solar and wind would be expensive. So is large scale use of any energy source.

[ZeroGravitas]

Putting the planet aside for a moment, the unnecessary death and illness they've inflicted on the human race will be staggering.

[SoftTalker]

I would disagree, I think that plentiful affordable energy has been a huge benefit to the human race. Transportation, refrigeration, manufacturing, simply having electricity in the home, most everything we take for granted in terms of our current standard of living traces back to abundant and cheap energy.

But there is no reason to hang on to the old, dirty technology if there are now better alternatives. And if the economics work, the market will follow, as it seems to be doing. You can't fake lower costs.

Nuclear should have replaced coal decades ago but the economics didn't actually work, even though the environmental benefit would have been real.

[ToucanLoucan]

Oh for fucking sure. I consider humans as much a part of the planet as anything else, but also very valid to call it out specifically.

Mass death of species too numerous to name, the biosphere itself, property damage from rising ocean levels, the soon to fail air currents, all the damage and death from extreme weather events, all of it. All of it could've been fucking prevented and it wasn't, because profits.

I wish I believed in hell for people like this.

[epistasis]

No, this is actually solar's output increasing.

Natural gas's share of electricity generation has been falling for five years straight:

https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/gas-share-in-global...

[bryanlarsen]

That's a link to a global chart. The OP is talking about the US. It's not surprising that countries that have to import natural gas are moving away from it and countries with plentiful local suppliew are doubling down on it.

[epistasis]

I'm not seeing that in US data either. Here's data from a top web hit:

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...

The 10-year change 2015 to 2025 is:

- Gas: +472 TWh, +35%

- Renewables: +525 TWh, +97%

Saying that this is more gas than coal is certainly not the case borne out by the numbers, even in the US, the one place where gas is as cheap as dirt due to it being a by-product of fracking.

[tolciho]

> have little black particles all over it. Nobody likes that, no matter what the President says.

Should you live near one of those big noisy "freeway" things you may note the little black particles over everything in the surroundings but nobody likes to tear down the interstate.

[kibwen]

> nobody likes to tear down the interstate

Lots of urban areas in the US have been resisting, tearing down, and/or relocating major roads since the freeway revolts of the 1970s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_revolts_in_the_United_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_removal

[bob1029]

Some of these plants are being retrofitted for dual firing. They can burn coal & natural gas at the same time. I wonder how that factors into these statistics.

[toomuchtodo]

The world is, roughly, deploying 1TW/solar PV a year at current rates. It took a while to get here, it won’t take as long to get to 100%.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...

[SoftTalker]

Storage is the issue. You still need to supply base load (well, all load) at night.

[horsawlarway]

LFPs are cheap and safe, with very good cycle counts.

Sodium seems to be actually hitting real commercial production volumes (ex - GM just announced a sodium ramp up days ago, CATL has been producing them for a while). I expect we'll see sodium mature a good bit over the next decade (right now - it's just not quite as good as LFP, but it has a lot of promise in temperature extremes and cheap input materials)

So sure - storage is an issue. But it's not THE issue anymore. It costs surprisingly little to get enough LFP storage to cover an entire house at modest usage for days at a time (ex - under 10k for 42.9KWh of storage, UL approved https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-wallmount-all-weather-lithium...)

So yes - storage remains something to consider. But I think pretending that storage is a constraint that should stop PV rollout is... cough... bullshit cough...

Let industry that needs it pull from existing generation at night, convert residential to solar as fast as possible. Subsidize residential battery rollout the same way we do for insulation and other efficiency improving home improvements (which to be clear - we were doing prior to the current admin).

China isn't fucking around on the solar front, and the continued excuses in US from entrenched interests tangled up in the oil industry are criminal.

[3eb7988a1663]

I suspect sodium is better than lithium today. The win is that sodium is much more forgiving of high temperatures so they can be run without cooling fans/pumps. Lithium battery installations are actually loud owing to all of their cooling infrastructure.

No cooling means the sodium batteries are easier/cheaper to maintain (no mechanical failures). Maybe not as energy dense, but you could still come out ahead long term when accounting for Capex+Opex.

[horsawlarway]

Seems likely. But I can't buy sodium ion today like I can LFP.

The chemistry definitely seems to be better than LFP long term, but higher manufacturing costs and low scale means it's just not as available.

CATL is predicting that they'll hit price parity for sodium against LFP this year, commercial scaling still needs to happen, though.

Meanwhile, manufacturers can pick up prismatic LFP from all sorts of places, at great prices (ex - https://www.18650batterystore.com/collections/lifepo4-prisma...)

[bryanlarsen]

You can by sodium ion batteries today. They're more expensive, but work better in the cold.

https://www.bluettipower.com/products/sodium-ion-battery-pio...

[michaelbuckbee]

I think it's your last point that's actually the strongest.

There's always gaps between theoretical and practical, but to see China investing so hard in the future while the US digs in it's heels is infuriating.

[mrtesthah]

>...while the US digs in it's heels is infuriating.

And we shouldn't imply that this policy represents any sort of national consensus -- it's pure corruption plain and simple.

[mullingitover]

It's also sabotage of all domestic manufacturing.

The price of energy sets a floor on the price of all manufactured goods. By kneecapping the cheapest sources of energy, the regime kneecaps all domestic manufacturers.

China's aggressive buildout of cost effective energy production isn't because they're 'woke,' it's because it makes them more competitive. Every product they export at low prices is in part due to the their extremely cheap energy.

It's like the regime looked at the UK's collapsing manufacturing industry due to their high energy costs and said "I want that for us!"

[quantified]

Corruption that concentrates on one party whether that party is in or out of power, too.

[toomuchtodo]

China exported 68GW of solar PV in March 2026, double the prior month and 14GW more than total solar PV capacity installed in Spain.

Chinese solar exports double in a month to hit record high amid energy crisis - https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/chinese-solar-export... - April 23rd, 2026

https://ember-energy.org/data/chinas-solar-pv-export-explore...

https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...

[oblio]

I read some interesting things about crazy sounding technologies like vanadium flow and iron batteries. I think we're at most 10 years away from storage being not fully solved, but becoming an enabler more than a bottleneck.

[XorNot]

Vanadium flow batteries are more expensive and less durable then LFP and the price won't come down because Vanadium is an expensive metal to get.

They were interesting but the whole concept just has problems and has for over a decade at this point despite commercialisation efforts.

Same story with iron: it's out there, but the scale on LFP and likely Sodium is going to shoot right past it.

[idiotsecant]

No, storage (and transmission) are, in fact, THE issue. They always were. Solar is cheap and easy to install. Balancing a net zero grid without storage and with the pitiful transmission we have now is simply not possible. See: california.

The entire CAISO is a power laundering scheme to allow california to have publicly have huge amounts of solar power that overproduces enormously (including strongly negative power prices for a good chink of day) and still import dirty base load power quietly.

If storage was simple to solve, it would be solved. Chemical storage simply doesn't exist at the required scale and we don't like to build the one thing that we could, right this second - pumped storage.

We are already massively overbuilding solar. We would be well serv d to stop building panels and start building pump storage and transmission lines to distribute the stuff we've already got, but nobody makes a political career announcing a new transmission line.

[bryanlarsen]

California? The state that hasn't had a blackout since 2020, the state with the lowest wholesale electricity cost, by far?

https://cleantechnica.com/2026/05/30/california-lowest-whole...

[toomuchtodo]

It is solved. Citations below.

When the sun sets, batteries rise: 24/7 solar in California - https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/02/17/when-the-sun-sets-bat... - February 17th, 2026

Natural gas use for electricity in California falls as solar generation rises - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=66704 - November 24th, 2025

California's solar and battery combo packs a transformational punch - https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/californias-sola... - October 3rd, 2025

California solar curtailment down 12% on back of batteries - https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/07/22/california-solar-curt... - July 22nd, 2025 ("For the first five months of 2025, CAISO data showed solar electricity curtailment declined by 12% as a share of generation, falling from 13% to 11.5%, even as solar output grew 18% year over year. During this period, however, curtailment still rose 4.1% in absolute terms, with March showing a 28% increase, matching the prior year’s peak.")

Batteries Taking Charge of the California Grid - https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/ - May 6th, 2024

Batteries are scaling up faster than ever in the US, enabling record solar growth to continue and reducing fossil fuel use. - https://ember-energy.org/chapter/the-rise-of-batteries-plus-...

> In 2024, California and Nevada led the nation in solar power, becoming the first states to surpass 30% annual solar share, with California hitting 32% and Nevada 31% – the highest shares of any state. But the transition is uneven – while some states are surging ahead, others are just beginning to see significant growth.

> Batteries are essential for the rise of solar, allowing solar to meet growing demand and displacing gas and coal generation. Across the US, the growth of batteries is accelerating alongside solar, with 1 MW of storage being added for every 3 MW of solar added in 2024.

California Energy Storage System Survey - https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Contrary to popular belief, solar panels don't generate zero power on cloudy days.

They typically generate 10-25% of their maximum output on the cloudiest of days. Most cloudy days are not maximally cloudy.

We don't need solar panels everywhere to get even close to ~100% renewables (with nuclear, wind, new geothermal, and hydro). The areas where you put them are distributed enough that it would be exceptionally rare to ever encounter a meaningful need to ration.

So, storage is an issue, but not as big of an issue as most people think, and we do not generate anywhere near enough solar energy for it to be a reasonable concern yet...

There's also more solutions than just conventional batteries. There's pumped hydro, etc...

[Marsymars]

> They typically generate 10-25% of their maximum output on the cloudiest of days. Most cloudy days are not maximally cloudy.

If you're at higher latitudes, this is notably less of a drop-off than you see between high/low season.

My friends with residential solar see <10% overall output in January vs July. (~60% drop from fewer sunshine hours, ~80% drop from decreased solar irradiance.)

[jwr]

This gets complex quickly, because temperature matters too: cells are more efficient when they are cold. These effects interact and the results are sometimes surprising.

Many pure-numbers theoretical comparisons also make the assumption that you can consume all the power that the cells generate, which is not always the case. In an off-grid installation with a battery, for example, you might not be able to consume everything, depending on the month of the year. Practical example: my installation gets some of peak usage numbers in March/April, because that's when it's still cold and I use the power for heating. The cells are cold, I need the power, and there is some sunshine, all this combines. It's not obvious.

[Marsymars]

Yeah, I mean these aren't entirely theoretical, like observationally, people I know locally are getting <10% January vs July generation - I'm working backwards to get the relative proportion of the drops due to solar hours vs irradiance.

They all have a relatively generous (I think - I'm not especially familiar with policies anywhere else) grid policy where they sell back any over-production in the summer. (They switch between summer/winter rates, so in the summer they buy/sell at ~35c/kWh and in the winter they buy/sell at ~8c/kWh. These rates are only effective as long as you don't have a net-surplus of generation in the year, so it doesn't make sense economically to oversize the system for more winter generation, as then you'll be generating more in the summer than you can use or sell back.)

[jaggederest]

Curtailment and dump loads are pretty straightforward, though, so using all the power isn't as critical as people might imagine either.

It's better to overbuild the dc-to-ac ratio moderately and just accept that on a summer noon you'll be dumping or curtailing, and still get useful percentages in the winter. I'm in the fortunate position of having an essentially infinite dump load (water pumping and heating) that would effectively turn most of my solar into real usage, but even most people can preheat a hot water tank and things like that. With electric cars it's even better.

[flumes_whims_]

But they do generate zero power at night.

[oblio]

And people use less energy at night. Yes, they do need heating/cooling and a few other things at night, but the peak is during the day and in the evening.

This argument is almost closed at this point, with PV + batteries being quite price competitive. We're no longer in 2018.

[fragmede]

Solution? Send large mirrors into space so it never stops shining.

https://www.reflectorbital.com/

[magicalhippo]

That surely won't interfere with the ecosystem at all! /s

[hyperhello]

The main load is during the day when the sun shines anyway, and then the seasonally changing periods before and after, basically ramping when people are getting up, then dropping off while people are going to bed. On the west side of a continent, the power for the ramp can come from the east because the sun shines earlier there; on the west the sun shines later and the east can get power. At night, there are still nuclear and other plants, and it is very foreseeable that installations of ground battery technology will have been in place well before twentieth century plants are retired.

[pdq]

High load in the day during sunlight is mostly true for summer heat, but in the winter you have cold evenings which requires base load or storage, combined with solar angle/efficiency being worse in the winter.

[nicoburns]

> in the winter you have cold evenings which requires base load or storage

If the energy is for heating then there is always the option of storing the energy as heat. Which is much simpler than storing electricity.

[Broken_Hippo]

Actually, the US uses more power during the day in the summer - there is a dropoff in the night for both summer and winter. Night time use is somewhat similar. [1]

Cooling takes more energy than warming, so the summer daytime use is higher. Summer = warm evenings. I'm from Indiana - it was almost always cooler at 10am than 7pm, even in the winter. It takes time to heat up or cool down. I'll also mention that nights and weekends use less power because business and industry tend to shut down during these times.

Which would somewhat logically mean that despite the efficiency being worse during winter, it isn't as much of a strain because power demands are less.

[1]https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915

[ssl-3]

Yeah, it's imperfect.

Does that mean that it is untenable?

[Retric]

Not quite, current nighttime load is largely a function of cheaper nighttime rates. People don’t set their EV’s to charge from 11-5AM because that’s the only time their cars are plugged in. If rates crater at noon on Sunday, there’s many an EV happy to suck up power then.

So yes batteries are going to continue to grow rapidly, but it’s a smaller role than it might seem.

[Paradigma11]

Great, so now not only is power production nondeterministic, your cars tank also is. It was too expensive and the algorithm decided to wait charging, so no spontaneous road trip for you, sorry.

[jaggederest]

As an electric car owner, this is absolutely the biggest non-problem ever. If you're planning a long journey, you push one button at some point over the preceeding week and it charges to full regardless of price.

[Retric]

There’s nothing non deterministic about cheaper daytime rates as you scale solar production. Net result, lower average electricity prices but a slow rise in nighttime rates across decades.

Similarly people respond to price changes, that’s the foundation for how capitalism functions. You don’t need to care, but many people will choose to save money when possible.

[notahacker]

I mean, assuming you don't zero your charge out when returning home, you could just take a few minutes to use a rapid charger part way through the journey...

[jillesvangurp]

The whole point about modern gas/coal plants is that it's relatively cheap to shut them down and start them up again. They are backup power, not for providing inflexible base load. Batteries + renewables are taking a lot of market share and flexible backup power is much more important than baseload (inflexible power like nuclear)

[pstuart]

Gas is faster to respond, coal, not so much.

From the Goog:

Starting up a coal-fired power station depends heavily on the plant's current temperature, taking anywhere from 2 to 48 hours to reach full operational capacity. Because of massive metal boilers and turbines, the heating process must be slow to prevent severe thermal fatigue and equipment damage. [1, 2] The startup time is broken down by the plant's previous state:

  • Hot Start (less than 8 hours offline): 2 to 4 hours. The boiler and equipment are still warm, allowing for a relatively quick resumption of steam production. 
  • Warm Start (8 to 120 hours offline): 4 to 8 hours. 
  • Cold Start (More than 120 hours offline): 12 to 48 hours. The plant must be heated from room temperature, which involves initially burning expensive natural gas or diesel just to safely warm the furnace and metal pipes before coal can be introduced. [1, 3, 5]

To explore how these heavy thermal operations impact the broader electricity supply, you can review the U.S. Energy Information Administration's grid reliability data or dive deeper into the technical challenges via the Environmental Protection Agency's Coal Startup Report. [6] If you are interested in the broader power market, let me know:

[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-its-not-that-easy-to-start-operati...

[2] https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-a-thermal-po...

[3] https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-11/documents/ma...

[4] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-minimum-time-required-by-s...

[5] https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/inflexible-fossil-fuels/

[6] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45956

[ssl-3]

We can keep some of that coal-fired stuff around and use it periodically.

It's OK. Winter happens every year.

When the market needs that power, then the market will have to pay for it.

[cduzz]

These days I think "at night" is mostly covered or at least could be mostly covered both by wind and batteries.

The "base load" question may still be appropriate for deep winter, high (or low) latitudes, etc, but renewables are getting there pretty fast.

[idontwantthis]

Grid batteries are being deployed everywhere every day and the cost including storage is now lower than fossil fuels.

[brendoelfrendo]

It's not, grid-scale batteries are being deployed all over the world, and newer batteries keep getting better and cheaper. Storage hasn't been the issue for years.

[ben_w]

To be fair, it depends if you were looking at "price/unit" or "sum of factory output".

The former, even a few years ago, I agree. The latter, people were arguing about a year or two ago. (Though your point remains as the trend was clear).

[pydry]

The fossil fuel lobbies want us to believe it is a way bigger problem than it is.

The people who echo that sentiment without educating themselves are giving them a helping hand.

[pstuart]

True, but battery advancements are ongoing at a rapid pace. Sodium-ion is now viable and will be a mainstay in grid storage. Ignoring ideology, this path is plain cheaper than anything else.

[ViewTrick1002]

Solar has also overtaken fossil gas.

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/renewables...