The featured image in the article is looks like an ecological nightmare.

https://thebulletin.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImag...

Duh? The US has a lot of easy and cheap access to fossil fuels. With Russia cut off, solar is a really easy part of the equation for a lot of countries.

Here in the US, I'd expect we wouldn't be adding much new coal or nat gas either if it weren't for all the data centers going up everywhere. The amount of electricity going into the Internet and AI is wild.

The US is choosing to make itself increasingly redundant. Increasing speed whilst in Reverse gear whilst talking as if they're highway cruising in 5th.

It's nice to know that the rest of the world is still pushing forwards, up a steep hill, in first gear. I hope it can continue, and the hill shrinks.

> “The IEA has, consistently over the last couple of decades, way underestimated how fast renewables are growing,” said Robert Brecha, a senior climate and energy adviser at Climate Analytics,

> The policy outlook for renewables in the United States is so bleak that the IEA lowered the country’s renewable capacity growth expectations by 50 percent compared to last year’s projections.

Maybe room for optimism they are underestimating what non govt supported solar growth would be in the US?

Capitalism aligns with being green, leaving right wing narrative-driven policy in a very confused state.

Apart from the obvious, another aspect of renewables that I hope will make the world a better place is the potential to be fucking free from oil and gas. Imagine the geopolitical impact of that. But, here’s a lesson from WW2. Unless we can pack the energy produced by renewables into tanks, jets, aircraft carriers and such effectively (cost, scale, etc.) nothing is gonna get meaningfully better there.

Winning here, means "are able to supply power at a price, which makes their backers money without having to invest in mines and wells"

If you hold assets which embody mines and wells, you are concerned at this point you're going to have a stranded asset. Strategically, you need the market to endure and so decisions of short term pain like dropping pricing, become important so you can stop people fleeing to other forms of energy. But, if the pricing has to drop below your cost of extraction and processing, there's a limit to how far you can go. Well, that point, for some forms of energy, was reached some time ago.

I think when the Saudi Arabian government started seriously diversifying their economy, it was a pretty strong signal.

Even in my home state (Queensland, Australia: Liberal/National right wing government, backed by coal and mining interests) the commercial realities of owning coal fired power stations has reared it's head, and the state government is making market interventions to prop up coal. It also fixes pricing decisions in state to return a significant profit to the state government with that coal price backed energy supply, which I believe is not dissimilar to Ontario. (happy to be corrected) -People are voting with their feed for rooftop domestic solar and batteries, and the pricing spiral continues.

They could do what the other (Labor) states are doing and get with renewables. They just cancelled pumped hydro, wind and solar deployments on pretty thin logic, but they can't stop the private sector and the move there is pretty clear: It's just cheaper as a path to profit, to sell electricity based on renewables right now. If you don't own a giant hole in the ground of coal generation, you get your money back faster building anything else BUT coal fired power now.

Luddites can't stop progress. But they'll try to slow it down.

Here's a counterpoint: https://brawlstreetjournal.substack.com/p/dead-man-walking

> According to a recent study by the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, annual investment in the energy, industry, building, and transport sectors would have to more than double if current energy policies were to continue: from an average of around €82 billion between 2020 and 2024 to somewhere between €113 billion to €316 billion in 2035. Early transition models had projected a fraction of that.

We'll see, but I don't know what to believe anymore. In particular, Germany's deindustrialization is unmistakeable and expensive energy may be the culprit.