> If Europe is a big customer for Chinese exports, and Russia is antagonizing, it seems like China would have an incentive to put pressure on Russia.

China wants Russia to at least keep the Ukraine war going, if not eventually win the darn thing. Russia winning (or getting away with an armistice that lets them keep Crimea and Donbas) means a precedence China has for a land-grab of its own - obviously Taiwan, but other countries in its "sphere of influence" have seen hostilities for years, from land grabs [1] to overfishing [2], not to mention the border dispute with India.

And as long as we are distracted with Israel/Palestine or Ukraine/Russia, China has free rein to do whatever they want.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_So...

[2] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/energy-world/chinas-overfi...

China is happy as a clam that Russia is self-isolating and destroying their internal economy. The natural resources of Russia are vast and if China is the only one exploiting them and funneling them into the Chinese economy it'd be an excellent outcome. I don't think China is opposed to strong economies as trade partners but dependent economies are much easier to control and monopolize.

If Europe were a big customer for Russia energy, it seems like Russia would have an incentive to not antagonize it.

Oh, see how well it went.

And that's $1000 per year at today's energy prices, which surely will go up over time.

And that on-roof-solar helps (as it becomes widespread) mitigate the growing need for additional grid capacity. Canada is a big country and, outside the major cities, upgrading grid capacity is quite expensive per capita. It's a win-win in Canada, investing in self-sufficiency while reducing the maintenance burden of infrastructure.

The Greener Homes Grant and Greener Homes Loan you describe have ended, but the 160% tarrif on imported solar panels remains. Solar prices in Canada are still quite expensive, and regulations are needlessly strict. Solar fencing is illegal in many jurisdictions, balcony solar is illegal everywhere, and utility-scale solar is effectively prohibited in the regions with the most sunlight.

Solar production in Canada will continue to grow, but we're not doing nearly as much as Europe to encourage it.

It's not always a no-brainer. If you live in a good established neighborhood in a warmer climate you'd have to remove tree coverage. Even if you did that, it's the other guys not oil or gas that will make it a hassle.

Missing from your calculus is the cost of creating, cleaning, maintaining and eventually replacing the hardware. None of that is "free" - it is merely externalized to a vulnerable population or to your future self.

Canada is blessed with cheap energy, the abundance of hydro surely helps to bridge any intermittency other renewables have. I lived there 10 years back, your energy is less than half the cost of mine in Scotland. In Scotland's case we're part of the UK and the rest of the UK is less blessed with the geography for hydro. The incumbent Scottish government also has an anti stance to nuclear.

I hope the incentives for cleaner energy continue to stack up. With the surge in demand from AI surely productivity will be more tightly coupled with energy usage and cost.

450W-500W solar panels are as low as 52€ here in Germany if you buy a couple of them. Batteries are also very affordable and I look forward to them getting a lot cheaper soon, thanks to Sodium-Ion.

What? No Canada isn't cheap solar power -- last I checked rooftop ballasted solar is a 12-14 year payback on avoided costs. Inverter will go beforehand and that excludes any op costs. 8k$ free loan doesn't really provide as much value as you would think.

FWIW - I am all for solar but selling rooftop solar in canada as cheap and no-brainer is false.

3-4 year payback would be a no brainer. 8-13 year payback with an inverter upgrade and op-costs is definitely a decision that needs to be thought out.

The grid you are offsetting is fairly green to begin with so the net benefit is marginal.

If you are going to be isolated and put backup power into the equation. You ROI tanks further but at least you have about a day or two worth of energy in the storage asset.

We have similar problem with prices being high despise renewable energy being cheap ;/

What is the underlying reason in the US though? You would think if they are artificially inflated prices the market would fix that. What I’ve found is that a large part of the cost is the actual labor for the installation, how are other developed countries getting around this?

>Australia has so much electricity during the day they’re talking about making I free for everyone in the middle of the day.

Not just talking about it, if you get a smart meter and sign up for a plan that matches the grid rates you can actually be paid to take electricity during the day right now.

If you're wondering "couldn't you just make bank with a battery" yes you can. In fact Australia dominates the world in grid connected storage (per capita) and this chart itself is actually out of date (it's growing even faster than shown).

https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/top-20-countries-by-ba...

I'll also point out that gas and oil generation has declined rapidly.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/the-rise-of-battery-storage-and-...

For anyone that thinks renewables can't phase out peaker plants it happens very naturally and rapidly once there's enough solar to set rates negative in the day.

> Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians.

It would be worth including control of the people who vote for the politicians by direct investment such as when the oil producing Saudis bought the second largest stake in NewCorps which controls FoxNews controlling the content that influences voters. And, less than ethical control using bots on social media by Russia.

A lot of what influences "solar prices in the US" is controlled by foreign oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia controlling content and media consumed by American voters.

>Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians. >Canada here. 7.6kw on our roof for $0 out of pocket thanks to $5k grant and $8k interest free loan.

This very well may be true, but taken at face value Canada seems to be paying you around $7k to install solar panels on your roof (that's 8k interest free loan is losing out to inflation + any interest it would have earned).

Definitely a great deal if you own a home, if I was a renter/condo owner I'd be annoyed that everyone is subsidizing your free solar however.

US also tariffs Chinese EV makers out of the US market so they can keep peddling the fiction that EV sucks or China can't build anything we can't.

This has the same corrupt nexus with the anti-renewable mantra. Essentially subsidize oil and gas under the table and punish renewables then tell the electorate that the latter is worse than the former.

Instead of giving Americans free choice American automakers pay American politicians to prop up their uncompetitive prices and subpar offerings. All while they take in huge private profits. American workers could work on foreign automobiles, just as they do with other automakers not from China. It's not about workers, it's not about national security. You don't even have to go into all the environmental concerns that of course disproportionately affect poorer individuals.

It's corporate welfare. And yes, it should be criminal. At the very least, if the American people are going to inflate CEOs salaries they should have seats on the board.

This is actually not a wild idea. You might be surprised to find who one of the largest shareholders of the Volkswagen group is. It's not like that is an obviously mismanaged socialist hellhole company, it's a perfectly competitive and well regarded car company.

Americans need to start demanding more equity or oversight in operations their governments are already paying for. The fact most Americans think this amounts to communism just means more people have to call out the money is already flowing.

>Canada here. 7.6kw on our roof for $0 out of pocket thanks to $5k grant and $8k interest free loan.

€13.000 for this still seems expensive.

Are there tariffs on Chinese PV in Canada?

The quotes for solar on my home in the US ranged between $40,000 (local company) and $120,000 (Tesla). How did you get solar installed for only $13,000?

At the end of the day, the retail cost of electricity in many EU member countries can be two to three times the cost of electricity in the US. Ultimately that’s what matters to consumers and businesses.

Also, Trump called out the idiotic decisions by greenies such as shutting down nuclear power plants and make long your industries less competitive as a result.

Declining industrially and demographically, no innovation, soaring energy prices, and our share of the world economy has shrunk for ten years straight and is projected to continue shrinking in the future. By all metrics us europeans are losers.

Have you considered that what you're paying for isn't just energy now, but energy security in the future?

Looking at the data it seems that uk industrial electricity is the most expensive before taxes, is that not correct?

The social and environmental cost part is being removed in April and should save around 15-20% of the bill. I guess that is what you mean by net zero taxes?

> due to the stupid Net Zero taxes.

No. Citation neede. The issue is the moronic way energy auctions are done, first by setting the price to the highest source that can satisfy (always gas) but ignoring (!) geography. Then, phase 2, dropping the impossible providers (i.e. Scottish hydro in the North for South England), and doing another (much more expensive pass). The Octopus CEO had a succinct explainer recently, can't find the video...

Found it: https://youtu.be/5WgS-Dsm31E?t=91 starts at 1:31

This is a glib statement that disregards a massive amount of complexity.

Energy is not expensive because of Net Zero taxes. Here's a breakdown of the average UK electricity bill over time [1]. The Renewables Obligation, that subsidised wind and solar at a time when they were infeasible without subsidies, was a scheme that ran between 2002 and 2017. It was stopped once renewables became cheaper than the alternatives. We will continue to pay for the renewable plants set up back in the day, but this will gradually taper off. In this electricity bill estimate for 2030 [2], you'll find that the Renewables Obligation is much lower (£17 rather than £102) for two reasons: plants losing subsidies as they age out and a chunk of the subsidy being borne by the treasury from general taxation.

So why aren't electricity bills coming down? Because we're recognising the reality that we will need to be powered by a mix of nuclear, wind and solar. Check out this real time dashboard of electricity generation in the UK [3], which shows you how Wind has zoomed in the last 14 years. From 2GW to 14GW, wind is now the single largest source of energy generated in the UK.

Wind is only going to grow, because it is cheap compared to the alternatives. In the Jan 2026 auction for wind power, an 8.4GW contract was awarded for a price 40% lower than the cost of a gas power plant. And unlike gas you aren't at the vagaries of global gas prices, like we were in 2022.

And now you're thinking, if wind is so cheap and we're continuing to build more, why is the estimate for the 2030 electricity bill higher than 2025? The 2030 page explains this - the wind is being built in the North Sea, far from where it is needed - in the South of England. This means investing in the transmission network, which will cost £70B over the next 5 years. That cost will be passed onto consumers.

So no, bills aren't high because of renewables. The decision to double down on wind, solar, batteries and nuclear by the previous and current government are sound. We will be more energy independent than we were in 2022 and possibly paying a bit less in overall bills. The reduction in carbon emissions is a nice bonus.

[1] - https://www.electricitybills.uk

[2] - https://www.electricitybills.uk/2030

[3] - https://grid.iamkate.com

What does this have to do with the topic?

This seems very much like AI-generated karma farming. Sorry if it isn't, then you should work on actually contributing to the discussion.

(As an aside, I'm from Groningen/NL :))

How much did Russia's recent invasion of Ukraine and nat gas price and supply changes accelerate things?

This is an important observation. For years these headlines came with asterisks - one sunny/windy day, excludes gas, new capacity only, etc. This being actual annual generation for wind+solar combined vs all fossil fuels is genuinely significant. The compounding nature of it is key too - solar capacity is now large enough that even modest percentage growth adds enormous absolute capacity each year.

The “but” this time is that we are talking about electricity demand, not total energy demand. Electrification of heating is the next big milestone.

It’s still a great trend.

Renewables lead to energy independence and a more distributed energy grid. It's fundamental to security, and can't be so easily measured in terms of money. The EU is increasing its independence from China via initiatives like the Net-Zero Industry Act. And this talk of "politicians being bought by Chinese companies" is laughable in the face of what oil companies are doing, to the benefit of exporters like USA, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other regimes, and definitively not the EU.

> Electricity/heating and gasoline in the EU is many times more expensive than in the U.S.

Maybe because Europe as a whole has little to no signifcant oil reserves ready for extraction? Very much unlike the US.

> I would think that most people would happily choose lower prices over clean energy and paper straws.

The US does have plenty of cheap energy and yet its industrial output is dwarfed by Chinas, which is increasingly relying on domestically products green tech. Also, people seem to be not very concerned with energy prices. If they were, they would not act as irrational when it comes to topics like heatpumps or electric vehicles.

> that it almost makes you think that politicians are being bought by Chinese companies/government.

Looking at the energy policy of some countries (Germany specifically), it seems vastly more likely that politicans are bought by oil companies.

EU electricity prices are high, but attributing this to renewables is backwards. Wholesale electricity prices drop when wind and solar are producing - that's been documented extensively. The high prices are largely due to: (1) gas setting marginal prices during peak hours, (2) grid infrastructure that hasn't kept pace, and (3) taxes/levies that fund the transition. As battery storage grows and reduces gas dependency for peaks, prices should moderate. The countries with the highest renewable penetration (Spain, Portugal) often have lower prices than those still dependent on gas imports.

Good catch. Electricity is maybe 20-25% of final energy consumption in most EU countries. The real test is whether cheap renewable electricity can pull heating (heat pumps) and transport (EVs) onto the grid fast enough. The encouraging sign is that both are happening - heat pump sales have surged in several EU countries, and EV adoption is well ahead of most forecasts from 5 years ago. But you're right that "overtaking fossil fuels" in total energy is still years away.

"Power" usually means electricity when used colloquially.

Regarding the affect of EV adoption on electricity consumption the site https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/ has some interesting data. I'd recommend looking at the following graphs:

* Distance travelled by passenger cars in Norway

* EV electricity consumption and total power generation in Norway

EVs now make up approximately 1/3 of miles travelled, but the increase in total electrcity consumption is fairly small.

> Particularly in heating, where peak demand is in times with very little solar generation, it seems like this will be challenging.

Heating is actually likely to be one of the easier questions here, because heat is just fundamentally an easier problem to tackle than most other intensive uses of energy in the modern world.

1. Solar isn't the only incredibly cheap form of intermittant renwewable energy production. Wind is also great, tends to support local manufacturing economies more than solar, and is anti-correlated with peak-sunshine. The wind tends to blow hardest in the winter and around sunset.

2. Heatpumps can pretty comfortably achieve 300+% coefficients of performance, meaning that for every joule of energy you put into a heatpump, you'll get 3+ joules of heat pumped into your home, office, or city-scale heat thermos

3. Heat energy storage is cheap compared to batteries. You just store large quantities of hot water or sand with a resistor or a heat pump. 3D geometry ensures that the bigger you make the heat-battery, the less energy you'll lose from it over time (percentage wise).

4. Heat is a waste product from many other forms of energy usage, and can be harnessed. For instance, gas peaker plants aren't going away any time soon, and cities which aren't harnessing the waste heat from those peaker plants and using it in a district heating system are wasting both money and carbon.

Just a couple kilometers from my home for instance is a gas power plant that stores waste heat in giant thermoses, and pumps hot water to my building to to be used for heating. They currently have the largest heat pump in europe under construction on the same site intended to supplement the gas plant, both to take up slack from the fact that it'll be running less often, and to expand the service to yet more households.

Those are two thresholds: cheaper than peakers using piped gas from Russia, and cheaper than peakers using LNG shipped via tanker ship. I imagine the latter threshold has already been met, only depending on the amortization period you choose for the battery purchase.

You have it backwards. At the current cost curve for renewables and storage, Nuclear will never again be able to compete.

See: the overly optimistic SMR plans being predictably scrapped in many places.

What you do have is ample land to build out solar and export eg. Ammonia (made out of Hydrogen) for "free" energy.