7mo ago

Fossil Fuel Interests Ramp Up Their “Solar Makes Electricity More Expensive” Falsehood

cleantechnica.com

Fossil Fuel Interests Ramp Up Their "Solar Makes Electricity More Expensive" Falsehood - CleanTechnica

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ArtikBanana @lemmy.dbzer0.com

7mo ago

Fossil Fuel Interests Ramp Up Their “Solar Makes Electricity More Expensive” Falsehood

cleantechnica.com /2025/01/02/fossil-fuel-interests-ramp-up-their-solar-makes-electricity-more-expensive-falsehood/

15 comments

The renewable industry needs to start up an alternative campaign.
They need to have something along the lines of “The Fossil Fuel Industry is full of something Brown and Stinky”.
- The problem is that the fossilfuckers have far deeper pockets.
  
  They are also more desperate. US oil needs the price to stay above 50$/barrel, and the price of WTI, currently at about 72, has been in decline for the last 3 years, trending downwards. These are desperate plees for help from an industry backed into a corner.
  
  That doesn’t matter as much because renewables have enough financial backing to mount a credible counter-campaign. Combine decent sass-back from the renewables industry with my eagerness to shitpost hard truths (there are dozens of us!). They pass the ammo, I fire it. I consciously amplify messages I agree with and I am not atypical in that regard.
  People power is a force multiplier but the industry needs to clap back and SLAM fossil fuels.
- We are all full of something brown and stinky on this glorious day.
They could spend that money on getting into the solar game… but no, they choose to be idiots.
- Solar is equipment you buy very infrequently.
  They want a product you have to consume over and over. That's why some of them push hydrogen.
Unfortunately there is some truth to this. It will make it more expensive for people who don’t have solar because the company needs to be paid. Think of the poor CEO’s!
Also someone has to pay to keep the grid up to date. (Well they are supposed to)
Man I can't even begin to process how they came up with this.
Sunlight is free outside lmfao
The rebuttal based on retail electricity prices is not the strongest.
So we must maintain enough energy capacity in a parallel system, typically powered by natural gas.
The question is what new energy to build. Batteries are extremely competitive for new energy, more competitive without trade barriers meant to protect O&G, placed in EVs with V2G (or Vehicle to home/power) a private expenditure to enhance grid.
Legacy FF plants do not need to be nuked from orbit. Solar+batteries can outcompete existing FF plant variable costs. They are more competitive at low interest rates. But if demand is growing they outcompete new FF/nuclear plants. Legacy plants supplement batteries/renewables through backup/resillence services. Even 24/7 datacenter demand growth can be met through on site solar/battereies, because the bottleneck is daytime/duck curve transmission instead of generation capacity outside of self production. Renewables and EVs also reduce the price/cost of FFs. They are energy that displaces demand for other energy.
The low price of NG was a function of a less than expected success in US war on Europe. EU decreased NG/coal use by over 10% as a result of renewables expansion, even as electricity demand grew.
Where cheap energy and cheap steel is a key to US manufacturing, tariffs are extremely counter productive. Consumers of energy/metals are denied competitiveness, and their customers are denied value. Creating domestic monopolies/cartels is political corruption.

15 comments