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A comment on Fossil fuels fall below 50% of US electricity for the first month on record. Parent comment

Re:Fossil fuels fall below 50% of US electricity for the fir... by cogman10 on Monday April 21, 2025 @03:54PM (#43755770)
There's really no reason the US or other major economies couldn't have followed suit. The chinese plan only works because the other major economies are more than willing to give them that manufacturing capacity since it means a local (although somewhat temporary) boon.

The whole plan could have been snookered by the US similarly subsidizing their solar production 10 or 20 years into the chinese plan. Which would have put most of the cost onto China while we reaped the benefits of cheap power production.

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Re:Fossil fuels fall below 50% of US electricity for the fir... by jandrese on Monday April 21, 2025 @04:24PM (#43756070)
The Obama administration tried, but it was too little too late and they were raked over the coals by Republicans for "choosing winners".

But fundamentally solar cell production was (is?) pretty dirty and US environmental regulations were always going to be a stumbling block. One used to be able to spot Chinese solar factories on satellite maps by looking upstream from deadzones, but apparently that has been enough of an embarrassment that even the CCP has started cracking down.

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Re:Fossil fuels fall below 50% of US electricity for the fir... by anonymars on Monday April 21, 2025 @04:47PM (#43756290)
And choosing "losers", specifically Solyndra was shrieked at along the lines of Benghazi

Basically DOE funded research pretty successfully but it only takes one failure for the loud voices to win

Same program funded Tesla as I recall

Example source: https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us/exclusive-controver...

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Re:Fossil fuels fall below 50% of US electricity for the fir... by pfdietz on Monday April 21, 2025 @05:33PM (#43756738)
> But fundamentally solar cell production was (is?) pretty dirty

There's nothing "fundamentally" dirty about it. It's not like fossil fuel combustion that inevitably produces a large stream of waste (CO2).

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Re:Fossil fuels fall below 50% of US electricity for the fir... by gamblor956 on Tuesday April 22, 2025 @05:46PM (#43766634)
WTO prohibit these types of subsidies. Every other country in the world was trying to follow the rules.

This is why the U.S. was able to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese solar without WTO interference.

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