Solar generates more energy than coal in US for 1st time
https://abcnews.com/US/solar-generates-energy-coal-us-1st-time-report/story?id=133783328&%3Bcid=social_twitter_abcnOpen linkView original on lemmy.today948
Comments117https://abcnews.com/US/solar-generates-energy-coal-us-1st-time-report/story?id=133783328&%3Bcid=social_twitter_abcnOpen linkView original on lemmy.today
-MF's who have never heard of a battery
they're also getting the benefits of solar, despite voting for the moron nixing renewables while peddling coal and oil.
Part of that is because of how fucking empty the middle fly over states are.
Or simply run dirty energy as a last resort. You don’t need to, and shouldn’t be, dependent on a single energy source.
"Pffft ... batteries are for toys ... my delusions tell me the following pictures are fake because I say so and I don't need to prove anything because jesus tells me petroholics like me are always right:"
Obviously fake, everybody knows that batteries are ruined by rain. Just like magnets.
Next you're gonna tell me that the Moon can come out during the day!
Heard a fantastic quote this morning for people with similar believes:
Beautiful !
I've unironically met people who use ChatGPT for everything. (and who unironically now think magnets are turned off by water since the president said it)
Like I literally had coffee with someone who while we were chatting they mentioned that they "asked ChatGPT if the place was queer friendly" before they agreed to go out for coffee.
It's like bro, did the pride flags year round not tip you off? The maps link literally has pictures of the place with snow on the ground and pride flags in the windows!
So many people have forgotten how to think and it's infuriating. They'll believe a chatbot before their own eyes.
That's great and all, but I'm still waiting for it to be affordable to install my own so that it can also be a whole-house uninterruptible power supply.
Obviously it depends on your use case but at least for me having an uninterruptible power supply for the maybe one day in 4 years that I have a power cut, it isn't worth it unless the installation cost is negligible.
I think for most people putting a few panels on the roof is probably good enough. Especially if they end up getting an electric car in the end which can do reverse charging.
Those aren't batteries, batteries are black and gold and round. Those things are evil woke liberal batteries and so don't work.
Wouldn't it be better to have them underground with vents?
All you need to do is put a solar panel under a lamp post, infinite electricity.
Just give the solar panels legs so they can walk around the earth following the sun.
They've heard plenty about battery, it's on their arrest records
Also: Wind is typically stronger when sun is not harvestable.
Lucky for us, the sun is up when energy and AC usage is highest in the daytime.
Ironically, USA ranks second on battery infrastructure, behind China, and ahead of my country, Australia.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-28/australia-global-battery-leader-and-wa-leads-charge/106526042
Stand to reason, the operating costs of a coal fired power station are immense compared to a renewable energy source. They can’t compete. That’s the major reason that industry doesn’t want to build them.
Here in Michigan Trump is using "emergency" orders to keep a coal plant running that the electric company was going to retire over a year ago. The order can only last 90 days but they've just renewed it every time.
Thanks to this bullshit, rates are going up because it's costing so much to keep the thing going we're losing money on it. Consumers Energy doesn't even want to be operating it, they're trying to get it shut down but hur dur coal good can't allow that. And it's not the only one affected by this crap.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/05/climate/trump-aging-coal-plants-electricity-bills
Maybe we could promise to poison 1 in 4 children as a compromise. At this point it's pretty clear, they actively want innocence to suffer.
China used them and it is a funny situation on how there were complications and how they handled them and handled the further complications by their solutions. In the end they all lived happily ever after though in the funniest way possible.
What
Crinoline!
"Experts say power plants 'burn coal to convert water into steam.'"
I mean, does anyone really know how these things operate?
The tide comes in. The tide goes out.
You can't explain that!
Omg, I've explained this so many times on here. The tide comes in because the tide goes out. See? Everything has an explanation.
Water, fire, air and dirt; fucking magnets, how do they work?
Every power source is a solar power source if you follow the trail back far enough.
Deep sea vents aren't, unless you're including the formation of the solar system as 'solar'
Also geothermal and nuclear power aren’t
I did say “if you follow the trail back far enough.” Same goes for uranium. Born from supernovae (exploding stars).
I only use pure clean hydrogen unchanged from the big bang.
*stellar, not solar, the carbon in coal wasn't formed by our sun but a different star far in the past
Yeah but the trees that made it into hydrocarbons were fuled by our sun.
Now you’re just splitting hairs. I mean we’d still call solar panels “solar panels,” even if they were collecting energy from another star (say, on an interstellar spaceship).
Anyone with a passing knowledge of chemistry and thermodynamics would know how it works in theory at least.
Much of North America has enjoyed electricity steady enough not to think much past don't wiz on the electric fence.
That was a multi-generational achievement.
Sadly from personal experience, no, the general public does not know that coal power plants work by burning coal to boil water, and are horrified at how trashy the concept is.
High-key a great way to persuade them to support renewables. Associate coal with the image of people in underdeveloped countries burning fossil fuels in their own homes to exploit their own preconceived biases.
Alternatively you can depict it as filthy and Victorian. Something that was once an improvement, but these days really only belongs in a museum. You can compare it to child labor and accurately point out that the Victorian era was grimy and disgusting because of how much coal was burned then.
But what about "clean coal"? Checkmate, Atheists!
Ah yes, whitewashed coal !
I think they meant "an ALLEGED greenhouse gas"
Surprised the Pedo-in-Chief doesn't immediately halt this so he can get more money from the coal lobbyists
He's been trying! Courts keep overturning it but it's been on and off for both wind and solar construction
https://www.enr.com/articles/62447-us-judge-revokes-trump-work-shutdown-order-on-fifth-offshore-wind-project
You are being misled about renewable energy technology
Tell me you didn't watch the video(s) without telling me you didn't watch the video.
The video is one and a half hours long so I don’t blame you, but it had the same point as you
You spent as least that much when you made the same point as he did
Really? You don't know youtube or how to copy a link without clicking on it? Wow!
If you're 5 you probably shouldn't be using the internet but i can ELI5 you on how to, although i don't think the topic will interest you.
In their defense, most of the time when someone just posts a YouTube link on social media it's a complete waste of time. Video is very slow to get to the point, that's why we're reading!
You can copy paste the transcript (or download the vtt subs with yt-dlp) into any AI and let it hallucinate a summary for you.
Ooh is there a website that does this? I want to bring it down to one step without visiting YouTube.
This particular youtuber is know to be "slow", but thorough in the topics he covers.
This particular video has an "extra" 30m, you can stick to just the first hour.
The TL;DR is that solar makes more sense than coal in the murican Midwest.
Completely different arguments. This is moving the goalposts
Fair, I assumed they meant the channel in context.
Have to sit through ads just to see it's a 90 minute video with next to no context of why I should trust this person with my time. In a era where most info is at best wildly ignorant and at worst maliciously misleading?
Good point.
I refuse to believe that anyone using the internet to get smarter doesn't know who Technology Connections is...
You watch ads?
He called you names after pointing out you can copy a link without opening it. What about that? You implied doing that is impossible:
Those are the emojis of someone who's confidently wrong. Just admit you didn't even bother what the video tries to say by reading the comments.
If it's about capacity factor then most people know about that by now.
I've posted a TL;DR somewhere on the thread already and I don't recall Alec mentioning "capacity factor", but maybe he referred to the same concept by a different name.
You dint know what capacity factor is? Is the main criteria used for comparing different types of power sources.
The MAGA response "No it didn't! No it didn't! Fox and The Anointed One didn't say so! Fake news! Fake news!"
Coal is black and dusty, solar panels are black and clean, it's clean coal as promised!
In spite of the idiocracy
Solar is more efficient. The corporations will move over to the most efficient power source regardless of what the administration may or may not want. Continuing to use coal just to appease Trump is stupid.
Anyway they can just lie and say that they are using coal for everything, it's not like anyone is going to check
Bold of you to try to make a distinction between this admin and corporations. But of course, they'll hedge. My point is that they do so uphill and slowly, without the research, subsidy/tax incentives and media praise that would typically accelerate progress towards such an obvious next step
Companies tend to be international. No matter what they might be telling the Trump administration in the United States if they've got solar desires in other parts of the world they're going to pursue them without having to prostrate themselves at the altar of idiocy. Hell, they might get praise in other countries for pursuing solar.
So they know the economic benefits and they know their benefits would be doubled if they were operating in the US as well.
Those corporations are happy with the Hormuz situation you think? More likely they let grandpa shit his pants on TV because the current idiocracy is even more corrupt than the previous oligarchy.
The current problem with mass solar plants is that they lose a good chunk of the stored energy before it is distributed to where it goes. Obviously far better than coal, but the panels need to be at the source of where they need to go, hence why roof top solar panels on buildings are great idea. Wind power is a lot more efficient, but it isn't like we can all plonk big windmills on our roofs.
Solar energy isn't magic. Power efficiency losses are the same for all power generation sources.
This is actually a pretty major indictment on the US. Coal is one of the worst most inefficient fuel sources for power generation, virtually every other fuel source is an improvement including incineration of food waste.
A good test of how efficient fuel is is to see how much of it you still have left after you've theoretically burnt all of it. The fact that coal smoke is black is a pretty good indication of how bad it is. You're throwing away a good chunk of your fuel.
I love the trivia that there's traces of uranium in coal which go up with the smoke - coal is worse than nuclear in terms of radiological pollution.
When looking if it was feasible to convert coal power plants to nuclear, we found out that most of the coal sites have more radioactivity than is allowed for a future nuclear site
And Mercury
What does Freddie have to do with this ?
This is an often misquoted fact. The study that compared coal and nuclear was only studying air pollutants, and obviously the steam stacks from nuclear reactors don’t have as much radionuclide pollutants as coal. However, the study did not look at other sources like wastewater - which is where most radionuclide pollution from nuclear reactors comes from (along with other sources like spent fuel, casings, and moderator rods).
Sure, but I assume it's easier to collect wastewater for proper disposal than the air pollutants.
Progress be progress. We’ll get there folks.
All to be eaten by glutton data centers. Ugh.
Or torn up by braianwashed regressives.
Great, but that doesn't mean less coal is being burned. The article says the share of coal in the total power of the US has been halved over the last five years but again, how much less coal has been burned? That's the important part.
Only speaking in parts tends to miss this:
On a global scale, energy sources cumulate, they don't replace each other.
I genuinely couldn’t believe it. Wow.
Don’t let drumpf know, he’ll find a way to have it reversed. Remywhen he used usa taxpayer funds (a billion or so usd) to cancel a windfarm?
First time ? (Spaniard here)
🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🎉🎉🎊🎊🎉🎊🎊
Capitalism does work afterall
"great start, now go for the lead!" 🏁
And all it took was shutting down 300 coal plants over the last 10 years.
Let's just hope the Fuhrer doesn't ramp up his attacks on it in order to satisfy the fossil lobby.
I never thought I'd see the day!
Not quite https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-energy-source-sub?country=%7EUSA
That chart seems to go until 2024. The article concerns 2026.
The article talks about energy, while they mean just electricity generation. My graph was about primary energy demand.
Yes, but isn't the graph limited to 2024? Do you have one through to the date in the article?
It's the most recent dataset "Energy Institute - Statistical Review of World Energy (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Share of primary energy consumption that comes from oil – Using the substitution method” [dataset]. Energy Institute, “Statistical Review of World Energy” [original data]." If you look at the historical data you'll notice that year over year changes are small. The reason coal is declining is because coal-intensive industrial processes have moved to other countries and because of the current transient natural gas glut due to oil fracking. This will not last.
So the dataset doesn't cover the time period the article is talking about?
I think the article showed a small blip where solar gained footing over coal. I think it makes sense that this wasn't what has happened in the past.
Let's see what happens I guess
Electrical energy. You're still not getting off fossil fuels for a long time, the only way is either we all live in car-less 300sq.ft condos with no windows and central laundry, or population reduces drastically.
Coal is mostly used to produce electricity and steel. So more electricity from solar then coal is actually good news.
However oil and gas are much harder to replace, but again we actually have a lot of the technology, it is "just" about rolling it out on scale, which is hard.
I've only driven an electric car for the last 4 years with an 65 mile daily commute. I save ~$1000 a year on electricity vs gas. My affordable electric accelerates way faster than my previous turbocharged Audi A4.
But the best part is, I never have to go to a gas station.
A serious question. Are you paying a road tax to drive on the roads with your EV yet? In the US, some states are now starting to look into how to charge EV owners a road use tax. ICE cars pay that tax at the pump and the more you drive, the more tax you pay. EV owners that charge at home, (and who wouldn't do that), currently pay no road taxes because they buy no or very little "fuel".
I'm interested to know what the states think is a fair tax amount. Particularly since EV owners tend to be wealthier than most people. And what EV owners think of paying such a tax.
My state charges an EV tax at vehicle registration renewal that is substantially more than the tax that would be paid on gasoline. I'd have to drive around 5 times what I do before it starts getting close. There were talks of adding some other kind of tax too, beyond this, which would be double dipping. I'm the kind of person that would happily pay taxes although I find the execution of this poor since it is largely rooted in entrenched interests. Namely selling ethanol.
The thing about fuel taxes is you pay based on how much you drive. More drive, more fuel, more taxes. And I'm sure you don't drive all that many miles every year. But, what about someone that drives their EV 2x what you do. Which causes 2x the road wear and tear that you do. Is a flat tax fair to you?
They pay no road tax for fuel but they do pay road taxes elsewhere. Roads are not funded solely on fuel taxes.
Obviously fuel taxes do not cover the whole cost of road maintenance, and they haven't for decades. Where are those EVs paying road use taxes beyond registration and license fees? The more you drive an ICE car, the more fuel tax you will pay. And that's fair. Shouldn't EVs pay for the mileage they drive on the roads too? Is it OK that an EV that doesn't drive many miles a year should pay the same flat tax/fee that another EV that gets driven 3x as many miles?
I'm all for EV use, I'd own one if I could afford one for sure. But the prices are a bar to ownership. In any case, states ARE looking into chiseling into the lost revenue that EVs are currently ducking. They want the revenue stream.
There are local taxes on energy/electricity commerce in some number of jurisdictions, if that matters. New York, as an example: https://www.tax.ny.gov/forms/publications/st/pub718r.htm
I'd have to look into whether or how the mentioned—waived—4% state tax would apply on non-residential chargers. I would tend to imagine that any taxes on such would more-or-less cover the same.
Edited for clarity and to include link to example.