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US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

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Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is already way ahead of the US in switching away from fossil electricity (also ahead of China). Sure, keeping the entire nuclear fleet from ~2000 would have maybe helped, but would have required very costly (economically and politically!) investments over the last few decades, and those basically went into renewables instead which turned out fine. See: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-sourc…

Is all of their energy consumption met by domestic production?

That’s not how electricity works. The electrons don’t really care about borders, and neither do the suppliers and consumers.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not evil, just dumb.

Using the HN homework from earlier about multi-objective optimization... perhaps a Pareto optimal trade space of evil and dumb, to the maximum extent the two can coexist

Hehe, I think evil often stems from dumb in the sense that rarely is evil the choice that leads to good long term outcomes. For example the famous prisoners dilemma where the best strategy is tit for tat with occasional forgiveness.

ofc smart/evil/dumb are all simplifying things way too much since its not like humans have video game like attribute sliders. Im very aware of that, this is not meant to be taken that seriously.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know if it would be easier to get fully domestic supply and manufacturing chains for solar or for wind, if a way is found to prevent corruption undermining setting up fully domestic production?

For onshore wind, probably wind. For offshore wind, not nearly as clear. The US still lacks a lot of the specialized vessels, ports and manufacturing capacity. Solar has bigger upstream dependence on Asian wafer/cell production.

Forgive the ignorance, what drives the demand for offshore wind instead of on land anyway? Shorter power run to coastal cities vs longer transmission loss from exurban environments?

And with solar, I can't imagine that would be fast to stand up production for... but we're attempting the Herculean task with modern chip fabs. Would panels be harder than that? They both seem existential needs for the future of the country.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#535
post #514

Meanwhile China is becoming entirely energy independent and electrifying their economy. I don't understand how the US doesn't see that they won't be top dog forever especially in this multipolar age.

As a proportion of total energy use, the US is ahead of China in moving away from fossil fuels by about 5 full percentage points. Most of the "energy independence" that China has is just based on burning coal. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-mix?tab=stacked-di...

Wanna know a great way to lose a race? Check your rear view mirror and see how far ahead you are and then let off the gas. Or worse, start braking.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not one dependent on "costly subsidies". While paying out 1.2 billion dollars.

Oh that's not nearly the amount of fossil subsidies. Some say it's $31b/yr direct. If you factor in indirect costs like climate damage, health expenses, oil wars, etc, it's much higher. Renewables are much, much cheaper regardless of a little incentive, if there are any left. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/09/fossil-f...

It’s kind of amazing and horrifying at the same time that a democratic country like the U.S. is doing all these shenanigans like blocking clean zero carbon energy, while a communist authoritarian country is massively moving towards clean energy.

Based on what our media and our education system teaches us, one would have assumed that common sense and sound logic would prevail in a democracy, but rather what we see is insane nonsense, paranoia, and misinformation (including about vaccines) prevail in the U.S., to the point of burning piles of money (including the 1.2B in this case) just to satisfy a childish and bully like need to spite and trigger the progressive side (like talking about causing more pollution with the goal of “owning the libs” or triggering “delicious liberal tears”). And we’re talking about massive negative externalities with increased pollution. This kind of childish bully behavior is as though you had a neighbor who cared about not littering in public and the streets being clean, and you just threw garbage on the streets to upset her. A ridiculous level of immaturity, truly.

Meanwhile, we have totalitarian dictatorships (like the Emirates which has heavily moved toward zero carbon electricity sources like solar and nuclear) behaving far more logically, rationally, and soundly with a view towards the long-term rather than the short-term.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#537
post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find something very refreshing in this, reading from Europe where we get told "gas" is the big bad, even threatening to make condensing gas boilers illegal from time to time [0], despite over 95% of homes (in the UK) being heated by this method. That said most of Europe doesn't heat or cool adequately, Spain and Portugal barely heat their homes in winter and boy it gets cold with 41F/5C nights. Then Germany/Switzer…

So we should only address the symptoms and not the cause. What are you saying? Modern AC units are heat pumps the same box cools in summer and heats in winter, more efficiently than a gas boiler. What is your stance on heat pumps? Conservatives here, who use the same talking points as you, are against them and they prefer to use oil and gas. And is 5c a extreme night temperature? Where are you from? I'm not from Euro…

I love heat pumps, but they are well out of reach for most people at 25-30k for a full system with insulation and radiator change. 5C is indeed a cold night, for Spain, in an uninsulated house which most are, and 13C/55F daily high, it's teeth-chatteringly cold without heating, yet most Spanish just brace it, for similar reasons they don't have AC in Germany: "it's survivable, and it only lasts around 3 months". This is why I refer to this as "energy poverty".

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#538
post #269

November can't come soon enough, this administration is beyond disgusting They are literally a non-stop crime-spree against humanity But if the Dems don't get 52 in the Senate absolutely nothing will change and might get even worse, likely much worse

Trump was elected because of rural/exurban white insecurity and white cultural decline. An election wasn't the cause of all this--it was more of an effect.

In other words, even if there's a feedback loop, an election won't magically fix everything.

Re: US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects

#540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar would produce enough power in winter. Germany is europe's top solar energy producer and is at a latitude similar to Alaska.

The very very northern tip of Germany reaches almost as far north as the southernmost tip of the Alaskan panhandle, but most of Germany is more like mid-south Canada on a latitude basis. Northern Germany is much more specialized into wind power, and the south is more solar intensive (though solar is more evenly spread throughout the country than Wind, thanks to ease of installation, and the fact that it still produce…

One additional tidbit of info. While the northern coast in Germany has certainly more wind, a reason why wind falls off so strongly towards the south, are the policies of the CSU party in Bavaria, which though not quite as bad as trump has been running Anti-Wind policies and making wind installations extremely difficult to build.
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