Live data from Hacker News

Deregulated energy markets accelerate solar adoption

seanobannon.substack.com

41–50 of 187 posts

Re: Deregulated energy markets accelerate solar adoption

#41

Well Texas seems to be planing to put in regulation on the electricity market. Seems like the current administration is out to completely gut any kind of cost savings for american businesses. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-markets/texas-bi...

> current administration is out to completely gut any kind of cost savings for american businesses I am sure businesses that follow the administration's wishes will get government contracts, tax rebates, tariff exceptions, and other favorable treatment. I am not worried, the vast majority of businesses will learn within a few months that it is financially profitable to bend the knee.

Just don't forget to remove any DEI statements from your website.

Re: Deregulated energy markets accelerate solar adoption

#42

Deregulating a basic human need and leaving it to the 'market' to solve this. This sounds a lot like other privatization efforts of the past decades. In my country healthcare, child support, energy, national railway, postal services, public housing, banking and more have all been privatized. I worry about this. Not for now, but for 20 years in the future, where all energy is managed by companies and the government ca…

There is nothing wrong with markets solving basic human needs as long as the incentives are properly aligned.

How do we keep "the incentives [...] properly aligned" when "the government can no longer control the market due to being 'too big too fail' and because it gave all control away"? And why can't I find anything about this in your generic pro-market answer?

Re: Deregulated energy markets accelerate solar adoption

#43

Deregulating a basic human need and leaving it to the 'market' to solve this. This sounds a lot like other privatization efforts of the past decades. In my country healthcare, child support, energy, national railway, postal services, public housing, banking and more have all been privatized. I worry about this. Not for now, but for 20 years in the future, where all energy is managed by companies and the government ca…

There is nothing wrong with markets solving basic human needs as long as the incentives are properly aligned.

Company and customer incentives are fundamentally not aligned.

Companies want to maximize profit and minimize cost, while customers want as much as possible for the lowest price.

Re: Deregulated energy markets accelerate solar adoption

#44

CTRL+F 'Enron' 0 results. Don't really trust something advocating for deregulated energy markets to not mention the elephant in the room.

Yeah he even has a section about deregulation problems in Texas and California... then talks only about wildfires in 2020.

Deregulating an industry to achieve a specific goal is certainly one approach.

Re: Deregulated energy markets accelerate solar adoption

#45
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China burns more coal than the rest of the world combined.

To manufacture products exported to the west. It's always this argument... You need to look at emissions by country of final destination of the products, not by country of manufacture. In an age where a simple t-shirt is made in Bangladesh with cotton from Afghanistan it's ridiculous to use the latter measure.

This is a large part of why I think we need to move manufacturing for domestic products back to the US.

The argument was always that the labor and regulations cost too much but the labor abuse and pollution are costing us more.

Re: Deregulated energy markets accelerate solar adoption

#46

It wouldn't be surprising that de-regulation is good for innovation in the US, because "regulation" in the US almost always means corporate capture of a market through political bribery. Regulation in territories where it is harder for corporations to buy politicians seems to be far more successful at driving improvements.

This is very true, and I think an underappreciated point specifically for utilities, so I hope you don't mind if I expand quite a bit on your excellent point. What "deregulation" means in Texas is that there's a competitive market for electricity generation, and that those who invest in the cheapest methods of production can make profits, and those who made poor investments can lose money. This "deregulation" is merely what we think of as "normal" in market economies, where normal competition allows for greater economic efficiency.

We are in an era where clean energy is the cheapest energy, and the biggest impediment to the transition is merely being allowed to put the energy on the grid. Go around the country, and the queue to get interconnected to the grid is one of the biggest stumbling blocks. Another huge stumbling block is the procedure for acquiring new electricity generation assets, typically done through IRPs for five years out, based on out-dated data. This is the "standard" regulatory regime in the US, though its highly fractured and there are many many variations.

In this highly "regulated" environment, the corporations have already completely captured the market, and have often bribed the Public Utility Commissions to achieve their own goals.

Deregulation in Texas means less corporate capture, more of a chance for smaller startups to deploy, and a faster energy transition now that the cheapest technology is clean technology.

Re: Deregulated energy markets accelerate solar adoption

#47
post #21

The most significant US regulations in the area aren't even mentioned in this article: the prohibitively high tariffs on Chinese solar modules and electric vehicles, which at least double the cost of solar panels and EVs in the US compared to much of the rest of the world. Current US elites grew up in the energy crisis that started with the Arab oil embargo of 01973 cutting off US energy imports, and they seem determ…

Because we cannot afford, geopolitically, to have a hostile rival nation with whom we may in the next decade be at war control our energy. There is no if, and, or but about that.

Of course, most of said solar and battery tech was originally developed by Americans; chinese bought old patents, bought companies out of bankruptcy, and threw obscene amounts of state capital at developing it further. and now we're stuck with crap like CATL owning a huge amount of the advanced battery market. The implication that this is "just what the market decided" and that we must concede to the artificial scenario beijing has constructed, likely with the express intent of gaining leverage over more nations, is ridiculous.

Instead, we should mass-invalidate every single chinese-owned patent. She built her economy on stealing ours anyhow. Do it ourselves, or rely on allied/subordinate nations for manufacturing.

Re: Deregulated energy markets accelerate solar adoption

#48

The Texas grid was deregulated in an era where solar and wind were not price competitive. The price competitive producers were all stable fossil fuels, natural gas and coal. They failed to take into account unreliable low cost producers forcing reliable but marginally more expensive producers out of the market. If solar/wind producers had to guarantee power 24x7 at fixed rates the cost would vastly exceed natural gas…

More pricing transparency is needed, not some onerous mandatory contracts. If users can deal with intermittent power, they should be allowed to accept the discount that comes with that.

Re: Deregulated energy markets accelerate solar adoption

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for pointing out that ambiguity, I hopefully edited for better clarity! The other problem in California is that most heating is done via natural gas, and though heating needs are fairly low if houses had any sort of insulation, there's basically zero insulation in all homes. Which means that every winter, people experience massive natural gas bills that should be close to zero, making it very problematic to sw…

> there's basically zero insulation in all homes. This is completely false.

I read "zero insulation" as "shit-tier insulation" and that is approximately accurate for a lot of Bay Area housing.

Re: Deregulated energy markets accelerate solar adoption

#50

Deregulating a basic human need and leaving it to the 'market' to solve this. This sounds a lot like other privatization efforts of the past decades. In my country healthcare, child support, energy, national railway, postal services, public housing, banking and more have all been privatized. I worry about this. Not for now, but for 20 years in the future, where all energy is managed by companies and the government ca…

There is nothing wrong with markets solving basic human needs as long as the incentives are properly aligned.

How does one properly align the incentives of people and corporations?
Post reply on HN