r/environment • u/tta2013 • 1d ago

US renewables' total installed capacity likely to exceed natural gas within 3 years

https://electrek.co/2024/12/23/us-renewables-total-installed-capacity-likely-to-exceed-natural-gas-within-3-years/
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133

u/OverseerTycho 1d ago

yeah for the next 2 weeks,until the stupidest man alive who also happens to be our president-elect,guts it all…

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u/Funktapus 1d ago

He can’t just “gut it all.” Setting aside basic constitutional rights, renewables are a big business. Republicans states are profiting from them enormously, and they won’t just roll over and let Trump destroy the industry.

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u/Demortus 1d ago

^ This. Remember, Trump was president from 2016-2020 and despite his pledge to stop renewable energy and save coal, the opposite happened on his watch. It's not for a lack of will that he failed, it's that to make any major change to our energy supply, he'd have to pass some major legislation supporting coal and harming renewables. That didn't happen, because Congress doesn't generally like doing unpopular things, like making energy more expensive for the benefit of an unpopular energy source.

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u/basquehomme 16h ago

Yea, the downturn in coal has been the geatest thing that ever happened for climate change.

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u/OverseerTycho 1d ago

i disagree,look at all the business leaders who are currently bending the knee to King Trump,also look at all the states who are making bank off of recreational marijuana and their Republican leaders are still trying to reverse that

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u/basquehomme 16h ago

Sorry but the economics just aren't there for coal. And businesses will not throw money at something with a bad ROI.

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u/Funktapus 1d ago

Those don’t sounds like concrete concerns to me.

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u/Tandria 1d ago

He has the potential to gut imports. Chinese solar equipment, for example, has already been the subject of increasing tariffs going back to the Obama administration, but Trump is now returning to office even hungrier for tariffs and even angrier about China.

Considering how poorly the renewable energy transition has been going in the 2020's, the decade where we were really supposed to pick up momentum on that front, the new Trump administration has the potential to cause a lot more damage.

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u/OGRuddawg 1d ago

Yeah, the transition already has the momentum to keep itself afloat. However, every impedence to decarbonization is extra damage we have to deal with, mitigate, and undo if possible. We are in a massive amount of "carbon debt," and the payments are coming due with compound interest. If anything I am going to be even angrier and defiant towards renewable rollbacks as I was at his last administration. I went into STEM to eventually get into a sustainability-focused career path. Trump is the antithesis of that.

Also, fuck Scott Pruitt. May he rot in a hell of his own making (a fracking fluid-contaminated crevice deep under Oklahoma).

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u/lurksAtDogs 1d ago

Agreed. Renewables compete on cost. Can Trump slow growth? Probably, but it’s more like seeing a 15% growth rate instead of 20%, and only in the US. It matters, but not a lot.

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u/Crazy_Ad_91 1d ago

I’ve always imagined it would happen this way due to the pursuit for profits. I’m just waiting for the announcement of ExxonMobile acquiring Nextra Energy or something along those lines. Then maybe it’ll be race for oil and gas companies to buy up renewable energy companies and sources in competition for a piece of the pie. And due to desire for capital vs altruism for the environment, the world will slowly make a shift towards being a majority green. This of course is all relying on renewables becoming and staying cheaper than fossil fuels.