Renewables Are the Cheapest Electricity in America. They Just Don’t Live Where You Do.
Pull up any Lazard slide deck, any IEA summary, any BNEF press release from the last five years. The number you’ll see is somewhere between $30 and $50 per megawatt-hour for new utility-scale solar and onshore wind, undercutting natural gas, decisively beating coal, embarrassing nuclear. NREL’s 2024 Annual Technology Baseline puts best-class onshore wind at $13/MWh. Best-class utility PV at $23/MWh. New nuclear, by the same methodology, lands at $95.
The numbers are real. The methodology is defensible. And the conclusion most people draw from them — that renewables are inevitable, that policy is the only obstacle, that ratepayers should already be seeing the savings — is wrong in four specific ways that nobody seems to want to write down at the same time.
Saying solar is a third the cost of nuclear is like saying I’ll sell you a car cheaper. You just don’t get brakes or tires.
@JamieBonkiewicz He'd talk to men that are dishonest and whiny like that oo. Stop making it a fucking gendered thing. You don't get a pass because of plumbing.
@garethicke where was the water outrage when we passed the CHIPS act? Oh wait, that was a Biden deal. So it's cool.
Because they actually use way more water than that. How many massive data centers would use 8 billion gallons a year? thats one small fab.
@MichaelRigg860@vivisected@LordMegazord@MorePerfectUS I was being an ass about the tax dollars paying it. We fail to realize they bring their own power to the party, at least here in texas, use less water than a residential sub with direct cooling, absolutely do noise abatement, and pay for power and telecom infrastructure
@debooter1@OrevaZSN ha! you caught my typo. Sorry about that. Tell me please what or who produces to feed your particular ideology. Or is that what the barrel of the gun is for once incentives are removed?