{"id":356456,"date":"2026-03-20T17:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T17:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/356456\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T17:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T17:16:09","slug":"the-folly-of-abandoning-renewables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/356456\/","title":{"rendered":"The folly of abandoning renewables."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Posted Mar 20, 2026 at 9:02 AM UTC<\/p>\n<p>The folly of abandoning renewables.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">As energy prices soar, Trump\u2019s systemic pivot away from solar and wind in favor of big-beautiful fossil fuels is looking <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/848012\/brendan-carr-fcc-dummy-free-speech-vergecast\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">dumber than Brendan Carr<\/a>. Spain invested heavily in renewables and France went nuclear to reduce its dependence on dinojuice. Both <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/19f2ee15-dc86-4964-b23f-d644b18a70a1?syn-25a6b1a6=1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">are expected<\/a> to weather the latest energy crisis better than more oil-dependent neighbors, with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2026-03-17\/why-europe-s-power-prices-aren-t-soaring-like-gas?embedded-checkout=true\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Europe as a whole fairing better overall<\/a> thanks to continued investment in solar panels and wind turbines.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"kqz8fh1\" href=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/03\/energy-spain-france.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0,0,100,100\" data-pswp-height=\"920\" data-pswp-width=\"1446\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\"><img alt=\"\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"x271pn0\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url(&quot;data:image\/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' %3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'\/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'\/%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'\/%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'\/%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'\/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'\/%3E%3C\/filter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mN8+R8AAtcB6oaHtZcAAAAASUVORK5CYII='\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E&quot;)\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/energy-spain-france.jpg\"\/><\/a>Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Thomas RickerClose<img alt=\"Thomas Ricker\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1bw37385 x271pn0\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url(&quot;data:image\/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' %3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'\/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'\/%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'\/%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'\/%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'\/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'\/%3E%3C\/filter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mN8+R8AAtcB6oaHtZcAAAAASUVORK5CYII='\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E&quot;)\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/IMG_5981_2.0.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Thomas Ricker<\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p>FollowFollow<\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/authors\/thomas-ricker\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">See All by Thomas Ricker<\/a><\/p>\n<p>EnergyClose<\/p>\n<p>Energy<\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p>FollowFollow<\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/energy\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">See All Energy<\/a><\/p>\n<p>NewsClose<\/p>\n<p>News<\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p>FollowFollow<\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/news\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">See All News<\/a><\/p>\n<p>PolicyClose<\/p>\n<p>Policy<\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p>FollowFollow<\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/policy\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">See All Policy<\/a><\/p>\n<p>ScienceClose<\/p>\n<p>Science<\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p>FollowFollow<\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/science\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">See All Science<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Posted Mar 20, 2026 at 9:02 AM UTC The folly of abandoning renewables. As energy prices soar, Trump\u2019s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[580,246,61,60,43,3667,82],"class_list":["post-356456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-energy","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-policy","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}