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\u201cThe days of stupidity\u201d are alive and well in the USA after the Department of the Interior cancelled a Nevada solar farm slated to become the world\u2019s largest. The 185-square-mile, 6.2-GW Esmeralda 7 solar and battery storage installation would have powered almost two million homes, but was unceremoniously dumped according to President Donald Trump\u2019s wishes as indicated in his typical Truth Social style. Not only is Trump\u2019s post<\/a> full of lies about energy costs, such policy is casting a dark shadow over the economic future of the USA.<\/p>\n In the early 1980s, the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory director Roland Hulstrom calculated that a 10,000 square-mile photovoltaic (PV) solar farm could power the entire US grid. Spread across existing rooftops \u2013 factories, warehouses, parking lots, and over 100 million American homes \u2013 the impact would be marginal. Colorado School of Mines professor John Fanchi made a similar calculation in 2004 for wind power: 12.7 million 4-MW turbines spread over 50,700 1-GW farms could power the entire globe.<\/p>\n A 2008 Scientific American cover story, \u201cA Grand Plan for Solar Energy,\u201d<\/a> outlined how the US could free itself from foreign oil and slash greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 using solar power: \u201cThe energy in sunlight striking the earth for 40 minutes is equivalent to global energy consumption for a year.\u201d<\/p>\n In a 2012 New York Times op-ed, \u201cSolar Panels for Every Home,\u201d<\/a> Robert F. Kennedy Jr. noted that solar panel prices had dropped 80% in five years and could generate electricity at or below grid prices in 20 states, succinctly stating \u201cWe have the technology. The economics make sense. All we need is the political will.\u201d Today, solar power provides unmatched cheap electricity across 50 states.<\/p>\n So what happened? Slow to ramp up as in the short-tail of any revolution, solar is now the world\u2019s fastest growing energy sector, providing a record 600 GW<\/a> or 70% of new energy capacity across the globe in 2024. Why turn the lights off of a successful made-in-America technology first demonstrated as a 6%-efficient \u201csolar energy battery\u201d<\/a> in 1954 at Bell Labs? By 2030, more than half of all electrical power will come from the sun.<\/p>\n Money is the obvious reason as in Big Oil\u2019s stranglehold on a petroleum-run world that gobbles up over 80 million barrels per day, subsidized to the tune of trillions of dollars a year. No surprise natural gas exports permits were fast-tracked, offshore oil-drilling leases increased, and electric-vehicle tax credits axed soon after Trump\u2019s 2024 inauguration. No surprise he constantly derides the green competition.<\/p>\n Presumed \u201ccreeping socialism\u201d is another reason. If consumers can power their own homes and cars, who needs to buy oil? Home solar for all means a loss of top-down utility control as \u201cprosumers\u201d buy and sell to each other, borrowing electrons from neighbours as easily as a cup of sugar with savings downloaded directly via phone app.<\/p>\n China\u2019s dominance is also a concern, now the number-one manufacturer of solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles as well the supplier of rare-earth metals needed in today\u2019s magnet-powered motors. Included in the transition to renewables is a growing transfer of political power from West to East.<\/p>\n Today, energy generation costs<\/a> are cheapest for onshore wind at $37\/MWh followed by utility PV at $38\/MWh, while nuclear power is almost four times as expensive. Coal power has become so unprofitable that a bid to buy 167 million tons of coal <\/a>at under 1 cent\/ton was rejected.<\/p>\n Integrated battery energy storage systems to reduce the \u201cdark doldrums\u201d (down-sun time and wind lull) are also on the rise, while \u201cintermittency firming\u201d is improving. Expanded microgrids, home storage, and virtual power plants are also a threat to American dominance and the entire oil-run economy. The real scam is lying about a growing green economy, raising energy prices, and discouraging investment.<\/p>\n Nor is solar destroying farmers. Just the opposite as solar and wind provide farmers with a guaranteed income (\u201cdouble cropping\u201d or \u201cagrivoltaics\u201d) in the always uncertain agricultural sector, made more uncertain by tariff-driven losses as US silos remain full of unsold produce.<\/p>\n The US is losing economic advantage with each cancelled project, including 223 previously awarded projects<\/a> valued at over $7.5 billion. As America turns its back on progress, China is building the world\u2019s largest solar farm, a 15-GW PV installation in the Tibetan Plateau<\/a>, while India is on track to reach 500 GW<\/a> of renewable energy by 2030. The 3.6-GW Dogger Bank Wind Farm in the North Sea will be the world\u2019s largest upon completion in 2027, powering \u201cthe equivalent of six million homes in the UK<\/a>,\u201d while France is building the largest offshore wind farm, a 1.5-GW installation 40 km off the Normandy coast<\/a>.<\/p>\n Is it worry over change, NIMBYism, or something as simple as the wrath of Donald Trump after planning authorities declined to stop a wind farm near one of his loss-making Scottish golf courses? Or a modern-day Don Quixote railing against non-existent giant adversaries in a fit of anti-science madness?<\/p>\n Stupidity has a formidable American pedigree, from circus showman P.T. Barnum\u2019s \u201cThere\u2019s a sucker born every minute\u201d to author and social critic H.L. Mencken\u2019s \u201cNo one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American consumer.\u201d George Orwell also didn\u2019t see much intelligence in the \u201cgoverning classes\u201d as he wrote about belching chimneys, stinking slums, and organized poverty in The Road to Wigan Pier, his scathing expos\u00e9 on the ugliness of industrialization in the coalfields of northern England. Orwell also warned about the folly of starting a civil war amid rising authoritarianism, tyranny, and misinformation.<\/p>\n As with any maturing technology, there are challenges ahead, such as improving grid resilience, interconnectivity, and security, same as in the time of the early electrical pioneers Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Samuel Insull, when less than 1% of the American population was grid-tied.<\/p>\n Who could imagine 130 years after the first electrons were sent 22 miles from Niagara Falls to Buffalo, a US president would try to stop the sun from shining and the wind from blowing? You might as well proclaim gravity a lie.<\/p>\n We should be stopping planet-destroying global warming, armed conflict, and cyber attacks, not hindering the roll-out of a proven clean, green, and sustainable energy technology. Stupid is as stupid does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe days of stupidity\u201d are alive and well in the USA after the Department of the Interior cancelled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-260497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}