Factual btw

Taking away (partially or completely) reliance upon carbon or nuclear energy will reduce costs and help save the planet. Like my solar set up, it costs less to run my home and workshop in summer than it does in winter.

And then he was yeeted out of the window

I'm confused, how does this help shareholders?

Reminder that China's competent government has done exactly this, and as a result they produce 93% of the world's solar photovoltaic panels.

Can we get the competency with out the whole... Everything else?
Or is our choice between awful and ineffective or awful and effective?
- You can't say bad things about the government in China.
  This might sound like an absurd restriction of free speech, but consider that it's also considered highly illegal in germany to ask for the abolishment of democracy. Many far-right groups do this, and the Verfassungsschutz (basically a kind of special police force) keeps a close eye on them because of that, calls them "verfassungsgefährdend" (going against the constitution). Monarchies like england had similar laws around 1900, where you could say everything except talk badly about the monarchy in power. That was known as the "english liberalism" because in many other countries, you could say even less. China does the same today, just that instead of the german constitution or the english monarchy it's the Communist Party.
- awful and effective?
  It's bad to do green energy when you're Chinese because... ?
- What's the awful everything else? China has consistently some of the highest government satisfaction rates in the world
  As a Spaniard, it's hard to conceive 90+% of the population being satisfied with the central government, everyone here hates our government and politicians.
  Are you sure you're speaking for Chinese people when you criticize whatever "everything else" you refer to?

No, no, you can't have green energy until corporations figure out how to make just as much money off it as they do fossil fuels. Don't worry though, they're innovating. Last summer some prick about had my dad convinced to pay him to put solar panels on his roof and then also continue paying for the power those panels generated.

They don't want it to be cheaper. This is a nice upwards funnel of wealth for them.

Fuck your government, cover your roof in panels and enjoy. Simple as

In FL, even if your home fully self sustains on solar and batteries, by law you still have to pay the power company $36 a month to be connected to the grid you don’t want to be a part of.
I left FL… over a year ago.
Here’s the other kicker… a huge chunk of Republican campaign funding comes from the power companies. FL residents are essentially being forced to fund the campaigns of people that seek to rule over them, not represent them.
because of nationalism, i cannot.

This argument has received responses calling me a Commie, a Tankie, and 'a would-be enslaver of humanity' from family, friends, and internet randoms alike.

For me it is that I just... sorta listened to Bill Nye in the 90s about carbon dioxide.

I am pretty sure 90% of people who get called tankies on Lemmy are not communists. Tankie-calling is by far the most obnoxious Lemmy community pastime. But I'll give them this, it's an extremely annoying word, much more annoying to be called than "fascist". We need an unjustifiably smug sounding pejorative for people who call everyone tankies, to call them in exchange so that they can see how not epic their insult is.
The key thing is that the insult needs to seem like you think it's really badass and brave of you to call them that, and it should seem like you think they're seething at you, when in reality it's a super lame insult. Like so:
"You're a tankie"
"Oh no the Tankie-twister has arrived!"
"Wtf kind of lame insult is that lol"
"Now you know how everyone else feels about being called tankies"
- Does the person deny the human rights violation of USSR and China? Then they're tankies. Simple as that.
- Probably an offshoot of just how many tankies there are on Lemmy. Some people are definitely getting caught in the crossfire.
- I am pretty sure 90% of people who get called tankies on Lemmy are not communists
  It's funny, because the term was coined back in the 1950s to describe British progressives who opposed NATO intervention in Eastern Europe.
  If anti-interventionism is what passes the bar for Communism, I suspect Lemmy might be flush with the little red bastards.
- The reciprocal word I've typically seen is "liberal".
- We need an unjustifiably smug sounding pejorative for people who call everyone tankies, to call them in exchange so that they can see how not epic their insult is.
  A lot of people dont deserve a reply. Works great for me. I'm sure thats been me many times in the past. (And future)

Lower prices? Yeah, I’m sure they’ll get right on that…

Bold of you to assume the government cares about you at all.

If "our" means on the US, you may have to take a look at your electricity monopolies for it to make any difference.

The US has some of the cheapest energy in the civilized world. I’m not sure what to draw from that fact, but it is clear our energy system works pretty well for the end-user.
For a counterpoint, check out Germany’s expensive as fuck energy.
- You have some of the world's cheapest electricity wholesale. You also have a huge variance in prices to end-user, with the people that complain on the internet being among the most expensive in the world... because, of course, people that get cheaper prices don't complain.
  Also, yes, electricity in Germany is expensive as fuck.
- It's also one of the oldest and poorly maintained for much of the country. As the data centers keep going up it's making it harder and harder to meet customers energy needs.

The UK is leading the western world in renewables in many ways, yet our bills are some of the most expensive.

The UK isn't leading they way. They're dragged kicking and screaming because they no longer have access to cheap Russian fuel. They've made it into the 45% bracket, which is good but not exceptional.
Sweden, Finland and Denmark had the highest RES (Renewable energy source) shares among Member States in 2024 due to strong hydro industries (Sweden and Finland), wind power and wide use of solid biofuels for district heating. All of which are driven by public investment and administration.
UK drop off in carbon emissions over the last 40 years has largely been the result of deindustrialization and exporting of manufacturing abroad. They still consume a great deal of carbon per capita. They just do it by purchasing finished goods from overseas.
Of late, they've also been rebuilding their old dirty energy economy to power AI datacenters.
- Also to add to what you wrote, another reason is that their North Sea oil reserves became pretty much depleted in the last decade or two with gas following it, which has pushed gas prices higher and hence pushed people to user more electricity (gas prices in Britain were famously low) and along with exporting all industry to places like China and Bangladesh that has naturally brought down Britain's direct CO2 emissions.
  Yet another reason is that the Crown makes money from licensing space for offshore wind farms since they're the ones who officially own the seabed around Britain.
  I used to live as an immigrant in Britain and, still today, it still never ceases to amaze me how so many of them keep falling for the "Britain is leading..." bullshit they're constantly fed by the media and politicians over there, not just in this but in pretty much everything (Brexit didn't happen in a vacuum).
  Even my shitty shit country - Portugal - has long been beating Britain in this (as it's a much poorer country, badly managed and with lots of problems) purelly because even in the time of Salazar (the Fascist dictator) there was a lot of investment in Hydro-generation, which continued after the Revolution in 74 and expanded into Wind-generation (actual in-shore wind, because unlike in Britain the NIMBYs don't have the power to just push it to be the much more expensive offshore kind) and later Solar, so whilst Britain was mismanaging their North Sea reserves and burning oil and gas like there's no tomorrow (part of the reason why Norway has a massive sovereign fund and the UK does not - the Norwegians didn't just burn it like crazy and wasted the money of whatever was sold) my country was already generating a lot of its power from hydro and it just became more so since.
  Shitty shit Portugal is now in the 75%+ bracket on renewables.
  The idea that Britain is leading anybody in renewables adoption is hilariously wrong.
How many nuclear plants?

Not to mention that in certain countries they could also get better public services if they didn't need to spend money on a military sized for power projection into the Middle East ...

Imagine the savings to society with the energy independence from green energy

shut down most of the continent wide natural gas distribution infrastructure
shut down most of the continent wide gasoline distribution infrastructure
cut way back on the military when we no longer have to protect oil kingdoms

There were recently a couple of bad gas leaks locally and it was an interesting reminder that there's these natural gas lines laid crisscrossing the northern US that are just explosions waiting to happen. There's been some nasty ones too
The unavoidable conclusion in today's world is that we need to be phasing out natural gas. It can't be cleanly turned off and back on, it's wildly dangerous if it leaks out due to poor install/maintaince or natural disasters, it can explode if someone happens to drill into a gas line (I know a guy who did internet installs and at the time he joked about how "yeah you just drill holes into folks homes to poke the cables through and hope you don't hear hissing after drilling") during a house fire it just feeds more extremely potent fuel into the fire until turned off. About the only benefit is when it's extremely cold out, such as when the destabilizing polar vortex whips through, natural gas is probably the most energy efficient option to keep homes and businesses inhabitable
- Plus methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, even with the shorter lifetime. We seem entirely unable to reduce methane leaks or even measure them against natural gas usage.
  But from a consumer perspective.
  where I live, electricity is much more expensive than natural gas, maybe double the cost per unit of energy
  and I pay even more for 75% renewables
  I just got a heat pump installed for my addition. So far temps have gotten just a bit under freezing and it has no problems keeping up
  But that adds up to a reality where the cost threshold is mid-40°F’s. While it may be an argument in favor of solar, I don’t have enough unshaded roof to generate more than half my usage
I know your intentions are good, but this reads as a rather damning list of why a bunch of people are going to fight tooth and nail to keep the status quo.

Would companies make it cheaper or would they keep the price and pocket the profit?

They can't, if you have a functioning market economy. There should be competition and renewables, due to their more decentralized nature even incite competition.
- You seem to assume that mergers and acquisitions are not an essential part of a market economy. Left to their own devices, capitalists will always end up trying to form monopolies. You need a strong regulatory state to keep them in check. But then because they are inexorably pulled towards maximizing profitability, they will try to capture the state and deregulate. So, unless you go to a very aggressively anticapitalist set of policies a market economy will never be "functioning" for long.

No they wouldn't. Final consumer cost is based on what people WILL pay not what they WANT to pay. At the end of the day the overarching goal of capitalism is for 99% of the population to spend 100% of their earnings. You can't funnel all wealth to the 1% if the 99% are holding on to it.

So you’re telling me if I found a way reach all my fellow power company customers we could strike and lower our power rates?
- This is sounding like you're trying to do a socialism over here.
- In the short term, yes. The money you've saved is now considered "disposable income" and will be absorbed by the next person in line.
  If a paycheck could make you wealthy, no one would give you a paycheck. A retirement account CAN make you wealthy but only after the machine has squeezed 40+ years out of you. But one way or another that money is leaving your hands and flowing back into the system.
- Many states have very regulated utility prices: you may need just a half dozen buddies and get appointed to the oversight board that approves rates
- Yes. It's like big telecom. When people install panels at home, power companies start inventing additional fees. If communities start looking for local grids, companies start lobbying to outlaw this.
- The main problem with that is the large power consumption by industry. This is ensuring continued profits for the company and thereby weakens your influence, similar to hiring scabs.
In a free market, people will pay less for the same service if they can.
Capitalistic utility monopolies are a scam.
Yes. BUT there are certain ways a government can help its citizens (and itself in most cases) by allowing them to be self sufficient that has nothing to do with electric companies or monopolies at all. The subsidies for solar panels were a great example of this. Depending on your personal needs, you could generate enough power to take yourself off the grid, and the government invested in your panels by way of those subsidies. In many cases the extra electricity from the panels that you don't use can go back into a grid to be used by someone else. Theoretically helping you and the government. There are, of course some issues with the system but speaking from experience it can absolutely work and work wonderfully.
Unfortunately Trump (of course) has killed these subsidies so that will not be a thing as of new years 2026.
- Ok, sure. There are theoretical and convoluted ways to disconnect from the electric grid. You're still buying solar panels. Your out of pocket costs don't change. The river of money still flows into and out of your life. It's called currency for a reason. The whole system is designed to stop you from keeping your money.
  The dark secret about money is that it only works when there's isn't enough for everyone. Despite what politicians want you to believe, you are SUPPOSED to live paycheck to paycheck- at least under a western capitalist economy. This is why poor people are both the most valuable citizens, and easiest to control. It's slavery with more steps.

Nuclear is also a good option. It has the potential to scale up to our generation needs faster than green energy, and it can still be environmentally clean when any byproduct is handled responsibly.

Do I trust my government (USA) to enforce proper procedure and handling? Not really… but I do think we’re less likely to have a nuclear accident in the present day. Modern designs have many more fail safes. And I think it’d still be much cleaner than burning fossil fuels.

I think they need to coexist, though. I think a goal in the far-future should be a decentralized grid with renewable energy sources integrated wherever they can be.

Basically the one nation I would have most trusted to handle nuclear safely, Japan, couldn't even do it. The issue these days is not that the plants themselves are unsafe, it's that we live on a active and changing planet, and accidents can and will always happen because of so-called acts of God. The problem is that nuclear, when it goes bad, tends to go mega ultra bad in ways that are very environmentally destructive and heinously expensive to clean up. So even if there is only 1/10000 the accident rate at nuclear plants that there are at other power plants, the consequences can be a million times worse.
- Why is your model for nuclear Japan? China is the world's forefront of nuclear energy research and development, keeps expanding its capabilities, and has a clean record with no accidents.
  Regardless, you're overestimating the damage that nuclear has done in comparison with other energy sources. You could have one Chernobyl per year and you wouldn't come close to the death toll coal or oil have worldwide. Regarding Fukushima for example, since you brought up Japan: some recent studies suggest that more people have died as a consequence of the upending of their lived by the evacuation of the whole region, than would have died according to realistic statistical models of radiation damage to humans. The main problem is that fossil fuel lobbies have successfully made people completely intolerant of radiation damage while they happily live in cities breathing in NO2 and particulate matter without one complaint.
- thorium is nuclear too...... (and doesnt seem to have the same runaway problems!)
- Humans would never cheap out on health and safety, or reduce regulatory red tape just to try to bring costs (and maybe, though less likely, prices) down. Unheard of.
- Would you feel better about nuclear if we expanded these rebreeder reactors I've heard of (uses spent nuclear waate) to the point there is no spent fuel sitting around?
Also you can vastly reduce the amount of battery capacity needed by having pilotable sources of energy like nuclear, hydro, geothermy and such
- Except nuclear is not very pilotable. More than Solar or Wind. But can't really be turned off either

Maybe it would also be much cheaper if "your" houses were a bit smaller and had proper insulation...

I wish!! Unfortunately, I didn't build my house.
- Have you considered inventing a time machine, going back in time, becoming a general contractor, and then building your house but smaller? Smh, people won't go the slightest bit out of their way to make things better these days.
I think it would cost trillions of dollars to rebuild all houses to be smaller. Imagine the carbon footprint of that endeavor.
Not sure if you’re referring to USA, but the energy code in the US is quite strict. Since the 80s insulation has been required and in the last 20 years the code has tightened to be quite strict. Homes in Latin America have none, no energy code, and European housing stock predates these requirements. Doesn’t mean US homes don’t consume a ton of energy but they are probably way better insulated than average.
- Hilariously my 1200 sq foot 125 year old home is much less energy efficient than my in-laws 3000 sq foot 3 year old home due to the greatly improved insulation and sealing practices in modern structures. On the other hand my house is so drafty I don't have to worry about things like mold growth due to improper vapor barriers nor the air becoming too stale due to insufficient circulation
- Both Europe and US are big enough to have a huge variety in building codes for different climates in different states/countries.
- Its not all about insulation though. A terrace has much less exterior wall than a row of spread out detached homes. Some still insulate the party wall. but more for sound reasons. But the main advantage of terraces , fossil fuel-wise, is that the medium-density is more likely to give you a walkable grocery + other stuff and a somewhat useful bus service or other public transport.
  Though modern suburbs here can be pretty sparse too with more detached homes.

Thankfully that is going to happen anyway through simple economics. Fossil fuel extraction is functionally already a peak technology, out of which every bit of efficiency has been squeezed by over 100 years of frantic and lavishly funded scientific development, whereas solar, battery, and wind technologies have been absolutely plunging in $-per-Kw to deploy and have much much further to go. So governments can try to slow this down as much as they wish, but it's as much a fool's errand as trying to rescue the horse industry in about 1920.

Now as for the question of "why isn't this more efficient technology resulting in savings for, me, the consumer?" I can only encourage you to look at the entire history of extractive, investor-driven capitalism for the answer.

Yeah, oil used to be the cheapest energy source for most situations (with the notable exception of mass power generation, were coal - an environmental even worse fossil fuel - was cheaper), but over the last couple of decades due to pressure on both the supply side (the easilly and cheaply extractable stuff gone) and from competing energy sources (like solar and wind-generation) oil stopped being one of the cheapest energy sources and it was pushed into just those uses were its high energy density gave it an advantage (i.e. transportation).
With better battery technology even that advantage is being lost (so electric cars are becoming the standard), which leaves only some chemical synthesis processes as places were oil is the best option.
Coal was kind pushed out of most of its markets long ago (hence you don't see that many steam trains around) so it is mainly used in power generation, and the falling cost of solar is making coal uncompetitive in it.
Gas is a little behind oil, with its main uses being domestic heating and cooking - now transiting to electric - and power generation - where renewables are now cheaper.
The trend for fossil fuels has been obvious for decades but there is naturally a TON of inertia in the pricing changes actually resulting in the needed infrastructure changes to transition away from them plus the Economic interests which extract rents in those areas are very literally paying politicians to delay this change as much as possible hence phenomenons like many more rightwing political parties pushing anti-renewables policies.

Don't even have to invest. In my area, a 100% renewable supplier was about 30% more per KWH, all of that extra overhead was paid to keep old unprofitable coal plants online. That's capitalist efficiency for you.

What’s the context of the painting?

Norman Rockwell. He did paintings of Americana. This one is about the civic duty to speak up or something
Reverse image search is a powerful tool
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Speech_(painting)
- Which reverse image search do you use? I use Tineye.
- Holy shit, I always just assumed it was John Brown

Not working great so far. I’m 100% for renewables and fuck fossil fuels, but despite the press about renewables finally being cheaper than fossil, it isn’t being passed to the consumer yet.

Depending on where you live this might be because of pricing regulations which require payments to be equal to the most expensive source used in a given period plus a preset margin. Some of the regulatory systems don't know how to cope with the differences in generation that come from renewables. ...not that they're great at managing the non-renewables these days either.

Truth, but the fossil fuels industry lobbies A LOT to keep your bills high and their pockets overflowing.

Legal bribing, if you will.

So, "green" energy is only cheaper if the government pays for it?

Not really a great argument.

No, you have it backwards. Fossil fuels were only cheaper because the government was heavily subsidizing it.
- *is
sure it is. governments have more leverage than private actors when doing projecting and costing, and can amortise things more economically.
That's what holds US gas prices down, subsidies. Helping large scale things be possible is what a government should do. There's many things that wouldn't have happened without the government paying for it.
The kicker is that if they switched to green and took away paying for petroleum, things would collapse, as green alone isn't going to support our society. That's the dead end we've walked ourselves into. It's not one or the other, it's what can we supplement or phase out with a better solution. And that kind of work needs government support, from subsidies to regulations to a supervisor that directs the change vs. relying only on free market.
- green alone isn’t going to support our society
  Let’s find out. When I started advocating for increased renewables, the expected limit was the grid destabilizing at 30% renewables. Now many places are there. I recently read a piece expecting the limit to be about 95% renewables based on scalability of todays grid storage. Were a long way from that, so let’s work toward it and see what improvements we can make along the way
  Note: one of the more difficult areas to greenify will be the military, but imagine instead shrinking that as we no longer have to defend petrostates or fossil fuel trade routes
When the government subsidizes the shit out of the alternatives, yes. But also investing in research for better things means you get better things faster.
They're already paying for fossil fuels (7$ trillion worldwide)
A government's concern is not in a single area.
For example some counties have free public transport, in part because it's better for the economy as a whole. That wouldn't make sense if public transport is privately owned.
Why? The government has better purchasing power than any private corporation and most things, but especially infrastructure become more economic at a greater scale.
Another point is that utilities are natural monopolies, and that the government building and controlling the infrastructure would cut out the profit motive that is currently driving up the cost.

But the fossil fuel billionaires are bribing them now. What's the point of creating solar and wind billionaires in ten years time? Who knows who will be in power and collecting their bribes then.

Yes. All of my problems are the government's fault.

Well that's a rediculous mischaracterization. All my problems are capitalism and how it influences the government's fault.
- If only the government would government me out of this!

Thats wildly incorrect.

If you care to know why, just ask me.

- Reminder for anyone looking at this graph that nuclear is driven high by western incompetence, and nuclear prices actually continuously drop in places with competent governments like China
We’d spend money up front to build the green energy generation. Distribution costs don’t go down, and tend to increase over time. It would take a while to realize any savings on the consumer bills?
It depends how you do it. I invested in green energy with a heat pump and spend fuck all compared to some people I know in heating. With a home battery I could cut my energy down to about £300 a year. Dont even need solar for that.