Last year, Donald Trump tried to kill the rising wave of alternative energy sources because, for mysterious reasons, he loves coal and oil. (I lie; it’s because the petrochemical dinosaurs are shoveling money at him.)
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said his administration will not approve solar or wind power projects, even as electricity demand is outpacing the supply in some parts of the U.S.
“We will not approve wind or farmer destroying Solar,” Trump, who has complained in the past that solar takes up too much land, posted on Truth Social. “The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!”
Ha ha, the jokes on him, the days of stupidity are flourishing in this country.
Except his King Cnut routine failed. Solar power rules!
Even as Donald Trump boosts coal over clean energy, solar power is hitting new milestones in the US and remains the leading source of new power.
Data released on Wednesday by the global energy thinktank Ember, along with a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association (Seia) and analytics firm Wood Mackenzie, show the continued growth of solar and decline of coal in the United States despite federal policy. In May, for the first time, solar supplied more of the nation’s electricity than coal, or 12.8%, Ember said. Coal supplied 12.2%, its fourth-lowest monthly share ever.
Actually, natural gas and nuclear are number one and two, with solar power in third place. But it’s progress! The reason solar is defying Trump’s stupid orders is money, of course.
Cost is a big reason for the shift, Sean McKenna of the Desert Research Institute told the Nevada Independent.
“Leveled cost of electricity from solar is now the cheapest generation of electricity in many states,” he told the paper.
Cory Doctorow has a more vivid story of how solar is transforming economies, thanks to Trump.
Back during Trump I, he decided that Americans couldn’t buy Chinese solar any more, which had the double benefit of allowing him to pursue the twin goals of throwing red meat to sinophobic Cold War 2.0 freaks and delivering a giant gift to the planet-wrecking oil companies that had helped him buy his way into office.
This was really bad for America, of course, but those solar panels had to go somewhere. Mostly, they ended up in Pakistan, dumped there at such a massive discount that the country solarised virtually overnight. Pakistani solar installers learned their trade from TikTok videos set to Tamil film soundtracks, and unwired the country so thoroughly that today, the national power company is in danger of going bust because no one buys their electricity from the grid any more. Pakistani bridal dowries now routinely include four panels, an inverter and a battery.
“Bad for America”…get used to those words, we’re going to hear them a lot in the near future, as we look back on Republican policies. We’re going to remember today as the days of stupidity, all right.
Good ideas thrive while bad ones die.
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Burying the traditional conservative economic consensus: Alan Greenspan (among other things, a personal friend of Ayn Rand) dies at 100.
As solar power coincide with the need for AC power, I can see Europe joining in. Britain will get more than 35°C and France more than 40°C, triggering emergency warnings.
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The next step is durable, cheaper batteries suitable for the second-hand market. Older EV batteries will serve as energy buffers. We are not there yet, but we see steady progress.
-Also, if and when they solve the durability problem for perovskite-based PV panels the cost for solar will really drop.
Single-payer health insurance! A return of the Fairness Doctrine to broadcast media. Comprehensive election reform. Adding four new justices to the Supreme Court. Adopting the Equal Rights Amendment fifty years late…
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“we’re going to hear them a lot in the near future, as we look back on Republican policies.”
Also, neoliberal pro-billionaire Democrats. Tow them out to the Marianas Trench along with the Republicans.
There may be some mutated monsters turning up in the sea, but that is a risk we should take.
Tamil in Pakistan surprises me. I thought Urdu was the first language there and Tamil was mainly in Southern India.
Destroying alternative energy sources allowing oil to be king was a great plan for the oil companies. Having President DJT on their side seemed like a sure bet. The only thing you can count on Trump to do is fuck things up. The oil companies are taking in a bundle due to the Iran war but in the long run it may be their doom.
It actually says Tamil film soundtracks not Tamil narration. A look at the Wikipedia article on Tamil Cinema shows that films are frequently dubbed and widely distributed elsewhere so the music may be familiar in Pakistan. I suspect possibly bootlegged music from Tamil films on Urdu narrated videos
Trump, who has complained in the past that solar takes up too much land…
Unsurprisingly, the opposite is true. A few years back, I got curious about land use for energy, specifically, the energy derived from corn used for ethanol that is mixed with gasoline. Speaking as a retired professor of electrical engineering, I wanted to see how the numbers worked out. I won’t get into the weeds here, but there’s a lot of data from reliable sources to do this, such as average yearly solar irradiance at specific locations, amount of corn produced and area used, energy content of ethanol, efficiency of internal combustion engines, efficiency of PV panels, etc. It turns out that Iowa farmers (a major producer of corn-for-ethanol) could take half of the land used for corn ethanol and place PV panels on it, letting the other half go fallow or be used for something else, and they’d still wind up producing more energy than growing corn. And that’s a constant input. There’s no tilling of the soil, no harvesting, no pesticides or fertilizer run-off, etc. Just put up the panels and let the sun do its work. And, if they wanted to, they could still make use of agrivoltaics (the simultaneous use of land for solar PV and raising flora or fauna). Sounds like a win-win unless you’re one of the middle-men in the current scheme, and that’s why it won’t get done. Things only happen in the USA when there is money to be made on them while no one is making money on what that new thing replaces.
“ for mysterious reasons, he loves coal and oil”. He obsesses over how wind turbines make his golf courses look bad. Never underestimate how petty he is.
Anyone who follows Technology Connections on YouTube probably has seen this video already, but for those who haven’t, he shows in this video how much better solar energy is and has some comparisons to land-use between solar farms and growing corn for ethanol. Also has a long-overdue (from his channel) political rant for the last 30 minutes.
Yes, that’s a great video, esp. at the end. Well worth the time to watch!
Yeah, we’ve reached the point where renewable energy makes much more sense from an economic as well as an environmental point of view. Trump and co’s advocacy for fossil fuels is purely ideological.
I remember when conservatives used to ridicule the left for being addicted to impractical utopian ideologies that made no practical sense, whereas they were the hard-headed common-sense people. I don’t know if that was ever true, but if it was, the shoe is now on the other foot.
But, tRUMP’s Clean Coal will save the day (ughh, I choked trying to say that).
O.K. now we see, tRUMP has aided china and other countries that are leaving u.s. (us) in the ‘coal dust-bin of history’
Juan Cole recently posted:
Hormuz Effect: EVS = Record 2/3s of Chinese New Car Sales
https://www.juancole.com/2026/06/hormuz-effect-chinese.html
Another issue with renewables for Trump is that he cannot invade another country to steal their sunlight or wind or hydro like he can for oil. He wants absolute control and he can’t do that with renewables.
Yeah, a pricey technique, too, for taxpayers (which excludes him, to be fair):
https://www.offshorewind.biz/2026/04/03/ocasio-cortez-markey-ask-trump-admin-to-explain-paying-totalenergies-usd-1-billion-in-taxpayer-money-to-drop-offshore-wind-projects/
and
https://transformer-magazine.com/news/us-buys-back-765-m-wind-leases/
for example.
The technology of solar has also been improving dramatically: efficiency of PV cells rising very quickly, their price dropping. Solar is now the cheapest electricity in history. Not just the cheapest out now, but the cheapest ever in history.
As was said above, storage batteries are moving along that road, too. They are now being sold as backup power generators for houses: I’ve been looking into getting one.
I’ve had solar panels for a long while now, and, while I thought they’d lower my electric bill a bit, I didn’t expect to make money off of them! Which is the case. And, I live in the Northeast, not exactly Sunshine Central.
Here, the electric company is offering to pay 30% of installation costs if you’ll get a house backup battery (you don’t need solar cells to have one) and let them buy the power in the battery from you during times of peak usage, aka, every night. So, more income for me, and electricity in my house when the grid is down.
Heating the house with my electric heat pumps is now so cheap that I don’t plan to turn on the furnace at all this winter.
BTW, a constant irritation: they are NOT windmills, they are wind turbines.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbine
@crivitz
This is a fantastic video and the rant is absolutely superb!
I’d also recommend Paul Krugman’s substack where one of his common themes is how much a champion of renewables Donald Trump has been.
I particularly liked this description of a comittee meeting in Congress:
What’s best for Americans has nothing to do with it. Thus, Trump lackeys justifying their hostility to renewables consistently make arguments even they must know are stupid. Consider, for example, an exchange last month between Doug Burgum, secretary of the interior, and Rep. Jared Huffman of Nevada:
Burgum: All of these projects you’re describing in Nevada have one thing in common—when the sun goes down, they produce zero electricity.
Huffman: Mr. Chairman, I request unanimous consent to enter in the record this amazing new technology that apparently the secretary is unaware of: It’s a battery.
I am pretty sure not being able to afford diesel fuel and fertilizer during the spring planting season is the reason so many farmers are struggling. Solar farms haven’t destroyed any farmers or farmland.
I’ve even seen photos of livestock hanging out in the shade from the solar panels, so the farmer gets two revenue streams from one piece of land.
#18 Tethys. Thats an field of study now Agrivoltaics. Using the shade of the PV to increase agricultural productivity and using the plants to cool the PV.
@ ^ francesconic & #18. Tethys : Huh. Yup. Didn’t know there was actually a word for it and whole field (apt) of it either :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics
So thanks for that.
As for “bringing on the days of stupidity”, well those who allowed and encouraged Trump to take power twice – its on them. Especially the Bothsiderists who refused to compare, contrast and choose wisely when it came to the two parties energy and environmental policies and credentials and pro-science vs anti-science positions.
But, hey, at least Joe Biden’s not POTUS & got “punished”* for, doing what any POTUS would’ve done post 7th October 2023 and for what Netanyahu then chose to do. .. Oh wait, Biden wouldn’t have been POTUS anyhow since he put his nation’s and the world’s future first and had stepped down anyhow. Things would ‘ve been so utterly different had HRC or Kamala or both been POTUS instead.
.* Punished lightly along with everyone else with perhaps the Gazans being punished most of all along with the poorest and most suffering nations & most actually persecuted groups on Earth including some of those who chose their punishment along with everyone else’s but, well,.. at least you made HRC, Biden, Kamala sad so you’re happy now. Worth it?
“The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!”
I love it when Republicans write their own obituary headlines.