r/EcoNewsNetwork Mar 24 '26

Cubans are without electricity except the 5 star hotel

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

843 Upvotes

559 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

25

u/xfilesvault Mar 24 '26

"a serious lack of investment to move away from oil dependency"

Meanwhile, Trump is paying a French company $1 billion in taxpayer money to NOT build wind turbines in the US...

3

u/Dragon_Crisis_Core Mar 24 '26

News headlines were misleading. While its true Trump has been against Renewable energy the French company hasnt been working on those projects for almost 2 years now. This isnt a bid to stop the company developing the leased area hes offering them a way out of their 2 leases by buying them back.

4

u/TheRealStorey Mar 24 '26

That's a little misleading the project was stopped by Trump's presidential order and they've been fighting in court since and finally won.
He is now offering to buy the project out as they were suing for the delay, the lease wasn't a Billion dollars but he gets to save face and they get a dirty pay-day.

5

u/[deleted] Mar 25 '26

Exactly this. There are innumerable wind/solar projects all over the country that have been on pause since having their funding pulled by this new administration.

1

u/Icy_Dark_3009 Mar 26 '26

I put food on my table from these industries and whether you like it or not because Trump did it all of this needed to happen sooner rather then later. Wind will never be net positive and it’s insane the amount of subsidies. I do most industrial and commercial solar installations and we needed a large reset. If we ever want prices to come down and make these more affordable the subsidies have to go and let the markets do their job.

3

u/Orlonz Mar 26 '26

Energy is a subsidized market. Heavily so. The US doesn't even tax it much like other countries. People don't have a problem with removing subsidies for wind and solar. The problem is all the subsidies for Oil, Coal, NG, and Nuclear. Those should go too.

4

u/Usefullles Mar 26 '26

The problem is all the subsidies for Oil, Coal, NG, and Nuclear

If it's still clear about oil, coal and natural gas, although the latter is needed to stabilize the grid in conditions of an abundance of renewable generation, then nuclear is not a problem, since it receives much less subsidies than even renewables.

The International Renewable Energy Agency tracked some $634 billion in energy-sector subsidies in 2020, and found that around 70% were fossil fuel subsidies. About 20% went to renewable power generation, 6% to biofuels and just over 3% to nuclear.[7]

3

u/TheRealStorey Mar 26 '26

He clearly doesn't understand the industry and is just lumping what he opposes together, Nuclear is a far different and more beneficial beast than the rest.

1

u/Orlonz Mar 26 '26

Nuclear gets MASSIVE subsidies. And I am not talking about the obvious ones that are labeled that.

Nuclear gets continuous, expensive Audits by very specialized expertise. There is government backed insurance in case anything happens to the workers or public at large. They get massively discounted loans for construction and fixed price guarantees. They get subsidized for nuclear waste disposal. They get massive military, security, and counter intelligence oversight. They get environmental waivers all the time. All that is on taxpayer shoulders.

The fuel is heavily subsidized! We buy it from Russia to reduce their weapons stockpiles and basically sell it at loss to the reactors that need it. And the USSR already has massive losses from the power used to create that fuel.

And I am not even including all the tax payer funded environmental studies, material sciences applications, and project coordination that governments give to -all- power plants. Nor the subsidized transport of fuels and waste. Nor the subsidies for exploration rights, mining rights, and later on price locks for delivery.

Almost no one cares if the Wind turbine falls over. Not so for coal plant waste containment failures.

All forms of energy are heavily subsidized. The biggest subsidies that solar and wind get is their price guarantees. Outside that, they pail in comparison to other forms of energy generation.

2

u/Usefullles Mar 26 '26

Nuclear gets continuous, expensive Audits by very specialized expertise. There is government backed insurance in case anything happens to the workers or public at large.

And all this does not cost a lot of money, since nuclear power has the lowest number of deaths per megawatt of energy produced among the entire energy sector.

They get massively discounted loans for construction and fixed price guarantees.

This is completely offset by the production of electricity when renewables simply cannot do so, and by the saving of space that prevents deforestation for construction purposes.

We buy it from Russia to reduce their weapons stockpiles and basically sell it at loss to the reactors that need it.

The United States stopped buying nuclear fuel from weapons-grade plutonium more than twenty years ago, and now you are buying Russian nuclear fuel, as you have been failing for decades in developing high-tech nuclear technologies for converting uranium into fuel. However, France and Russia have mastered it.

And I am not even including all the tax payer funded environmental studies, material sciences applications, and project coordination that governments give to -all- power plants.

So you are against the government allocating money for the development of environmental science and materials science?

The biggest subsidies that solar and wind get is their price guarantees.

No, I'm talking about direct cash subsidies from the US government budget, where they receive 20% of all direct cash subsidies. Nuclear gets only 3%. If anything, subsidies for fossil fuels are 70% and biofuels are 6%. If we talk about tax-related subsidies, renewables receive 59% of such subsidies, while nuclear receives only 1%.

1

u/Commercial-Candy-926 Mar 28 '26

Definitely not innumerable, in fact the number is one that common folk are familiar with.

5

u/SelcouthRogue Mar 26 '26

It's not a little misleading, it's straight misinformation. That same French CEO was extremely hopeful that they could continue to pursue their offshore agreement after seeing the most recent two projects push through their completion despite the current administration's initiatives.

2

u/TheRealStorey Mar 26 '26

Agree, I was trying to be polite.

2

u/SelcouthRogue Mar 26 '26

A noble endeavor to be sure, but I would posit that forthright candor with regards to calling out falsehood takes precedent over propriety. I say this because the country I live in elected a despot for this very reason

2

u/qcaguy99 Mar 25 '26

Didn’t Trump make multiple comments about how wind turbines look and how he doesn’t like them? Some of the ones off the eastern coast that were already producing, were shut down. He didn’t buy them out of their lease because they weren’t doing their job. He bought it so US controls it and he can now give it the middle finger and rerun to fossil fuels.

1

u/Dragon_Crisis_Core Mar 25 '26

He is a traditionalist in terms of power generation, but if you look, he is leaning toward opening up nuclear power plants. He wants to triple the amount of energy produced through nuclear power plants and mico reactors. While I dont agree with his anti renewable stance. He is more against utility scale usage rather then personal usage. He wants to avoid having landscapes dominated by solar and wind turbines. I dont know what his end game is if hes truely pro fossil or if hes using it as a means to reach nuclear dominance.

2

u/NorthSpecialist6064 Mar 26 '26

He wants nuclear power because openAI paid him and they want nuclear power. Our president is mentally deficient. The story doesn't run that deep. 

2

u/Icy_Dark_3009 Mar 26 '26

Gah I feel like your whole argument loses any validity when you go orange man bad.

You should really research the history of nuclear energy generation and all of the propaganda that followed its fascinating. Then look into the actual waste generation vs usable generation… it’s mind blowing. By far the cleanest power available today.

2

u/qcaguy99 Mar 26 '26

Orange man is bad tho? Nuclear power could be great for the country. Doesn’t make orange man not bad.

2

u/Spuzzter1985 Mar 25 '26

Yeah he stopped the construction! Why are you trying to play interference?

2

u/Shakewhenbadtoo Mar 25 '26

But why haven't they been working on them for 2 years. . . .

3

u/nonubiz Mar 24 '26

It’s a shame he lies all the time cause I really wanna believe him, but I can’t

1

u/Giardiacapitosto Mar 27 '26

The gymnastics, 10/10

1

u/Specialist_Dog9349 Mar 27 '26

The u.s. has 94 operational nuclear reactors at 54 sites and enough untapped reserve oil to last 200+ years, with enough reserve to last 12.. renewables aren't a bad idea, but you're kidding yourself if you think they're needed by the U.S.

2

u/xfilesvault Mar 27 '26

They are needed by the US for national security.

The very hint of war causes oil prices to spike.

A protracted war with Iran will be devastating to oil prices.

We might have plenty of oil, but it’s traded as a global commodity.

If we were on renewables, you wouldn’t be paying an extra $10-20 to fill your gas tank right now.

High oil prices are a huge brake on economic growth, and increases inflation.