Tag: solar power

Renewables ‘Can’t Keep Up’ With Data Center Pace. As Usual, The Left Wants Government To Step In…

The political left is worried that the rapid expansion of data centers across the U.S. – a controversial but necessary development considering our competition with China – is increasingly accompanied by the corresponding construction of stand-alone natural gas plants to provide the power demands of the centers.

In Ohio, 10 gas-fired power plants are in the works to fuel new data centers. In West Virginia, a startup business building AI compute campuses plans to utilize hundreds of gas generators by 2028. Newly minted trillionaire Elon Musk has purchased a gas turbine company specifically to power the Tennessee-based data centers fueling Grok.

Across the nation, similar stories are playing out region by region, with dedicated gas plants often backed by tech giants who once swore off fossil fuels before reality set in.

Natural gas plants can be stood up relatively quickly and deliver the massive power required to keep the U.S. ahead of its adversaries in the AI/data center race. While data centers have resulted in controversies in some local communities – an unsurprising NIMBY reaction – other places have welcomed the developments.

As stated here before, artificial intelligence is here, like it or not. The only question is who will make the rules, the U.S. or China?

Soldiers in the anti-fossil fuel brigade are once again coming face-to-face with their biggest enemy: reality. And as usual, rather than seeking to engage fairly in the free market, backers of renewables are demanding that government write regulations requiring their use.

The Associated Press recently reported that “tech giants are demanding power at such speed and scale – some data centers consume more energy than a mid-size city – that the construction of wind and solar simply can’t keep up,” giving natural gas a substantial advantage. Most people call that the free market playing out as it naturally will. The climate change fearmongers call it foul play.

To level the field, the same old playbook is once again being deployed. For instance, in Michigan, Oregon and Minnesota, laws have been enacted in the last 18 months “designed to protect their pre-existing requirements that electric utilities use only emissions-free energy sources by 2040,” AP reported, adding that similar bills are emerging in California, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

New York, not surprisingly, leads the way when it comes to the heavy hand of government mandates. There, legislation would force data centers over a certain size “to meet renewable energy benchmarks starting in 2030 and, by 2040, get at least 90% of their energy from renewable energies.”

The arrogance of those demanding that alternatives be given special consideration was once more on display courtesy of a New York state lawmaker who wrote the bill in question. “We are literally talking about the wealthiest companies in the world that are looking to build in New York state,” said state Sen. Kristen Gonzalez (D), adding, “and if they have the resources to put billions of dollars into data center development, then they certainly should have the resources to build out renewable energy sources to power them.”

So there!

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Wind and Solar Finally Meet the Taxpayer’s Breaking Point

A family paying the electric bill doesn’t care how noble a subsidy sounds in Washington. They care whether the lights stay on, the furnace runs, the air conditioner works, and the bill leaves enough money for groceries.

President Donald Trump’s tax law set July 4, 2026, as the deadline ending federal tax credit subsidies for new wind and solar projects not already under construction. U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright called the deadline the end of roughly 35 years of federal support for wind and solar, and he noted that in 2025 they comprised about 3% of total U.S. primary energy consumption. From Just the News:

The Working Families Tax Cuts, a signature piece of President Trump’s tax legislation signed a year ago, set Saturday as the deadline for federal tax credit subsidies on any new solar or wind projects not currently under construction.

U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright touted the subsidy deadline and criticized solar and wind energy projects in a video posted to social media Thursday.

“The wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine,” Wright said. “They drive up the system costs and increase Americans’ electricity prices.”

From 2010 to 2023, solar and wind energy projects received more than $141 billion in government subsidies combined, according to an analysis by the Texas Public Policy Foundation. The projects received more in government subsidies than any other energy source in the United States, the group reported.

“Beyond their direct costs, subsidies are causing artificially low or negative wholesale prices, scarcity prices during periods of high demand and low wind and solar generation, inefficient use of existing assets, and increased transmission costs,” Brent Bennett, a researcher at the Texas foundation wrote.

The original argument for subsidies was patience. Give the industry help, let technology improve, then let the market decide. After decades of federal support, taxpayers were still being asked to finance energy sources that need backup, transmission buildouts, land, materials, and favorable rules to compete.

Patience became a policy shift; policy drift becomes a bill the public never really got to vote on.

The White House executive order signed July 7, 2025, said federal policy would rapidly eliminate market distortions and taxpayer costs tied to green energy subsidies. The order directed the Treasury Department to strictly enforce the termination of clean electricity production and investment tax credits under sections 45Y and 48E for wind and solar facilities. 

It also directed the Interior Department to review policies that favor wind and solar over dispatchable energy sources.

A Just the News report placed the cost in plain sight. Wind and solar subsidies were estimated at more than $141 billion from 2010 to 2023, more than any other energy source. Before the cuts, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the two programs would increase the federal deficit by $308 billion from 2026 through 2035.

Those figures should settle the basic question. Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to bankroll electricity that still struggles when demand peaks and weather refuses to cooperate. America needs power that can run steel mills, hospitals, data centers, farms, factories, and homes without asking families to pray for sunshine or a breeze.

Wind and solar have a role where they make sense. Let them compete; let investors risk their own money; let customers decide what they want to buy.

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California Program Gives Free Solar Panels to Illegal Aliens

A California climate change program has spent $49 million to hand out free solar panels to illegal migrant homeowners, a shocking report revealed.

The Farmworker Housing Component of the Low-Income Weatherization Program is one of the state’s many climate change initiatives, and this one is aimed at farm workers — including those who are in the U.S. illegally, according to City Journal researcher and writer Christopher Rufo and his co-author Austen Hufford.

The program is part of California’s multibillion-dollar cap-and-trade system which “taxes carbon producers and redistributes approximately $3 billion per year to energy programs and left-wing social causes — all under the banner of fighting ‘climate change,’” the two wrote.

Rufo and Hufford found that California has spent about $49 million on the program to hand out free solar panels to recipients, some of whom are illegal aliens.

The company that runs the program is called Nonprofit La Cooperativa Campesina de California. La Cooperativa then partnered with MAROMA Energy Services, which describes itself as “minority owned.” These two have contracted out the installations of said solar panels.

As Rufo and Hufford note:

These organizations have heavily advertised the program to California’s nearly 900,000 agricultural workers, half to three-quarters of whom are illegal immigrants. In its official documentation, California’s Department of Community Services and Development acknowledges that non-citizens are eligible for the program and that they even accept identification from foreign governments.

In a Spanish-language radio broadcast, Natalie Velores, a program manager for MAROMA, confirmed that participants do not need “legal status” in the United States and can use a matrìcula consular, a common form of identification that the Mexican consulate provides to migrants who have crossed the border, to apply.

These companies confirmed that legal citizenship is not required to be afforded the free solar panels.

The providers also mounted an extensive information drive by sending representatives out into the farm worker communities across the state to let them know how to get their free solar power systems.

But, while a ton of cash has been spent on this program, only 2,000 families have been the recipients of the free solar systems to date.

“That means the State of California has allocated roughly $23,000 per household for its program to provide free solar panels, refrigerators, and other services — a number that raises serious concerns about financial accountability,” Ruffo and Hufford wrote.

Finally, it appears that at least one politically connected activist is at the center of these groups that are reaping millions from the state. The man, Mauricio Blanco, “worked as a project manager for La Cooperativa Campesina de California, which has been awarded at least $10.7 million by the state; is currently listed as an executive of MAROMA Energy Services, which has been granted nearly $34 million from La Cooperativa for ‘weatherization’ services since 2017; and is CEO of John Harrison Contracting, a firm that appears to have done much of the solar installation work.”

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Meta Inks Deal For Solar Power At Night, Beamed From Space

The race to secure electricity for AI models has reached new heights: Meta has signed an agreement with the startup Overview Energy that could see a thousand satellites beam infrared light to solar farms that power data centers at night.

In 2024, Meta’s data centers used more than 18,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity — roughly enough to power more than 1.7 million American homes for a year — and its need for compute power is only increasing. The company has committed to building 30 gigawatts of renewable power sources, with a focus on industrial-scale solar power plants.

Typically, data centers turning to solar power must either invest in battery storage or rely on other generation sources to operate at night.

Overview Energy, a four-year-old, Ashburn, Virginia, outfit that emerged from stealth in December, has a different solution: The company is developing spacecraft that collect plentiful solar power in space. It then plans to convert that energy to near-infrared light and beam it at sufficiently large solar farms — on the order of hundreds of megawatts — which can convert that light to electricity.

By using a wide, infrared beam to power existing terrestrial solar infrastructure, Overview thinks it can sidestep the technological challenges and safety and regulatory issues that bedevil plans to transmit power to Earth through high-power lasers or microwave beams. CEO Marc Berte says you’ll be able to stare right into his satellite’s beam with no ill effects.

The technology would increase the return on investment from building solar farms and reduce reliance on fossil fuels — if it can be deployed at scale.

Overview says it has already demonstrated power transmission to the ground from an aircraft, and is planning to launch a satellite to low Earth orbit in January 2028 to perform its first power transmission from space.

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IDF probes video showing soldiers destroying solar panels in Christian-Lebanese village

The IDF has launched an investigation into a video in which Israeli soldiers are seen destroying solar panels in a village in Lebanon, Israeli media reported on Saturday night.

The destruction took place in the village of Debel, the same village in which an IDF soldier was photographed smashing a statue of Jesus last week.

KAN also reported that the solar panels were civilian infrastructure, being used by hundreds of residents of the village who had not been evacuated from their homes, with the IDF’s permission.

“The actions seen in the video are not in line with the IDF‘s values and the conduct expected of its soldiers,” the IDF told KAN. “The incident is under investigation. Based on its findings, command measures will be taken accordingly.”

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Sen. Bernie Sanders, Meet ‘Just the Facts’ on Renewable Energy Myths and Realities

Hardly a day goes by without luminaries of the left like Vermont’s Independent Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders pumping half-truths, undocumented claims, and outright lies about the evils of fossil fuels versus the saintly characteristics of renewables like solar and wind power.

Here’s a typical example of the routine sort of cant Sanders deals on energy issues: “At a time when solar and wind are the cheapest forms of new energy in the world, Trump wants to open a BILLION acres of US water to oil drilling. Why? To line the pockets of his fossil fuel billionaire friends. The rest of the world moves forward, we get left behind.”

Thanks to the sharp-eyed researchers working for James Agresti’s Just Facts (based in Conroe, Texas), exposing the fallacies and fables in Sanders’ energy claims is no more difficult than a mouse click and a few minutes of illuminating reading. Apparently it’s not easy enough for editors and reporters at major mainstream media outlets to check out claims like those peddled by Sanders before publishing them as reliable.

Consider these 14 points from a Just Facts evaluation of the Sanders tweet quoted above:

  • The assertion that solar and wind are “cheap” is based on a metric called “levelized costs,” which fails to account for the fact that wind and solar don’t produce energy when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. Thus, they must be backed up by expensive energy storage systems or technologies that generate electricity on demand, like natural gas.
  • Due to the unreliability of solar and wind, the U.S. Energy Information Administration warns that its levelized costs for solar and wind “are not directly comparable to those for other technologies,” a vital fact that proponents of wind and solar often ignore.
  • After 40+ years of the U.S. government aggressively subsidizing solar and wind while discouraging the use of fossil fuels through taxes and regulations, solar and wind provided only 6.6% of all U.S. energy in 2024.
  • In addition to the federal government, some states have subsidized solar and wind so heavily that the New York Times reported in 2024 that “thousands” of “renewable energy” companies “are reeling” from a reduction in only one California solar subsidy, causing a “sharp decline” in rooftop solar installations.
  • Per a 2024 report by the International Energy Agency, “Although renewable energy technologies are becoming more cost-competitive,” “roughly 87% of global renewable utility-scale capacity growth in 2023–2028 is expected to be stimulated by policy schemes” in which “government policy is the primary driver for the investment decision.”
  • Despite claims from politicians like Gavin Newsom that solar is the “cheapest form of energy,” his state of California — which gets more of its electricity from solar than any other state — has the highest electricity prices in the continental U.S., or more than twice the national average. This elevated rate doesn’t even account for all of the government spending on solar that is borne by taxpayers instead of consumers.
  • In Germany, which is a “global leader in sustainable energy production,” the average price of household electricity is 3.5 times that of the United States.
  • A diverse array of scholarly publications document that affordable energy is “essential for public health and economic prosperity,” while high energy prices drive up hunger, drive down wages, stoke unemployment, and harm people in a wide variety of other ways.
  • While admitting that “past economic growth and poverty reduction have been associated with high GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions,” a 2024 World Bank report calls for “trade-offs” because “ending poverty for the 3 billion people who struggle on less than $6.85 a day would come at a high cost to the environment.”
  • Contrary to claims that green energy subsidies create “good paying” jobs, they actually enrich selected investors while neglecting workers. As explained in scholarly publications like the encyclopedia Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, the financial benefits of renewable energy subsidies “largely accrue to the owners of capital” because “energy development” is “capital-intensive,” and growth in “the green jobs sector does not necessarily imply net job creation” since it reduces the jobs “that would have been produced from fossil fuels,” and thus, “net job creation may be zero (or negative).”
  • Western Europe’s abandonment of fossil fuel production and nuclear energy has left it heavily dependent on Russia for energy.
  • A shell company in Bermuda with deep ties to Vladimir Putin and Russian oil companies has donated tens of millions of dollars to the Sierra Club and other environmental groups that oppose fracking.
  • A 2021 Bloomberg report documents that Communist China dominates global supply chains for key components of the solar industry, including 78% of the world’s supply of solar cells.
  • A 2025 report by the International Energy Agency states that the “battery supply chain” for electric vehicles has become “increasingly geographically concentrated” in China, which was “responsible for 80% of global battery cell production in 2024.” The report also states that “China has also established a near monopoly on battery components production.”

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NY’s ‘green elephant’ climate projects are collapsing under the weight of . . . math

Nearly two dozen New York clean energy projects are likely to get scrapped because the financial math doesn’t add up — though the state powers that be don’t want to admit that it never did.

Officially, the New York State Energy Research Development Authority, aka NYSERDA, is simply refusing to renegotiate state contracts to build various wind and solar plants, likely leading its counterparties to pull out.

These companies want more cash because the projects’ costs have soared since the deals were inked — mainly because NYSERDA winked at unlikely early estimates with an expectation that it would OK more realistic numbers later on.

In at least one earlier round, it simply rebid the contracts to reflect true costs, but that game is up now that those costs are becoming undeniable, and consumers are already screaming at the electric rate hikes needed to cover the bills.

It’s all part of the con that is New York’s 2019 Climate Act, a scam that set insane goals for decarbonizing the state’s electricity grid and outlined imaginary steps to paint the transition as practical. 

Green ideologues always figure deception is the best way to get governments started on such “reforms,” hoping they can then hector the politicians into keeping the scam going by concealing how exorbitant the costs really are.

Then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo jumped on board as he eyed a presidential run; his successor, Kathy Hochul, declined to call out the lunacy until now, when she’s running for re-election as the economic pain starts to hit.

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Large Michigan Solar Projects Can Now Bypass Township Permit Denials. 122 of 148 Lawmakers Took Utility Money

One of Michigan’s electric utilities, Consumers Energy, announced plans to build up to 9,000 megawatts of solar power on 209,000 acres of farmland. The total size of these solar projects is about 326 square miles. That’s about 2.5 times the size of Detroit itself.

Nearly all these costs get added to citizens’ electric bills. Recognizing this would likely create opposition within townships, Democrat politicians in Michigan passed Public Act 233. It overrides a township if they deny a solar or wind farm permit.

For decades, Michigan’s 1,773 local township governments had the authority to decide whether a large solar farm could be built in their communities. In late November of 2023, Public Act 233 was signed into law. Larger solar (>50MW) and wind (>100MW) projects can now skip the voices of local residents. They now have almost no say in some of Michigan’s biggest industrial projects.

If the local jurisdiction denies the solar application, takes too long, or imposes excessive rules, the developer can bypass the township entirely. They can apply directly to the 3 person Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) for approval. All 3 commissioners are appointed by Democrat governor Gretchen Whitmer. In some cases, these developers can bypass townships from the onset.

PA 233 was introduced by MI House of Representatives Abraham Aiyash (D), a top Muslim lawmaker from the Detroit area. Every Democrat voted in favor of the bill, every Republican against (20-18). Like fascists, the MI Democrats took oversight from these small townships and gave it to MPSC. Democrats also control MPSC, which determines how much the two utility companies can charge their MI customers (Consumers Energy, DTE Energy).

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California to Keep Bird Broiling Solar Plant in Operation

I was in Las Vegas with my family the week before Christmas. On the drive back to California we passed a solar generation site called Ivanpah. If you haven’t seen this before it’s pretty striking in person. Instead of using photo-voltaic cells, the site has three towers surrounded by mirrors. The mirrors focus light and heat on the towers which use the concetrated heat to turn turbines.

The site was built with funds from several major companies including Google and a federal loan guarantee of $1.6 billion dollars. When this site opened in 2014, it was considered a step into the future of solar energy, but that quickly changed for several reasons. First, the site never produced as much power as was promised. Second, the cost of PV solar panels dropped dramatically to the point that rate-payers were paying a lot more for Ivanpah’s solar energy than they would be if the site were just full of regular solar panels. And thirdly, the site had some environmental problems including interfering with local tortoises and killing as many as 6,000 birds a year.

A macabre fireworks show unfolds each day along I-15 west of Las Vegas, as birds fly into concentrated beams of sunlight and are instantly incinerated, leaving wisps of white smoke against the blue desert sky.

Workers at the Ivanpah Solar Plant have a name for the spectacle: “Streamers.”

And the image-conscious owners of the 390-megawatt plant say they are trying everything they can think of to stop the slaughter.

Federal biologists say about 6,000 birds die from collisions or immolation annually while chasing flying insects around the facility’s three 40-story towers, which catch sunlight from five square miles of garage-door-size mirrors to drive the plant’s power-producing turbines.

For all of these reasons, both the Biden administration and the Trump administration agreed the state should shut down Ivanpah. Here’s a video Reason made about it last April.

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The Hidden Subsidy for Renewable Energy

Renewable energy really means anti-establishment energy, or politically correct energy.  The energy is usually electricity that is distributed via the electric grid.  The source of energy has to be “natural.”

Solar and wind are the most popular types of renewable energy.  Hydroelectric energy derived from a big dam on a river might seem ideal, except that the promoters of renewable energy don’t like dams.  If you can figure out how to generate hydroelectricity without a dam, you can call it renewable.  Nuclear energy might seem like a good candidate except that nuclear energy is too scary and too good a fundraising tool to accept as renewable.

Solar energy costs about seven times as much as electricity from coal or natural gas.  Most of the cost is hidden in subsidies.  If that truth were not obscured by massive propaganda, hardly anyone would build solar energy or wind energy farms.

The renewable energy promoters are politically successful.  About half the U.S. states have renewable portfolio laws that mandate the amount of renewable electricity they use.  For example, California requires that 60% of its electricity be renewable by 2030.  That has increased and will increase the cost of electricity in California.  Many electric customers pay more than 50 cents per kilowatt-hour.

According to the promoters of renewable energy, it is well-suited for solving a multitude of imaginary problems.  The number-one imaginary problem is global warming, rechristened “climate change” when the globe failed to warm.

The Sierra Club is a leading promoter of renewable energy.  This is the pitch on one of their websites promoting renewable energy:

We are facing monumental threats to our planet’s future. We are fighting back with every tool at our disposal — but to face these challenges, we need your support. Make your gift today.

Even the New York Times has become critical of the Sierra Club, for reasons described in this video.

Solar and wind are erratically intermittent sources of electricity.  Solar quits at night and whenever a cloud obscures the sun.  Wind quits when the wind slows or stops.

When solar or wind electricity is introduced, it is supplementary to the existing electric infrastructure.  Solar or wind cannot replace existing generating plants because solar and wind  are intermittent sources of electricity.  The existing grid generating plants must be retained so they can supply electricity when solar or wind fails.  In order to compare the cost of solar and wind with the traditional fossil fuels, we need only to compare expenditure when the traditional plants are powering the grid with the expenditure when solar or wind is engaged.

When solar or wind is working backup, coal and gas plants are idling.  Every megawatt-hour of electricity not produced by a coal or gas plant reduces the cost of fuel by about $20.  Every megawatt-hour of electricity produced by a solar plant costs about $150, mostly amortization of the original cost of the plant.  The cost for wind is similar.  A spreadsheet showing a detailed calculation of the cost of solar energy can be downloaded here.

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