Comment by dzonga 9 hours ago
the sad thing about this data is how politicized clean energy has become.
the blue states have a lot of energy solar - while the red ones are sparse. the red ones get a lot of sun while the blue ones don't.
There's a very specific reason (or quirk) as to why Texas leads the nation in renewable energy -- ERCOT. Basically, 90% of Texas' electric load is serviced by in-state assets, and they have very few interconnections to the rest of the grid. The electricity dispatch curve is priced on the margin, on the cost to operate the last-fired generator (natural gas), and ERCOT has moved to grow solar as a way to reduce prices.[0]
ERCOT has also had a number of spectacular -- and costly -- failures.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Reliability_Council_o...
What's their argument against interconnects though?
Especially as you install more wind and solar, capturing (or sending) generation across a wider geographic area should regress-to-the-mean production and consumption better without turning on peaking plants that may be on for only hours a year. Or get natgas generation from areas where the natgas infra hasn't frozen solid.
Avoiding federal regulatory oversight.
https://www.ferc.gov/introductory-guide-electricity-markets-... ("ERCOT is not subject to federal (FERC) jurisdiction because its grid is not connected to those of other states. Thus, power sales in ERCOT are not considered sales in interstate commerce and not subject to federal (FERC) oversight. That said, ERCOT runs some electricity markets that have similarities to those described herein.")
Edit: This is only up until recently; Texas is seeking to potentially interconnect with neighboring grids, forgoing FERC independence in the process.
Texas Bill [H.B. 199] Opens ERCOT to Grid Interconnection - https://www.environmentenergyleader.com/stories/texas-bill-o... - July 25th, 2025 ("A completed interconnection—either synchronous or non-synchronous—would likely bring ERCOT under partial federal jurisdiction for the first time since its creation. Currently, ERCOT operates almost entirely within Texas to avoid triggering FERC oversight under the Federal Power Act.")
Connecting Past and Future: A History of Texas’ Isolated Power Grid - https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/connecting-past-and-... - December 1st, 2022
Why Texas Has Its Own Power Grid - https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/08/why-texas-has-it... - August 18th, 2003
It makes fantastic sense in Texas too because air conditioning is such a high portion of demand. Clean energy production reaches its peak at midday when everyone has their AC going flat out.
Yup, my home state of Idaho also has a shockingly green energy portfolio. All of the PNW is like that because it's on a shared grid that has been primarily powered by hydro for as long as I've been alive.
And still, we've seen a massive amount of green energy installed here. Both windmills and solar farms.
For what it's worth Oregon and Washington are pretty much at the bottom of new renewable installs: https://www.propublica.org/article/oregon-washington-green-e...
Yup, Idaho's on that list as well.
But when you look at a grid map you pretty quickly understand why that's the case.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NW-IPCO/live/fif...
Right now, about 6% of my power comes from natural gas. That's the only fossil fuel power I'm currently using. Everything else is solar/hydro/wind. Not sure why nuclear isn't listed, I thought we had an active plant here. But you get the picture.
For my grid, new solar or wind is simply not needed so why would we be anywhere near the top of installation? Batteries is what we actually need.
There is a point where it's a bad idea to install more renewables.
Idaho Power’s local generation is quite clean. But…during the summer in Idaho, almost a third of energy comes from Wyoming and Utah where coal is still a substantial part of generation.
Indiana has one of the largest wind farms in the world and is so red it practically glows...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fowler_Ridge_Wind_Farm
We also have a ton of solar. We could be doing much better as we also have an enormous amount of coal plants.
I lived in texas before & the first time I saw massive wind farms alongside oil pumps was in texas.
wind turbines are wonderful things to look at. but yeah some of those were constructed in the years there was a "blue" admin n I guess market forces took over too.
At least it's only natgas for electricity, which is less valuable than oil.
Saudi Arabia generates ~41% of its electricity from oil, 59% from natgas and <1% solar. Talk about mismanagement...
https://www.eia.gov/international/data/country/SAU/electrici...
I don't disagree about it being politicized, but if you look at the states with the highest amounts of renewable generation, your second sentence is not supported. There is a LOT of wind energy in Republican-led states in places where wind makes sense.
Oh, that's fair point, except solar isn't relatively sparse in a lot of Republican led states too. Texas, Florida, North Carolina all have a relatively decent amount of solar, and Arizona does too which is... mixed?
And solar does show up in red states. I am not sure how this short administration would have had an impact on it. I don’t agree with the politicization of it but I suspect this has more to do with the parent energy grid and any constraints due to geography. Without a doubt I would expect the Midwest to have more.
It's lovely to see actual data swat away ideological mosquito bite sniping points.
The curious thing is that so many of these kinds of claims can be disproven in literally seconds to minutes in any debate, yet they persist.
Certain tendencies aside, republican and conservatives types aren't utter idiots and do know how sidestep some rally talk to serve their own benefit if they think it's practical, profitable and useful.
Not to mention that many conservatives love the field of off-grid prepping to this day and would certainly know about the value of solar, wind, hydro and any other robust renewable power technology. You're not going to build a coal plant or an oil refinery next to your deep-woods Utah cabin.
Indeed. I live in a pretty red state, and have lots of red or red-leaning family and friends, and practically nobody I know is "anti-solar" or even considered it a political stance. I do run into more anti-windmill though, but the reason is clearly that nobody likes looking at them across the landscape (windfarm in SE Utah was controversial for this point). Also in the southwest solar is often not favored because some amount of water is used to clean the dust off, and water scarcity here in the SW US is starting to finally creep into peoples' minds.
I'd imagine a lot of the lack of solar farms in the rural midwest and southwest is due to land use conflicts with ag and ranching. I don't have data to back that up though, just a hunch.
There are both red states and blue states in places in the US that are good for solar power (rural, lots of sun). The sunny American southwest with huge amounts of empty desert land good for solar arrays includes the states of California (blue), Arizona (red), Nevada (toss-up), New Mexico (blue), and Texas (red). And the party that a state's population prefers in presidential elections isn't stable over mutli-decade time periods, but this doesn't change suitability for solar energy production.
Eh?
Looking at, say, wind energy, the top 4 states are all red states. Their cumulative amount handily is more than the next so many states.
That's absolute energy. If you want to go by percentage of energy that is wind, it's the same - the top 4 are red states. In fact, 7 of the top 10 are:
https://www.chooseenergy.com/data-center/wind-generation-by-...
I haven't looked at solar, but it doesn't seem there's a clear divide.
Of course, as others have pointed out Texas is helping with renewables.
On the other hand, at the federal level Republican admins tend to cut renewable subsidies and that sort of thing.
Red states have a lot of open space and ought to be ideologically in favor is loose regulations; it would be kind of nice if Republican national politicians would fully embrace cronyism and identify renewable subsidies as an easy way to give money to their supporters. “Oh we did the environmental survey it turns out we should plop down a bunch of subsidized renewable installations in Red states.” Plenty of room for pork and might actually help the country as a side effect…
> renewable subsidies
I think a lot of (honest) smart people would say that there are circumstances where even for those of us who love green energy (raises hand) subsidies aren't the most productive use of tax dollars. It can distort markets and can make the subsidized industry wasteful and uncompetitive, begetting reliance on the subsidy instead of pressuring them to compete.
Solar and wind in 2025 aren't some fragile, experimental things that would die without subsidies. At this point they ought to be able to compete normally, and they can. Given a high percentage of the government dollars spent today aren't even tax dollars, they're borrowed money, at now-increasing interest rates, for our grandchildren to deal with, I'd rather not subsidize businesses that can get by on their own now.
my red state is full of solar, so you may want to double check whatever sources you are using, as they seem dubious at best and biased at worst
The blue ones generally have a lot of people and need a lot more energy
Yeah, in Oconto county Wisconsin, residents are all up in arms about a solar farm going up. It's the poorest county in the state and would bring in much needed money. The arguments against it are "this destroys farmland", "who will clean the snow off of it in winter", "I don't like how it looks", "static electricity will kill the crops around it", "it will raise the temperature of the surrounding area", "you can't recycle fiberglass so it's bad", etc.
Power bills will go down. Solar electricity is by far the cheapest form.
But it's unreliable, and needs a lot of battery tech + overbuilding to make it reliable. Can people be confident that building the array will in and of itself make their electricity bills go down?
The contractors that build it and the jobs to maintain them.
We should be honest and admit that the maintainance jobs are very, very few.
> "who will clean the snow off of it in winter"
This is something I don’t really get. There’s always concern around change of course. But tending to renewables sounds so much nicer than fossil fuel issues. Like clearing snow off the panels doesn’t sound fun exactly, but it is outdoors… realistically for these giant fields of panels it should be a fairly mechanized process, so somewhat low impact… compare to black lung or, whatever, petrochemicals causing your tap water to catch fire.
It's a fair concern. There's a solar install up in northern WI that is part of a microgrid and basically doesn't generate energy in winter due to the amount of snow they get. The lack of solar output is offset by nat gas generators.
Oconto County averages between 4 and 5 feet of snow every winter. You need pretty heavy duty equipment to move that much snow out of a large field.
Most of Wisconsin doesn't actually get that much snow, though.
PV panels are typically angled to catch the sun better, and they're smooth and dark... snow slides off by itself if the sun is shining (and if the sun isn't shining, you aren't losing much by having the panels covered).
Snow only rolls off after a lite dusting.
If there's a foot of snow on the panels they don't catch any sun, don't get warm, and it doesn't melt off.
More than about 3 inches needs to be manually cleared.
You could ask them why they grow so much dang corn then?
> 1/3 of corn is used for fuel - https://ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/chart-detai...
> Corn raises temp & humidity - https://extension.illinois.edu/news-releases/corn-fields-add...
> Corn destroys farmland & requires very high fertilizer & pesticide inputs, plus extra fuel to to apply all those - ask any old farmer but this one has a lot of sources
Also solar farms can easily be hidden. They don't need to be next to a public road way and you can put trees around them. They're also great for dual use land with small animals &/or certain crops.
>> "who will clean the snow off of it in winter"
Not sure why they are whining. Sounds like job creation to me!
The price of electricity in blue states has sky rocketed.
Electricity in SF is now more than $0.50/kWh OFF peak.
It is certainly not a coincidence that CalISO has contracted with the most solar generators.
It really is absurd how expensive our energy is across the state. Meanwhile Virginia gets electricity for 15 cents a kwh.
Notably, the municipal power companies mostly are far lower. It's PG&E and SoCal Edison who are that high, because they're shoving the costs of doing 75 years worth of deferred system maintenance all at once onto current ratepayers instead of their investors taking the hit. It's too bad that there wasn't a viable legal framework whereby the investor-owned utilties' shareholders could be wiped out as they deserved to be, and the utility infrastructure transferred to municipal ownership. Around PG&E's bankruptcy there were rumblings, but Sacramento couldn't figure out how to do it, so they propped them up and created a Wildfire Fund paid for by ratepayers to keep bailing them out.
Please don't post flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments. We're trying for something different here.
What is the argument against it? I've never heard any logical reasons beyond hating the Left.
It's like hating bikers, why? The same people that have pickup trucks and swerve to intimidate bikers, seem to hate solar energy. But why?
(To preface: I am strongly in favor of renewable energy overall).
To the extent that there is anything real to their dislike:
Poorly structured/overly generous homeowner net metering initiatives, especially for solar without storage, legitimately have escalated costs for everyone else in some regions.
The excessive subsidy given to those homeowners for power that's often not very valuable (as it comes primarily at a time of day that's already well supplied) comes from somewhere, and somewhere is....the pockets of everyone who doesn't have home rooftop solar.
And those people are typically poorer people in rented, denser housing than the average homeowner.
Most places have been moving to correct this mistake for the future (ex: CA's "Net Metering 3.0"), but that also gets pushback from people who wanted to take advantage of that unsustainable deal from the government or who incorrectly think it's a part of general anti-renewable pushes.
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Aside from that, in regions known for production of coal/oil/gas or major processing of, it's seen as a potential threat to jobs + mineral tax revenues that are often what underwrite most of their local/state government functions.
While there are plenty of job creation claims for renewables, it doesn't take a genius to see that they don't appear to need all that many workers once built, and that the manufacturing chain for the solar panels or wind turbines is probably not to be put in places like West Virginia, Midland TX, Alaska, etc.
Highest demand for energy is during the day.
Highest output of solar is during the day.
Your comment about energy supply implies we just don't need any solar at all.
I think we need is a large set of incentives to do home solar with storage.
I think you'll have a difficult time comprehending the phenomenon if you look for reasoned arguments. A much more productive framework, IMO, is to see it in terms of a feedback loop between funding sources and the aggregate valence of speech on a particular topic.
The energy industry is one of the largest in the world, with trillions of revenue on the line. The FF component of that industry has every incentive to turn sentiment against upstart competitors, but you do that at scale less by reasoned arguments and more by gut level appeals: "the people who want renewable energy hate your culture and way of life", "renewal installations are ugly and a blight on the landscape of your home", etc.
Because anything one side says the other must automatically and reflexively oppose no matter what. The example here is Right hating on Left, but the Left as the same illogical hate against the right - though in different areas.
This has often been blamed on first past the post voting - if you want to win you have to team up which means your views on Abortion and Environment Policy have to align even though there is no reason to think the two should have anything to do with one another. Since there is no room for thinking each side is correct one one and wrong on the other you have to oppose anything the other does without wondering if maybe they are correct. Now remember that are thousands (millions?) of different issues, and many of them have a range of different answers, yet there can only be one unified position that you support...
I'm not convinced that the various alternatives are really better though. They all seem to have issues in the real world, and too often people will look at what they have an ignore the issues because they want to feel better.
Most of the "real" opposition is against providing further federal subsidies, along with it doesn't eliminate the need for base load during bad weather. The closing of the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility has been making the rounds, as it had received $1.6 billion in funding but can't compete.
I think most people would be less opposed if they saw the math behind more of the actual PV installations.
> It's like hating bikers, why?
Totally off topic, but I was walking through a city yesterday. Cars politely stopped for me as I crossed roads. Bikes didn't, and they also swerved onto sidewalks past me. They obeyed fewer rules of the road and put me at greater risk of harm than did any vehicle.
I grew up an avid bicyclist out in the countryside, but people on bikes in the city manage to piss me off far more than most drivers do.
Yeah, I don’t hate bicyclists in the “I would try to make them feel less safe” sense (I tend to go way the opposite way, if anything) but I do dread seeing them when driving or walking in the same spaces. They’re really unpredictable, and their presence creates extremely unsafe-feeling situations for everyone around.
When I ride a bike, I don’t do it in places where, when I encounter a bike driving, it makes me especially anxious.
It acknowledges the reality of global warming. Furthermore, and the real reason why it's considered "woke", is that it implies taking some action to reduce the harm done to others. People who enjoy threatening to harm others (such as your biker example) get very angry about that.
I think guilt plays in also, a sizable fraction of the population don't want to hear that the way they live their lives is damaging everyone (even themselves, poignantly enough).
To try and put that in a more sympathetic light, they don't want to hear they need to invest a significant chunk of their income in reducing that harm (like improving the efficiency of their home, installing PV, driving an EV or even biking to work instead of hopping in the pickup). It'd be nice if there were some subsidies to make that easier... except those are now getting the axe.
Rhetoric mostly I'd say. The idea being promoted is that clean energy subsidies hurt the honest Joe coal miner (details being very hand wavy). I'm not convinced it's really that well thought out though and might just be about owning the libs. Maybe there's a MAGA in here that can educate us.
Technically I could see some reasons. Grids need serious upgrades to support personal solar properly. Which is €€€ and, if end-customers would have to foot the bill themselves, very few people would install solar at home. On top of that, at least in my whereabouts solar is receives a fuckton of subsidies. In the long run lower energy prices will pay back those subsidies for the society, but for now I could see why some people ain't happy to foot the bill. Especially when it's usually better-off people installing solar. While poor people end up partially footing the bool.
Last but not least, Chinese domination in modern solar equipment is mind-boggling. At least when I was installing solar, buying western-made would have been much more expensive, to the point that it wouldn't be worth to go through.
P.S. I got solar on the roof myself. „Free“ electricity is damn nice.
This is a good reply since it feels accurate but generally is not, which captures the sentiment of those opposing solar.
1. “The grid needs an upgrade”. This is true regardless of whether solar exists or not. Energy demand, battery technology, etc have all changed but the grid has not kept pace (on purpose). End customers may foot the bill, again, regardless of solar.
2. Solar does receive more subsidies, intentionally. This is how you quickly drive adoption of new technology and stop the old technology (gas/coal) from using its market power to stop new technology growth. Subsidies jumpstart the switch to solar, which in the long term is good for our country (export more energy), our planet, and for individuals who want energy independence.
3. Taxes aren’t flat rates, so when you make more you pay more progressively. A poor person pays significantly less than a rich person does for solar subsidies.
4. Chinese domination isn’t a reason for not using solar. If we want to change that, the US should motivate buyers to buy US (subsidize), increase import costs (targeted, time limited tariffs), or promote growth of the industry (education, research, etc).
Isn't US made equipment facing the headwinds of the US being anti-solar. It seems more like the US shot itself in the foot by letting the Chinese get the lead on this technology. And by subsidizing, and maybe regulating buying US, we could support our domestic industry.
Seems like all over the place we are giving up and letting China win the technology race. Robots, cars, solar, all the future tech is in trouble.
I don't know why anybody is against clean air. It makes no sense.
Arguments only matter if we assume totally rational actors. There is ample evidence that this could potentially be a faulty assumption.
A questiom: What do you think, do people first have an emotion and then try to rationalize it? Or do they first have a the rational judgment and only after that start to become emotional?
If you watch right wing media it is pretty clear that emotions play a huge role for them. And because nobody particularly likes having emotions they can't explain, the rationalizations come after: "Windmills are destroy the landscape" (unlike let's say an oilfield which is somehow totally fine), things about the infrasound (which if a concern you can get rid off by the same way it is done with nuclear waste in the US, just use that massive land mass to your advantage).
If we had rational, emotionally distanced actors they would change their mind once all doubts are addressed and the facts are on the table. But that is not the case here in my own experience. Once the last rationalization breaks they go back to the feeling of: "I just don't like it".
That means the much more fruitful question to investigate is that particular dislike and where it might come from, emotionally.
Surely this isn't just one root. For some it may be the "safe" opinion of their herd/tribe. Others say it, their entertainment (that under traditional media law wouldn't deserve the title "News") says it and so on.
For yet others this may be a question of their insecure masculinity. They feel insecure, but men have to be strong! So they try their best to appear strong, by buying manly products, driving manly trucks and spouting manly opinions. You know what isn't manly in their mind? Being sensible. Sensible with other people, the environment, wensible with thought. And then a sensible energy option come around. Guess what, that feels like an attack to them. Suddenly society wants to erect huge pillars thst remind them that being sensible is now required. That really touches their core fear of not being manly enough. Being sensible could be misread as being gay after all.
There are probably more reasons.
P.S.: I am not saying there are no rational critics of wind energy. Whwt I am saying is the bulk of categorical dislike comes from an entirely uninformed, purely emotional direction
Perhaps you're fortunate to run in different circles that I do, but I have heard that sentiment expressed similarly and unironically. Poe's Law and all...
Texas is about as red as it gets and leads the nation in renewable energy including solar. Red or blue, if the gov can setup a situation where renewable energy is profitable then nature will take its course.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/texas-tops-us-states...