chubbs

The plants that were being shutdown had relatively high cost, that's why they were being shutdown.

Long article on rapid introduction of electric HD trucks in China. China is upending fossil fuel economics: "The lesson for Western operators and policymakers is that the cost curve has shifted. The decisions that made sense even in 2024 do not match the realities of 2025." https://cleantechnica.com/2025/11/26/chinas-bev-trucks-and-the-end-of-diesels-dominance/

Don't agree with your comments. The article provided references. Other than fully depreciated gas and nuclear, Renewables are the lowest cost of electricity in the US. New gas plants, to meet increasing demand, will be much more expensive than fully depreciated; and, as the article states, costs and backlogs for new gas plants are increasing.

Data is available at link below. Glad to answer questions. https://ceres-tool.larc.nasa.gov/ord-tool/jsp/EBAFTOA421Selection.jsp

Ceres has updated through September. Net radiation continues to increase off the enso bottom and the 12-month average is getting close to peak levels in La Ninas before 2020.

Slowing down the introduction of renewables is going to increase US electricity prices. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianpalmer/2025/11/23/electricity-prices-will-shoot-up-due-to-us-federal-mandates/?ctpv=xlrecirc

Plug-in hybrids, EVs with a back-up gas engine, are an additional roughly 20% in China. So conventional combustion cars have fallen below 50%. EV subsidies are being eliminated in China as they aren't needed anymore (see link). Agree China wouldn't have cheap EVs without subsidies. However, now that cheap EVS are here there is no going back. EVs are only going to get cheaper and better going forward as commercial scale increases and battery technology improves. China's big EV bet is paying off. Their EV exports are ramping, reaching a record $7 billion in August. (2nd link). https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/china-signals-it-will-pull-plug-subsidies-evs-with-five-year-plan-exclusion-2025-10-29/ https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-explorer/

Agree that EV's are not out competing oil in the US. They are outcompeting in China though, and those cars will spread as volume production increases both in China and in plants being built by Chinese companies around the world.

A number of countries have increasing EV market share with the global share over 20% this year. Link below has EV and plug-in EV market penetration for 61 countries. There's a range between countries with the US and North America a relative low penetration area. Another growing EV market is Heavy-Duty trucks, which are ramping quickly in China (2nd link), reaching a 28% market share there in Aug 25. https://robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/ https://apnews.com/article/china-truck-lng-ev-diesel-transport-70f3d612de4b45b6f954a7f557f7f741

Yea he brought up some good points: our economy and life-style is currently dependent on oil, and oil is running out. However. he's wrong that there is no alternative. Electric vehicles are out competing combustion vehicles in an increasing number of markets and getting cheaper all the time. Meanwhile the best oil reserves are increasingly depleted. Its not going to get better for oil.

Believe the table is calculating electric energy out vs fossil energy in over the powerplant lifetime; i.e., coal (or gas, oil) used to generate power is included. Fossil fuel use during operation of the wind turbine is also included. Agree that society gets an energy payback from use of coal or oil. The problem is that once burned the coal it is gone forever. In-any-case wind has a good energy payback. Here's an extensive study from Europe covering 33 different kinds of turbines. The median payback period is 6 months. Note that the energy payback for wind has to be good. Its the cheapest source of electricity in windy areas like the great plains. If it didn't pay back it wouldn't be cheap. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0196890421005100

An oil industry myth. The bigger the wind turbine the faster it pays out the energy needed to make it. Only 64 days for a 3.4 MW turbine https://pure.sruc.ac.uk/en/publications/life-cycle-analysis-of-the-embodied-carbon-emissions-from-14-wind/ https://www.vestas.com/en/sustainability/environment/energy-payback

I'm open to any non-fossil energy source, let the market decide. In the case of nuclear, the US will need to lower cost to deploy significant volume. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/22/climate/china-us-nuclear-energy-race.html?unlocked_article_code=1.vk8.p953.GyoqfHxUqxEK&smid=url-share

Cheap labor is only one part of the story. "China has close to 50 graduate programs that focus on either battery chemistry or the closely related subject of battery metallurgy. By contrast, only a handful of professors in the United States are working on batteries." https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/how-china-built-tech-prowess-chemistry-classes-and-research-labs-124081000019_1.html https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20251110-how-china-won-the-worlds-battery-race

"cheap labor" is an outdated stereotype. The factories producing solar/battery/ev are highly automated. China is kicking our butt in a wide range of advanced technologies. https://itif.org/publications/2025/09/23/how-china-is-outperforming-the-united-states-in-critical-technologies/