What Donald Trump taught me about renewable energy

Probably I have a fun and cute personal connection with a most climate destructive individual living today. Twelve years ago, I made an infographic trying to show ridiculous symptoms attributed to “wind turbine syndrome”. Donald found Trump and Sent as proof of damage Wind turbines (to help a Scottish project near one of the golf fields). When I stated that he had missed it, he prevented me instantly. You hurt me deeply, Don.

I will forgive him. It was a beautiful early education at an extremely important principle: cavity And ridiculous rationalization It will change constantly, but there will be no hostility to fresh technologies. For predictable futureThe right wing forces will hate the wind and solar energy deeply. The actions of the Trump administration were fast. Recently, 80% has ordered a stop job in an open sea wind farm (developers are currently currently suing to try and reverse). In addition to this wider efforts Wind and solar energy subsidies in the USA.

These things usually take years to emerge, but as the latest data from the Global Energy Monitor, there is already a clear, systemic effect in the USA. show. “Currently, the total solar energy capacity of the pre -construction phase is approximately 92,000 MW in the same development stages in 2024” and the wind decreased from 74,000 to 64,000 in the same period. The gas explodes, doubled The capacity planned from this time last year.

A partner speaking point “Permission reform” pushing (a kind of proto-abundance ”) is that the deregulation of the energy field allows the construction of new fossil fuels, but at the same time Open the lock of big volumes The new wind and sun will flock on the grounds of exquisite cheapness of the free market. Open now opinion In the future, especially for the growth of renewable energy resources for solar energy. There is plenty of well -intentioned discussion about the “positive” overturning points, such as the social adoption of electric vehicles, but this criticized problematic extreme simplification.

Far from being unstoppableSelf -on -the -leak technological revolutionChanging dangerous fossil fuels for safer technologies is always something that will need the participation of scattered, hard and permanent activists and the government in changing degrees. It is clear that the global human energy system is inevitable to ultimately replace fossil fuels with cleaner alternatives, but the rate of change is not the end point that decides exactly how awful we are with the burning of coal, oil and gas.

To briefly explain this, imagine that the world’s atmosphere is a bathtub and filled with water (greenhouse gases), we get so much warming up. When your bathtub is on the verge of overflow, you close the tap quickly, you flutter off, because you realize that your target stops the flow as soon as possible, and finally closes the tap at some point in the future.

I’ve shown this with some makeup numbers below. Even if we reach a net zero by 2050, we can do about three times damage if we take the “Slow Road öyle instead of the“ Fast Road ”. Over time, targets tend to hide the pure physical damage caused by short -term delay.

In the energy sector of Australia, you can really see the dynamics of this erase. Recently, the network regulator (Australian Energy Market Commission, AEMC), “National Energy Target”(Neo). This means that the regulator thinks that there is a harmony with the climatic objectives that have pre -existing in his decisions. This must be great. targets It is almost only “over time ,, that is, the heel dragging along the road results in more planetary heating damage.

Adding also in 2024, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), the GRID planner meant that only each judicial authority preferred to include the full success of climate objectives with federal targets in the scenarios. For example, the scenario of “slow change ve was deleted and any visualization of emissions was deleted. The cost and consequences of a delayed transition occurs, but only occurs in the context of price and reliability. As long as we hit future goals, delays on the road are seen as a problem.

Australia has achieved an undeniable success in releasing renewable energies and especially in the sun. What is less recognized is that the growth of renewable energy and the elimination of coal is much slower than various players in the area for the last half ten years. This resulted in a delayed energy sector: along the way, additional emissions will cause irreversible damage to life.

The latest AEMO ISS received a possible share of 46% of renewable energies for the 2024-25 Fiscal Year (FY25). The previous two editions put a share of up to 55% of the same year, up to 37% of the same year. It resulted in 41 %: lower than all scenarios revealed in the ISS’s 2022 and 2024 prints. These stumbles are bad enough to propose a reason beyond seasonal variations in wind, water or solar energy.

The same story when you look at the absolute emissions of the Australian energy industry that seems to fall very slowly. Thanks to Hotter fossil fuel-intensified summers and data center expansion, increasing power demand means that new renewable energy offers new load instead of cutting the fossil fuel output.

. the last The three-month report from the Clean Energy Council said that in the first half of 2025, only 1,173 MW new benefit scale production projects represented Australia about one-third of the work rate (6-7 GW) for 82% renewable energy target by 2030.

There is also growing sounds To expand the operational life of the largest and second largest coal plants in Australia: plug -in) And Bayswater. When these discussions become more pronounced, the focal point will focus on price and reliability, not physical damages caused by heated pollution.

Despite the federal government’s “capacity investment plan ,, there is still not enough acceleration in the growth of the new wind and sun in Australia. The two largest retailers, agl energy and origin, most shoulder -shoulder crime – while aging coal plants fall offline, they did not develop reserve energy in their portfolios:

There is absolutely no magic treatment to shift Australia’s power network back to a reasonable orbit. Messy “moderate transition“The challenge emerges in the power sectors around the world. However, when active, aggressive and emergency actions need to be carried out, they will not exist in a warm way that changes warmly in the country’s overheating atmosphere (and overheating geopolitics) without a continent that requires a wider defining of the short -term delay.

Fossil -owned energy companies, lack of progress, shoulder will shake shoulder and “we have not tried anything and we are all out of ideas” line will say something. They deprive the human agency and the possible future range, and use determinism as a kind of climate delay; Something I said “Predatory fatalism“. They always called To present It was impossible to quickly change fossil fuels quickly and have always been wrong with disasters (like the “renewable energy target” period of the 2010s). It seems that they have no effect on the perceived ones that they are wrong in the past in the past. expertise In the impossible thing.

Observation is an optimistic thing. Skeptics, suspects and deadly have been proven to be wrong. We are not connected to fossil fuels. However, we are committed to the fact that there is no deterministic destiny for this change.