The Us Department of Agriculture Bans Support for Renewables
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The US Department of Agriculture has stopped supporting renewable energy projects on farmland, sparking controversy and debate among commenters about the implications for the environment, energy policy, and the agricultural industry.
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Tesla has the right idea with solar roofs but we need better options than shingles or giant panels mounted. Wind gen is amazingly good if you have a consistent supply.
When I was sailing, the sun and wind would recharge my batteries during the day. At night, wind would keep the batteries charging so I could run lights, laptops, VHF, and NMea2000 equipment.
The future isn’t this. Banning renewable energy is like banning breathing.
EDIT
Coming back after a walk, I can't stop thinking about this. When I worked at an energy tech company, me and a couple data scientists actually worked out that if, theoretically you had solar panels capable of capturing sun energy with 99% efficiency - you could power all of humanity on 1 day's worth of sunlight. (granted you had the storage capacity, we did fun things like "You saved 254,143 trees by reducing your water use" kind of stuff).
The wind farms off the coasts in the EU countries are producing massive amounts of energy at fractions of the cost. Yes, the engineering is hard. Yes, the big tall windmills are ugly (paint them, put LED lights on them, who cares). You don't need the giant big ones, a field of smaller ones works too at the same altitude (key part... wind is faster at altitude). Make a wind mill kite and send it up. There's so much energy around us. We just need to find a way to trap those electrons.
It may be short term good for them but long term fairly idiotic (for them and the US).
1. More expensive power from non-renewables. Especially as the global consumption of fossil fuels decline (so domestic costs will likely rise). This will become a drag on the US economy.
2. Not participating in the production and sale of solar panels to other nations.
Trump decries the US trade deficit while simultaneously discouraging one massive upcoming market that the US could become a net exporter in.
Full electrification would halve energy needs even if it doubled electrical usage.
One country stands out starkly if you look at the pace of electrification over the last decade or so, and it's China.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/0...
At least President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho cared about things enough to make things better for his people, hired the smartest person he knew and genuinely tried to fix things.
Could be reasonable, we need more renewable independence.
> ...while boosting support for biofuels...
And there it is, going backwards. So tired of this.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE/12mo/monthly
https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/germany/
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/eu-battery-storage-...
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/01/03/germany-hits-62-7-ren...
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/negativ...
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Power-generation-from-renewable...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-27/how-germa... | https://archive.today/4Vk52
If you're looking for a renewables success story, Germany ain't it.
Citation? Because the EU intends to phase out Russian gas entirely by 2027. I'm not too concerned about Germany consuming non Russian LNG at this time as they continue to deploy renewables and batteries (GP said "and now reliant on Russian gas." in their comment above). Germany is now getting almost two-thirds of its power from renewables; if that isn't a success story, I don't know what is.
EU plans ban on new Russian gas contracts using trade law - https://www.ft.com/content/8b005c13-2088-47cd-aa47-9163e36ef... | https://archive.today/INqOI ("Russian gas makes up less than 19 per cent of the EU’s overall imports of the fossil fuel, down from around two-fifths when Moscow started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.")
Import volume of natural gas from Russia in Germany from June 2021 to November 2024 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1332783/german-gas-impor... ("As of November 2024, Germany has imported no Russian natural gas since September 2022. To compare, in August 2022, the import volume of the named commodity stood at around 953 million cubic meters. Over the period observed, the highest figure was recorded at 5.2 billion cubic meters in December 2021.")
Renewables Supplied Two-Thirds of Germany’s Power Last Year [2024] - https://e360.yale.edu/digest/germany-renewable-power-2024 - January 8th, 2025
(edit: Supermancho wrote in a deleted comment about energy demand destruction due to German de-industrialization, but I'm unsure if that energy demand should be forecasted in the future without good data about potential re-industrialization in the future creating said energy demand)
Yes, by replacing it with natgas from Azerbaijan, Qatar, and other wonderful countries.
I'm kinda jaded about this whole topic because it exposes the utter hypocrisy of Germany's Greens.
But long story short, Germany can get Dunkelflaute. Long periods of time in winter when renewable generation falls to about 10% of the _normal_ generation for that time period. A once-in-100-years event is a full month of sustained Dunkelflaute. And this is not a hand-wavy theory. For example, in 2019 there was a 10-day sustained Dunkelflaute: https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_spot_market/chart.ht... - look at the period from 17 to 26 Jan. And as you see, they also coincide with heightened energy consumption, which will become even _worse_ as Germany switches to heat pumps for heating.
The current plan for these is to build more natgas powerplants (German government had to _subsidize_ them directly). With noises about magic "hydrogen".
Here's the thing. If Germany had spent on nuclear the same amount of money it has spent (so far) on renewables, then it could have had 100% carbon-free electricity and heating. With lower energy prices than now.
So yes. Nuclear all the way.
Instead, we now face the reality where Germany will have to rely on imported natural gas as far as the eye can see. And certainly past 2040. While having one of the highest electricity rates in Europe, so high that they're now depressing the industry. And the plan to fix it is to keep repeating the word "hydrogen" until something happens.
Meanwhile:
> The coalition agreement between the CDU/CSU alliance and the SPD mentions the construction of up to 20 GW of gas-fired power plant capacity by 2030. In June, Reiche announced a first step with a tender volume of between five and ten gigawatts.
Do we live in 2005 or 2025? We live in 2025 and can not influence past actions.
Solar power was expensive a decade ago. Today it is not. We build it based on 2025 costs and not 2005. I would suggest you stop crying over spilled milk and instead start looking forward.
Today renewables are the cheapest source of energy in human history, why don't you celebrate that we over the coming decades finally are able to let go off fossil fuels for all but emergency and niche use cases?
How much money has been spent on extra subsidies on top of what a fossil based system would cost for Energiewende? Say €200B? Please do not link the Norwegian professor double counting costs as a source, that would just prove how desperate you are.
As per modern western nuclear construction costs that would result in about 10-15 GW of nuclear power. But somehow that would be enough to power a grid which over the year averages 56 GW. Does not sound very logical does it? Or do you suggest the now phased out fleet could be running today without spending enormous sums on LTO upgrades?
And then you round it all off with crying about perfect. Missing the forest for the trees.
Who cares if the emergency reserves are a tiny bit of fossil fuels when we have an entire economy to decarbonize? The costs to switch the reserves to biofuels, synfuels or pure hydrogen are negligible and trivial to do when they become the most pressing matter to decarbonize.
Take the US and ethanol mix in for gasoline. That is enough energy to run the entire US grid without any other source for 16 days. What happens as we switch the car fleet to BEVs? The ethanol becomes available for emergency reserve duties.
Yeah. "Oh, we made a mistake, but it's water under the bridge now. It's too late to build nuclear. Here, get this lump of coal and burn it to warm up. It's fine, we'll phase it out in 20 years. Just don't think about it now, and don't forget to vote for more green energy"
> Today renewables are the cheapest source of energy in human history, why don't you celebrate that we over the coming decades finally are able to let go off fossil fuels for all but emergency and niche use cases?
OK. Why is Germany directly paying for new natural gas generation? Wouldn't it be cheaper to replace coal with cheap renewables and storage? Should be a no-brainer, yeah?
Oh, it's the "cheapest energy" only when you don't care about the grid stability (see: Spain) or winter (see: Germany).
> As per modern western nuclear construction costs that would result in about 10-15 GW of nuclear power.
Germany has spent more than $500B on Energiewende so far. It'll need to spend about that amount _again_ to decarbonize, even with some generous assumptions about future technologies.
If we use Oikiluoto Unit 3 as a guide, it cost 11B euros for 1.6GWe of capacity. Getting to 60GWe would have required 400B euros. Without considering any economy of scale or savings from streamlining the construction.
> And then you round it all off with crying about perfect. Missing the forest for the trees.
Perhaps you should look in the mirror? Maybe YOU are missing the forest for the trees? In this case, "trees" are vapid editorials about how Germany generated 100% of energy from renewables. Small print: in summer, when demand is low.
> A few years ago ”even an hour” of storage was the impossible marker. Then it quickly became ”a day!!!” and now we are at a month without any solar or wind power.
No. The problem has been known for decades, but governments simply ignored it. That's why there's so much noise about hydrogen in Geramny. It's used to whitewash the natural gas.
LOL. Can't find any modern research can you? I love how the nuclear bro crowd never wants to step into 2025 and instead keeps living in the past.
> That's why there's so much noise about hydrogen in Geramny. It's used to whitewash the natural gas.
Nah. There's so much noise about hydrogen because the fossil and chemical industries in Germany rely on hydrocarbons. They want another complex gas based system to profit from.
We will likely keep a fleet of gas turbines around for emergency reserve duties for the coming decades. But you are trying to paint the emergency reserves as if they would be the entire grid. When they very much are not.
I quoted newer research in the next post. For your information, the article was actually from 1997.
And if you don't like the old research, the first investigation of the greenhouse effect was done by Svante Arrhenius in 1889.
> Nah. There's so much noise about hydrogen because the fossil and chemical industries in Germany rely on hydrocarbons.
And the second largest consumer of natural gas in Germany is household heating. It has to be replaced by electric heating, but it's not feasible with the current generating capacity.
> We will likely keep a fleet of gas turbines around for emergency reserve duties for the coming decades.
No. Germany will paint gas turbines in green color and then keep burning natural gas from Qatar, the USA, Nigeria, etc.
> "Nuclear power mitigates storage needs, but only to a limited extent"
So you suggest we spend 10x as much to not solve Dunkelflautes.
This truly is getting quite sad. Who cares if the 1 in 36 year event is solved with fossil fuels, biofuels, synfuels, hydrogen or whatever?
We are literally talking the scenario happening once during a nuclear plants economic lifespan.
Do you build technologies which are extremely heavily weighted towards CAPEX to solve a problem happening once?
Of course not. You minimize CAPEX and accept high OPEX to solve it. Which might be rationing for a week in the 40 year period.
The study of course did not specify what level of renewables they implemented. What would a 20% overbuild lead to? 50%? It would still cost a fraction compared to new built nuclear power.
This is what is so funny with you nuclear bros. You cry about Dunkeflautes and reliability but then propose literally the worst solution for extreme events.
Take a look at France. They generally export quite large amounts of electricity. But whenever a cold spell hits that export flow is reversed to imports and they have to start up local fossil gas and coal based production.
What they have done is that they have outsourced the management of their grid to their neighbors and rely on 35 GW of fossil based electricity production both inside France and their neighbors grids. Because their nuclear power produces too much when no one wants the electricity and too little when it is actually needed.
Their neighbors are able to both absorb the cold spell which very likely hits them as well, their own grid as the French exports stops and they start exporting to France.
Because it requires maintaining costly infrastructure that needs to provide more than 100% of normal generation for these cases.
And even without considering _extreme_ events, normal weather variations still require multi-day storage capacity which is _still_ prohibitively expensive.
> The study of course did not specify what level of renewables they implemented. What would a 20% overbuild lead to? 50%? It would still cost a fraction compared to new built nuclear power.
Renewables need 10x (1000%) overbuild to ride through Dunkelflaute in Germany. And that's a conservative estimate.
> But whenever a cold spell hits that export flow is reversed to imports and they have to start up local fossil gas and coal based production.
Why are Greens always lying? https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20240118-france-reclaims-title-...
France had a rough 2 years when they took offline multiple plants due to deferred maintenance and bad luck. Now it's back to normal.
In time, it seems to me that those will drive the US economy right into a solid brick wall.
They just think that solar and wind is woke shit that liberals like and since they hate liberals they need to hate solar and wind.
This is what Google says when asked about why the panels were removed:
“President Ronald Reagan had the White House solar panels removed in 1986 as part of his administration's broader opposition to government involvement in renewable energy and a belief that the free market, not the government, should drive energy policy. While the administration cited cost as a reason for not reinstalling them during roof repairs, the decision reflected Reagan's philosophy and his administration's cuts to renewable energy funding”
Not sure about the sources though. So I guess it’s debatable
Still interesting to realize that the US govt can zigzag so much, and that it’s not necessarily progressing in a specific direction
The "economics" of a particular roof repair are simply irrelevant in this context.
also that first panel provided minimum lights and water for a house, then was installed on.the hood of a truck that got destroyed by bieng rear ended, and is now moumted on.another building providing lighting and power for small tools, chargers, etc. ie: the stuff is tough
Wind power on farmland only results in a tiny drop in acreage. And a hot area of study is mixing solar PV with various ag uses. In some cases yield is improved.
Finally, farmland that is used for solar is almost always not the best yielding land. Maybe the farmer is facing a water shortage or is just not that competitive. Solar could be a lifeline in situations like that.
My aunt is a conservative lobbyist. She is also a drunk. This means that she gets drunk and texts my family her real feelings all the time. She is absolutely 100% motivated by hate. That's it. She has told her sister to kill herself because she's on government benefits. She has told my mom that she should be thrown in prison for going to an anti-Trump protest. She has told her own daughter that she'd be better off dead than bisexual. Her daughter has attempted suicide twice.
She is not motivated by some actual policy outcome. She is not motivated by trying to help people just through some different mechanism than the left would use. She is not motivated by libertarian ideals. She is motivated by hate.
As another comment mentioned, this is immaterial at the rate at which solar PV and batteries are being manufactured, it just makes electricity more costly (an additional tax) until we get to the future.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/72h/hourly (center on US)
Outright banning solar and wind in red states and then watching as power generation companies flee to blue states as these energy sources outcompete fossil fuels in the marketplace doesn't matter. They still got to say "fuck you, libs." That's all that matters. Pointing out how this hurts their own voters won't change anything because the thing they want is not actually human flourishing. The thing they want is "fuck you, libs" and they got that already.
They can use it as a wedge issue.
Look, Republicans in Republican states, they're leaving you without jobs and giving your jobs to immigrants. See, slightly red but mostly purple States? This is what will happen to you. And the energy companies take the blame, not legislators.
Politics today is ruled by cynicism.
That's not cynicism. That's brute honesty.
California is ahead of the curve by having built renewables and batteries before this policy change, while other states will be stuck with suboptimal energy policy for at least the next half decade, increasing their cost of power. California is also the world's fourth largest economy with the energy system they have built.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-CAL-CISO/12mo/monthl...
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/us-electricity-2025...
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/04/23/california-is-now-the-4th-...
It sounds like your broader point is that conservatives are all stupid and motivated by hatred. I kind of feel like you have plenty of your own hatred though but seem sort of blind to it.
Unless someone is completely incapable of rational action (which has happened to me), there’s some level of personal responsibility involved.
I wouldn’t argue that conservatives are stupid and motivated by hatred. However, many people voted for a campaign of blatant hate and an explicitly stated desire for revenge. This definitely colors your view of anyone that doesn’t think this is a bad thing.
You seem to happily ignore who started this garbage, who's responsible for the orange shit stain on the entire country, who yelled "Fuck your feelings" when anyone disagreed, who refused to wear a mask to possibly prevent infections, but is quite happy to see their idiocy forced upon anyone else.
My mother has dealt with her for her entire life.
I assure you that I am not missing some hidden trauma that complicates my aunt. What I described above is just a taste of the harm she's done to people.
My family would absolutely love to go no-contact with her. But if she ends up with guardianship of my other aunt once my grandparents pass then she'll be sentenced to suffer and die.
But unfortunately being a republican lobbyist means a couple things. She is extremely persuasive and she is friends with some relevant government officials.
I don't envy your situation, or your mom's, at all.
2) Enforce your boundaries
That started out grimly funny but got more and more depressing as I read on. Dealing with that can't be easy.
It's all they do now. If it will make some liberal in their heads unhappy, they'll do it. They don't care how much it hurts themselves.
That's honestly why I have absolutely not one iota of sympathy for all the Republicans who's businesses are getting obliterated by the trade "policies" of the dumbass in chief. You voted for this shit. I hope it sucks for you. I hope your wife leaves you. I hope your children never talk to you again. I hope broad society rejects you, permanently, for playing such stupid fucking games with the future of your nation, your children, and your own life.
Truly, it's the Right's chickens finally come home to roost. For decades the Republican side of things has gotten to play incompetent jackass olympics with the government, and between the US's position in global politics, our overall wealth and the general stability maintained by Democrats and moderates over the shrieking howling objections of themselves, everything kept trucking more or less to spec. Like children in a home maintained by parents who know what they're doing.
Now like the adolescents they so frequently scold everyone else for acting like, they have moved out on their own, maxed out their credit cards on stupid shit, and bills are stacking up. And just like those adolescents, they have no goddamn plan and just point the blame at everyone else for letting them fuck everything up for themselves.
Fucking. Children. And I don't just mean in that a distressing amount of them seem to be pedophiles.
That's how they rile up their voting base. But the actual goal is more just to get rich.
Every time we have this discussion, we always conclude that nuclear power generation is the only viable path forward.
Nuclear NIMBYism is even harder to defeat than regular NIMBYism, so you might as well ask for geothermal.
https://archive.is/h99oh
See: utilities trying to shut down coal plants because they are too expensive, being stopped by the current administration.
Turns out the department that deals with farming, is going to focus on farming… and not on pushing electricity production.
Well yeah, the Department of Energy should probably be the ones spearheading our solar, wind, etc.
Did those agencies you dealt with provide you with grants that you depended on to stay in business? Did those grants rely on actual proof that required onsite presence to confirm? Because it's one thing to measure a farm's yield and it's another to see how that yield came to be. There's a reason why the NRCS has field offices at the county level. It's so farmers can go there and so those working in the offices can go to the farms.
I'm getting real tired of fighting tax breaks for people with 131 Scrooge McDuck piles of money already, at the cost of services a large portion of the country uses or may need.
To be clear, I don't have kids, but want my tax dollars to fund free lunches, but we can't have that. Instead we get garbage like public school busses being used to drive kids to private schools, while the public school students walk. (See Ohio)
(bonus points if you know what movie that quote comes from)
The wealthiest people aren’t descendants of Julius Caesar, the Medicis, the Hapsburgs, Rollo (who is an ancestor to every European monarch), the Astors, the Vanderbilts, the Morgans, etc.
Some of these are moderately wealthy now (eg the Rothchilds) but they don’t dominate the world’s wealth.
Part of this is that can be hard to maintain a lineage over time. Also, foolish fail sons will squander family wealth.
But some wealthy people just go the French Revolution way.
I don’t believe the Gateses, Musks, Bezoses, etc will survive the upheaval, violence and revolution they are making inevitable.
Also, where are they running to? In an increasingly interconnected world, the whole developed world looks like it'll go down together.
I advocate for things like universal healthcare and providing food and shelter for every person not only because it's moral but also because we can afford it and it preserves the current system. If the ultra-wealthy really took a long-term view, they'd be fighting for those things because they simply won't survive the revolution.
But I believe we're beyond the point where electoral politics can halt a violent upheaval of the current economic order. And many, many people will die in that process.
At the end it's an olygarchy with too much stockpiled military slowly creeping on it's neighbour and stationning troops "on vacation" across the border.
1 - Secretary Rollins Blocks Taxpayer Dollars for Solar Panels on Prime Farmland
2- Secretary Rollins Prioritizes American Energy on National Forest Land
Both have quotes about putting "America first" to confuse people to make them think this is better for all. We think the USDA is about getting healthy food to people, but really they're about maximizing the money for farmers and people who own the land. Terrible.
[1] - https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/08/... [2] - https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2025/08/...
I am a little curious to know what percentage voted for this.
That can be enough to swing things, but it's not enough to be the deciding block that many think they are. A century ago things were much different.
Iowa was listed as 63% urban in the 2020 census. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. An area needs 2000 housing units and/or 5000 people to be counted as urban. If you’ve been through the state, you’ll see lots of tiny little 2000-3000 person towns that have an urban street grid around a couple-block downtown core. These things don’t get counted as urban.
The farmland is too valuable for you to see much of any sprawl except in Des Moines and Iowa City. Even Council Bluffs (the Iowa side of the Omaha metro) has very little for the metro size.
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2025/03/07/g-s1-52362/tariffs-farmers-tr...
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1154867064/solar-power-misinf...
https://krcrtv.com/news/local/trinity-county-urges-congress-...
https://x.com/MargoMartin47/status/1958969428948980139
If you stop thinking so critically and logically, it'll all start to make a lot more sense.
In the exact same way that "back in my day" stories don't matter to the lives of the grandchildren being told.
That is were we are headed, if you live below the Mason/Dixon line, a good chance your descendants will be one of those migrants many people seem to hate these days.
Solar panels are manufactured using energy that comes mostly from coal.
I certainly do not believe that solar panels are the universal solution for climate change, like a lot of zealots with no contact with reality believe.
It sounds like you’re implying that solar panels are a net negative in regards to reducing heat and/or carbon but you never actually made a firm declaration.
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