New MAGA tax on renewable energy - WHY?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Windmills are really bad for migrating birds. BAD.

It sounds like a fantastic idea, until it doesn't.

They need to figure out how to make the windmills so that they don't create havoc for wildlife. Until then, I'm against them.

Microparticles and exhaust are worse for wildlife than a random bird getting whacked by a windmill.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the energy source can't compete without favorable treatment then it sucks. Tax it like we tax oil and see how it does.

Ok, then lets pay the full cost of oil, including environmental remediation and the military subsidy. It comes to $12-14/gal instead of the ~$3 you are paying now.

Baloney. You're just picking numbers out of the air. You're also making the assumption there wouldn't be a military if we didn't use petroleum. False. Bigly. You're also making assumptions on what percentage of military spending goes to protect petroleum from exploration to shipping.

BTW, where the hell do you think that PLASTIC dashboard in your electric vehicle comes from? Guess what material is a large part of the components of plastic? Oil.... from the ground. Yikes, huh? Have you really thought this out?

Now, let's get to Electric Vehicles. Efficient? Not by a long shot.

The entire reason a gallon of gasoline fits in that size and weighs six pounds, more or less (plus the tank of course) is that it is mixed with 14 times, roughly, as much air as said fuel when it is burned. You don't carry the air with you; it's there for the mixture to burn. Gasoline is a mixture of things but has a mass in the common mixtures of about 100g/mol (molar mass). Air is a mixture too (mostly nitrogen and then oxygen) and has a mass of about 30g/mol. I'm rounding.

There are 450 grams to a pound. So for every pound of gasoline you must have roughly fourteen pounds of air to react with it.

A battery has to carry both reactants in the case. In both cases the reaction is roughly the same; both are a form of oxidation-reduction reaction (redox reaction) in that one molecule gains electrons and another loses them. That is, using a battery requires roughly 14 times the mass of fuel to be carried for the energy produced compared with gasoline, because you have to have the air in the case and to accelerate something you must accelerate its mass. The fuel-driven vehicle thus wins twice as it neither has to carry that mass or accelerate it.

There ain't no free lunch (TANFL), so you have to be much more-efficient end-to-end to use a battery to make sense for this very reason. But the electricity is generated somewhere else, it must be generated, go through multiple lines and transformers and then undergo a chemical conversion in the battery twice -- once to charge it and then again when you use it. All you're doing is moving a polluting event from one place to another! It doesn't make it disappear and we never want to account for things like the energy consumed and environmental waste produced by making lithium-chemistry batteries and all the ugly heavy metals. However, all of that has to be accounted for when you choose where to make the batteries because you can trash the environment there, also. Heavy metals like cadmium tend to be nasty at low levels.

Stop being a talking points bot and know what you're talking about.

Every middle east war, every penny on Israel and everything with Iran since before 1953 is about oil.

Rant over.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the energy source can't compete without favorable treatment then it sucks. Tax it like we tax oil and see how it does.

Ok, then lets pay the full cost of oil, including environmental remediation and the military subsidy. It comes to $12-14/gal instead of the ~$3 you are paying now.

Baloney. You're just picking numbers out of the air. You're also making the assumption there wouldn't be a military if we didn't use petroleum. False. Bigly. You're also making assumptions on what percentage of military spending goes to protect petroleum from exploration to shipping.

BTW, where the hell do you think that PLASTIC dashboard in your electric vehicle comes from? Guess what material is a large part of the components of plastic? Oil.... from the ground. Yikes, huh? Have you really thought this out?

Now, let's get to Electric Vehicles. Efficient? Not by a long shot.

The entire reason a gallon of gasoline fits in that size and weighs six pounds, more or less (plus the tank of course) is that it is mixed with 14 times, roughly, as much air as said fuel when it is burned. You don't carry the air with you; it's there for the mixture to burn. Gasoline is a mixture of things but has a mass in the common mixtures of about 100g/mol (molar mass). Air is a mixture too (mostly nitrogen and then oxygen) and has a mass of about 30g/mol. I'm rounding.

There are 450 grams to a pound. So for every pound of gasoline you must have roughly fourteen pounds of air to react with it.

A battery has to carry both reactants in the case. In both cases the reaction is roughly the same; both are a form of oxidation-reduction reaction (redox reaction) in that one molecule gains electrons and another loses them. That is, using a battery requires roughly 14 times the mass of fuel to be carried for the energy produced compared with gasoline, because you have to have the air in the case and to accelerate something you must accelerate its mass. The fuel-driven vehicle thus wins twice as it neither has to carry that mass or accelerate it.

There ain't no free lunch (TANFL), so you have to be much more-efficient end-to-end to use a battery to make sense for this very reason. But the electricity is generated somewhere else, it must be generated, go through multiple lines and transformers and then undergo a chemical conversion in the battery twice -- once to charge it and then again when you use it. All you're doing is moving a polluting event from one place to another! It doesn't make it disappear and we never want to account for things like the energy consumed and environmental waste produced by making lithium-chemistry batteries and all the ugly heavy metals. However, all of that has to be accounted for when you choose where to make the batteries because you can trash the environment there, also. Heavy metals like cadmium tend to be nasty at low levels.

Stop being a talking points bot and know what you're talking about.

The fact is that solar and wind are becoming a larger part of our energy mix because of basic economics. You aren’t wrong about the challenges of battery storage (although there are lots of innovative ideas about mechanical energy storage that would help level out grid inputs). And yes, oil and gas will be needed as a backup for many years.

But the simple reality is solar is starting to outcompete fossil fuels for those applications where storage isn’t paramount. The market, not government, is dictating this migration. Taxing solar is a worthless attempt to turn back to an older, more expensive energy supply mix for no good reason than ideological purity, and hatred of the environmental movement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Solar and wind suck. The way you can tell us that Martha's vineyard and Cape cod fight to the death to keep them out.

When Aspen, Martha's vineyard and the Hamptons get wind farms and when jets take off with batteries then I'll consider them worth looking into.

Wind farms are going in up and down the Atlantic and across the plains and in mountains areas including Western PA and western MD.

Total eyesores. Ruining the beauty of the country

Do you know what is worse? A country with denuded forests, piled garbage and no clear air or water, which is the world the GOP wants.

The landscape was clean and beautiful before it was littered with wind and solar farm eyesores

Yeah, that highway in CA that’s had wind farms for decades sure would look better with a concrete wall. 🙄

And a refinery would be beautiful too and so clean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Solar and wind suck. The way you can tell us that Martha's vineyard and Cape cod fight to the death to keep them out.

When Aspen, Martha's vineyard and the Hamptons get wind farms and when jets take off with batteries then I'll consider them worth looking into.

You know, government has often subsidized new technologies. We gave away millions of acres to the railroads in the 1800s to incentivize them to build railroads across the country (every other section on each side of the line extending 6 miles on each side, so the railroads got 6 square miles of land for every mile of track they built, which could then be sold to the promoters pitching new towns where the trains would go).

There was a guy on one of the broadcast news channels last night, he builds solar panels in the midwest (I think Indiana?)--manufacturing IN the US, not imported from China. He has 64 employees and says if the bill goes through he will have to lay off have of them. He went to Washington to make his case but he says these people can look right at you and simply not believe anything you tell them.

Besides, this is not just removing incentives--it's ADDing a tax.

Also, the incentives could help make the difference between your grandchildren having a civilized world to live in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Windmills are really bad for migrating birds. BAD.

It sounds like a fantastic idea, until it doesn't.

They need to figure out how to make the windmills so that they don't create havoc for wildlife. Until then, I'm against them.

Do some googling and find out the loss of avian populations from fossil fuels, including resulting climate change.

And buildings and cats kill WAY more birds. Are you ready to kill your cats and eliminate buildings more than 2 stories tall?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If the energy source can't compete without favorable treatment then it sucks. Tax it like we tax oil and see how it does.

Oil and gas get a ton of subsidies. It takes 6 to 9 years to bring a pipeline or nuclear facility online. Wind and solar are cheaper to build and are free once they are operational. We give subsidies to many types of businesses. Why not this one? We need to be thinking about the future, not the past. Coal?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Solar and wind suck. The way you can tell us that Martha's vineyard and Cape cod fight to the death to keep them out.

When Aspen, Martha's vineyard and the Hamptons get wind farms and when jets take off with batteries then I'll consider them worth looking into.

They are off the coast of MV. You can't see them so why do you care?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Solar and wind suck. The way you can tell us that Martha's vineyard and Cape cod fight to the death to keep them out.

When Aspen, Martha's vineyard and the Hamptons get wind farms and when jets take off with batteries then I'll consider them worth looking into.

Wind farms are going in up and down the Atlantic and across the plains and in mountains areas including Western PA and western MD.

Total eyesores. Ruining the beauty of the country

Do you know what is worse? A country with denuded forests, piled garbage and no clear air or water, which is the world the GOP wants.

The landscape was clean and beautiful before it was littered with wind and solar farm eyesores

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think they are beautiful. I really do. I've had the pleasure of climbing a wind turbine. The technology is amazing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The BBB includes not only rolling back Biden-era subsidies for solar and wind power, but new taxes intended to kneecap those rapidly growing industries. Much of the solar and wind production in the US is in red states like Texas. Why is it "winning" to kneecap an industry that's providing cheaper energy, in exchange for oil and gas that are becoming relatively more and more expensive?
https://www.axios.com/2025/07/01/trump-clean-energy-tax-credits-renewables

How is solar and wind cheaper?

Because once you build it, the energy is free.

[Anonymous]

And subsidies for coal. . . . what is MAGA going to promote next? Subsidies for the horse and buggy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Windmills are really bad for migrating birds. BAD.

It sounds like a fantastic idea, until it doesn't.

They need to figure out how to make the windmills so that they don't create havoc for wildlife. Until then, I'm against them.

You know what else wreaks havoc? Planes and high rise windows. Should all planes be grounded?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If the energy source can't compete without favorable treatment then it sucks. Tax it like we tax oil and see how it does.

You don’t know anything at all about energy policy obviously so why are you acting like you do?

[Anonymous]

DCUM says “the planes are still going” or claims carbon credits

[Anonymous]

I am so glad I got my tax rebate for the new heat pump I bought last year!!