Opinion | Under Trump, the US Will Forfeit the Global Clean Tech Race to China / Capital flowing into the US over the last few years chasing the Inflation Reduction Act is now likely to flow to jurisdictions aligned with long-term sustainable growth goals #GlobalCarbonFeeAndDividendPetition

2 comments

1. I tend to agree. I’m far from expert in these matters, just a layperson… but I do pay some attention, as an EV owner and someone very worried about the climate crisis.

   This TED talk was full of figures and graphs that I found quite interesting.

   [https://www.reddit.com/r/climate/comments/1gof9zb/welcome_to_the_era_of_energy_disruption_gerard/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/climate/comments/1gof9zb/welcome_to_the_era_of_energy_disruption_gerard/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)

   and what I took away from it was that China is going balls-to-wall for electrification while the US is likely to go backwards — back to fossil fuel and super expensive, slow to deploy, unwieldy nuke plants.

   also that the cost/MW of PV/battery is crashing, while the cost/MW of fossil generated electricity can only rise.

   therefore the rest of the world, esp developing nations in equatorial and subequatorial zones, is more likely to buy affordable electric generation equipment from China than fossil fuel from the DIrty Duo (N America and Russia).

   I also am getting a weird gut feeling that Putin’s full-court press to destabilise the US and Canada and install Orban or Milei style neo-theo-autocrats is some kind of bid to prevent N America from decarbonising and keep the fossil cartel going a bit longer. Oil is an export good for Russia, and its value is likely to decline for a while as electrification continues. The value of oil of course will never reach zero because we need it for many chemical processes, for industrial lubricants and solvents, etc. But the bonanza, the great peak of oil demand that has been booming all my lifetime, if this TED talk guy is right… is almost over.

   of course the TED talk guy could have been presenting bogus data, I suppose. I don’t know what kind of peer review TED talks go through. I do know that my Bolt EV is simply better than any gas car I’ve ever owned: clean, quiet, hellacious torque and zero maintenance, super low cost of ownership. even if I were not trying to be “greener” I think it would be a better choice than most gas cars — unless I lived someplace where 300 mile drives are routine. and my experience is that when a product is better, it usually (not always but usually) starts to take market share away from the less desirable product.

2. Trump hates China while simultaneously yielding dominance of the decarbonized economy to China. He can’t even get jingoism right.

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