Instead, with a mandate and subsidy, governments are preventing innovation with the status quo. Companies rush to drain the pool of available taxpayer budget, then they eat their own trying to keep it. Yet prices don't drop because the money is finite. Thanks to mandates and subsidies, there are more solar panel manufacturers - propped up by subsidies - than there is demand, because that is also propped up by mandates and subsidies. Just like no one wants to build electric car charging stations until the Biden administration gives them $4 trillion, no one is going to innovate in solar panels when there is no government money for that, only manufacturing, installation, and end use.
Meanwhile, California Democrats are complaining about spending $300 million to keep the state's last nuclear plant functioning, just after President Biden proclaimed Democrats no longer hate energy science and when the state has the nation's highest electricity rates due to so many subsidies for solar and wind.(1)
If solar and wind are viable, why spend money on an old nuclear reactor?
Here are 4 trillion reasons why:
![](https://www.science20.com/files/images/renewable_energy_share_has_not_gone_up.jpg)
The answer is obviously that those schemes are a grift created and endorsed by President Obama and unfortunately allowed by every President since. Republicans are no better than Democrats. Instead, the solar industry is likely to vote Republican because US solar companies want protectionism and tariffs - they are demanding China be blocked from selling panels cheaper than Western countries can make them. Installers are still getting rich, so they want to buy the cheapest panels they can get, and for as long as governments pay ridiculous net meter subsidies to homeowners so they can bizarrely 'sell it back to the utility at the same price they buy it', owners do not care. Manufacturers are the ones hurt.(2) President Trump has already said he is going to use tariffs to make domestic products competitive. Which puts solar companies in the position of voting for the candidate opposed by nearly all of their wealthy elite customer base. They need a Republican to keep their government protection from competition, which is as weird as all those supposedly patriotic new car dealerships that fly American flags the size of a 737 but ask government to keep consumers from buying cars directly from Ford and GM.
Once upon a time, gossip magazines used to produce stories about bat boys found in caves in remote places like Russia, now with Google it's more of a challenge.(3) That is the consumer that the solar industry is appealing to with its constant promotion of 'success' stories that are nothing of the kind. White western activists invoke Kenya and its share of solar and wind, for example, but leave out that the country has nationwide blackouts once per month and localized blackouts every day. It's nice that White Saviors in Europe signal how awesome Europe is for forcing their beliefs on poor black people but those people would rather have lights that work.
Kenya has no choice. While they have a quasi-democracy, graft and corruption have not changed so anyone handed a suitcase full of money by Greenpeace is going to endorse anything they want.
Americans do have a choice, though.
(1) Alternative energy provides energy when it is needed so poorly that during heat waves, California requests exemptions from emissions laws so that they can run conventional energy still in the state at full blast to prevent brownouts.
(2) Rich white people in Malibu are just fine knowing that poor black people in Compton are forced by the government to pay higher utility bills so wealthy people can get a big discount. It is not about saving the planet, unless elites are getting paid. That is why when the largest solar panel states propose reducing net meter subsidies from the impossible 'full retail cost' to 'wholesale price that utilities pay, lobbyists pivoted from 'we need to incentivize people to adopt' to 'people did this expecting they'd be rewarded and government should not change that.'
(3) People are still gullible. Some Democrats believed President Biden's Secret Service Director when she claimed there was only a 200-yard perimeter around President Trump during an outdoor event because of 'budget constraints' while some Republicans think Vice-President Kamala Harris traveled back in time and faked her birth certified.
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