Longtime So Cal resident Charles Carr is a nationally published journalist and playwright. His award-winning "Southpaw" column has appeared in college textbooks published by Macmillan, St. Martin's Press, Bedford, and others.
BREAKING NEWS: Sun and wind discovered in red states!
It would be funny if it weren't so... not funny, watching GOP politicians twisting themselves into pretzels giving the green light to clean energy projects in their states and districts, then dumping on renewables every time a red light on a TV video camera flickers on. It is of further humorlessness that much of the funding for these projects comes from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) which -- irony alert -- passed both houses of congress without a single Republican vote.
But they sure love that sugar.
Oliver Milman writes in the Guardian, "Georgia, a state once known for its peaches and peanuts, is rapidly becoming a crucible of clean energy technology in the US, leading a pack of Republican-led states enjoying a boom in renewables investment that has been accelerated by Joe Biden’s climate agenda. ... Billions of dollars of new clean energy investment has been announced for solar, electric vehicle, and battery manufacturing in Georgia, pushing it to the forefront of a swathe of southern states that are becoming a so-called 'battery belt' in the economic transition away from fossil fuels." Battery belt states have secured more than $90 billion in battery investments over the past three years from companies like Qcells, Hyundai, Rivian, and SK Battery America to build new plants and create tens of thousands of jobs.
CleanTechnica notes that the deal made with Qcells on behalf of Microsoft will churn out a whopping 12 gigawatts of solar modules. For reference, a single gigawatt, or 1 billion watts, is the equivalent of 2.5 million photovoltaic panels. Multiply by 12. Energy.gov says that at the end of 2022 there was over 110 GW of solar photovoltaic in the US. The Georgia 12 GW plant is an enormous chunk of that total and is not only the largest manufacturing plant of its kind in the Western Hemisphere but the largest investment in the history of American solar.
Kemp's own office gushed, “Solar photovoltaic is the fastest-growing source of energy in Georgia. ... Georgia’s energy solutions providers are helping to accelerate the development of renewable energy products by lowering risks, reducing costs, providing access to innovative industry research, and investing in a superior infrastructure network.” Even Georgia representative and conservative firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene, who once said climate change is “actually healthy for us,” told Politico that she was “excited to have jobs” in her district that will result from the Qcells deal.
And let's not forget to mess with Texas, which added 7.7 GW of solar power and 2 GW of onshore wind in 2023, the largest of any state according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Texas alone accounted for more than 21 percent of the nation’s renewable energy in 2022 (excluding hydropower), despite enacting bills like 2023's House Bill 1500 and Senate Bill 2627 aimed at protecting fossil fuels. Funny how when they throw their constituents' money at their own ideological darlings, it's an investment, but when it's put into something inimical, it's a boondoggle. Well, good luck with that. As CleanTechnica further notes, "Public officials in the US state of Georgia have joined a multi-state effort to protect fossil fuels against competition from renewable energy, but the force of the free market is just not with them."
Time is running out. The same way we didn't end the Stone Age because we ran out of stones and we don't farm enormous pods of whales for their oil, we will change because we're intelligent creatures who can see further down the road than the next gas station. Yes, there will be bumps on the road to a renewable future, just as there were with dirty energy. Shall we begin a list of the 100+ year history of vast fossil fuel subsidies, failed venture, false starts, stillborn promises? Get out a sheet of paper. Make it a ream.
And to the group holding back so much of this progress -- the Boomers -- how about we keep the name but let it come to describe the generation that did a surprise one-eighty and shepherded in the biggest boom in energy this nation has ever seen. Yeah, I know. I'm a dreamer.
Good on you, conservative leaders for understanding the world is changing, slowly, in fits and starts. They're cynical and look pretty silly with their fingers perpetually stuck up in the air testing which way the wind is blowing, but they can be persuaded. There's a far greater impediment to a clean future out there: the dinosaur pols who have a fever almost approaching religious zealotry about digging up old, dirty stuff and setting it on fire. You can convince a cynic, but you're wasting your breath on these true believers. Smug, self-satisfied. Looking like nothing so much as the cat who ate the canary.
The canary in the coal mine