2025 was a wake-up call. The first year of Donald Trump’s comeback term brought back a familiar problem: rising costs and broken promises on affordability.
Really strong framing on the childcare piece. The point about cash benefits versus institutional daycare subsidies matters way more than most policy debates acknowledge. I remember when a family friend had to quit a decent job becuase subsidized slots only covered 9-5 and her shift started at 6am, so the "help" was basically useless. Flexibility isnt just good policy, it's the differnce between whether support actually reaches people or just checks a box.
Thank you to both of you for all you’ve written this year. I’ve learned a lot and have cited The Rebuild in my own writings. I look forward to reading a lot more great stuff next year.
Wind and solar are not the cheapest forms of electricity. They have the lowest marginal cost, but they drive higher overall system cost. The areas in U.S. and the world that have the highest “renewable” penetration also have the highest electricity costs.
Why?
I live in MN. If it is not windy on January 2nd at 5:00 PM, and if I rely only on wind and solar I am in deep trouble. There is to no sun. I can’t run my furnace, I can’t cook my food, I can’t light my house, and I can’t do any number of things that require electricity. I could freeze to death.
To fix that problem, the grids needs to build 100% additional dispatchable (natural gas, coal, nuclear) or deploy huge amounts of unaffordable batteries. To be safe, weeks of batteries. Building a second just in case grid, is not affordable.
The windiest sites in the country are in the middle of the U.S, from Texas up to North Dakota. Most of those states have very low populations. To take advantage of that wind, huge amounts of transmission must be built.
Transmission is very expensive.
There is multi-year waiting list for large transformers. The transformer industry is having trouble getting the specialty steel it needs, in particular grain-oriented steel. That steel is hard to manufacture and contains about 3% silicon by weight. Silicon improves the magnetic properties of the steel. Most of it is made overseas. There is a 2-3 year wait time for transformers.
We don’t have enough lineman. It takes about 7 years to train a high voltage lineman assuming you can find enough people who are interested in working outside in a very dangerous job. An article published in December 2022 on Linemancentral.com, claimed there will be about 21,000 lineman job openings in 2023 alone.
According to a 2023 Department of Energy report we will need some 57% more transmission capacity by 2035. At the current rate we built transmission capacity that will take 80 years to complete.
The United States has 10 synchronous isolated electricity grids: 6 in Hawaii, 1 in Alaska and 3 in the continental United States. For all practical purposes, no electricity flows between these grids.
In the continental U.S. there is the Western Interconnect, the Eastern Interconnect and the Texas Interconnect. If the sunny states of California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico could produce all the quantities of electricity used by the entire United States, that electricity would be unavailable to Texas and all the states in the Eastern part of the U.S. If the windy states of Iowa, Oklahoma and Kansas could produce all the electricity the entire United States could use, it would be unavailable to Texas, California and all the other state in the Western Interconnect. It may be sunny and windy somewhere but so what.
Quoting wind and solar as being the cheapest energy, is like saying a free steering wheel on a Lamborghini makes it a cheap car. That is just plain wrong
Really strong framing on the childcare piece. The point about cash benefits versus institutional daycare subsidies matters way more than most policy debates acknowledge. I remember when a family friend had to quit a decent job becuase subsidized slots only covered 9-5 and her shift started at 6am, so the "help" was basically useless. Flexibility isnt just good policy, it's the differnce between whether support actually reaches people or just checks a box.
Thank you to both of you for all you’ve written this year. I’ve learned a lot and have cited The Rebuild in my own writings. I look forward to reading a lot more great stuff next year.
Thank you Andy!
Wind and solar are not the cheapest forms of electricity. They have the lowest marginal cost, but they drive higher overall system cost. The areas in U.S. and the world that have the highest “renewable” penetration also have the highest electricity costs.
Why?
I live in MN. If it is not windy on January 2nd at 5:00 PM, and if I rely only on wind and solar I am in deep trouble. There is to no sun. I can’t run my furnace, I can’t cook my food, I can’t light my house, and I can’t do any number of things that require electricity. I could freeze to death.
To fix that problem, the grids needs to build 100% additional dispatchable (natural gas, coal, nuclear) or deploy huge amounts of unaffordable batteries. To be safe, weeks of batteries. Building a second just in case grid, is not affordable.
The windiest sites in the country are in the middle of the U.S, from Texas up to North Dakota. Most of those states have very low populations. To take advantage of that wind, huge amounts of transmission must be built.
Transmission is very expensive.
There is multi-year waiting list for large transformers. The transformer industry is having trouble getting the specialty steel it needs, in particular grain-oriented steel. That steel is hard to manufacture and contains about 3% silicon by weight. Silicon improves the magnetic properties of the steel. Most of it is made overseas. There is a 2-3 year wait time for transformers.
We don’t have enough lineman. It takes about 7 years to train a high voltage lineman assuming you can find enough people who are interested in working outside in a very dangerous job. An article published in December 2022 on Linemancentral.com, claimed there will be about 21,000 lineman job openings in 2023 alone.
According to a 2023 Department of Energy report we will need some 57% more transmission capacity by 2035. At the current rate we built transmission capacity that will take 80 years to complete.
The United States has 10 synchronous isolated electricity grids: 6 in Hawaii, 1 in Alaska and 3 in the continental United States. For all practical purposes, no electricity flows between these grids.
In the continental U.S. there is the Western Interconnect, the Eastern Interconnect and the Texas Interconnect. If the sunny states of California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico could produce all the quantities of electricity used by the entire United States, that electricity would be unavailable to Texas and all the states in the Eastern part of the U.S. If the windy states of Iowa, Oklahoma and Kansas could produce all the electricity the entire United States could use, it would be unavailable to Texas, California and all the other state in the Western Interconnect. It may be sunny and windy somewhere but so what.
Quoting wind and solar as being the cheapest energy, is like saying a free steering wheel on a Lamborghini makes it a cheap car. That is just plain wrong