Right now renewables and storage are cheaper than most new fossil fuel types of generation. The cheapest new fossil fuel generation, gas, is bottlenecked by limited capacity to build new turbines currently.

So if you look at new resources being added to the grid, it's all solar, wind, storage, and a tiny bit of new fossil gas generation.

The biggest impediment to more renewables is no longer cost, it's politics and regulations. We have a president that has torpedoes one of the best new sources of wind, offshore wind, just as it's becoming super economical, and all the rest of the world is going to get the benefit of that cheap energy while the US falls behind. Floating offshore wind in the Pacific, based on the same type of tech as floating oil platforms, could provide a hugely beneficial amount of electricity at night and in winter, to balance out solar with less storage and less overbuilding.

Meanwhile on land, transmission line are a huge bottleneck towards more solar and wind, and the interconnection queue for the grid is backed out to hell in most places.

The technology and economics are there, but the humans and their bureaucracy is not ready to fully jump on board.

Is there a good resource for finding out more about fossil fuel subsidies? There are lots of questionable sources out there, like ones that inform you that oil companies only pay taxes on profits, not on revenue, so they consider that a subsidy. But that is just like every other company.

You also then have to include the subsidies renewables have gotten. They of course also use distribution infrastructure

Or subsidize nuclear because it complements beautifully solar & wind as cheap and clean energy?

Can we stop with this? It's not a helpful line of thinking or a useful argument. This is the batman vs. superman argument of children at a comic convention. Arguing whether federal highway funding factors in to the cost of coal is absurdly useless.

"I wonder how good it could be"

It's already here, solar is already dramatically cheaper and has none of the risk profile a global energy market produces. You install solar and you have that energy for decades.

Solar is here and its cheaper, batteries are good enough for utility scale. Now its simply an adoption curve.

Moralizing or bringing up silly arguments about how cost ought to be accounted should be considered harmful to the progress away from fossil fuels. Unless it's your intent to start pointless arguments.

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