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Ramez Naam
@ramez
Getting rid of monopoly utilities and going to something like Texas's deregulated market all around the country is an underrated climate solution.
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Kevin O'Rourke
@krorourke
Where markets are free, wind and solar are dominating. "Solar and wind generated 40.2% of the ERCOT grid’s electricity this year through June." See: pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/07/22/sol
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David Watson 🥑
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Rohan Patel
@rohanspatel
The investor owned utilities own their state legislatures and often their utility commissions. You’re right, but it would take a massive set of scandals or a system catastrophe for any change to happen. Nevada’s competitive electricity market ballot measure prompted Warren
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Zac Hill
@zdch
Yeah it’s this odd thing IMO where both Dems and Repubs locked in their heuristics about the tech before it was commercially mature and so now have equally maladaptive schema relative to the simple solution that would actually work
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Clark H
@Clarksterh
Part of this is, almost certainly, much better alignment of grid, night power plants, … capital cost allocation to source type that drove investment. ERCOT makes proactive efforts here, and uses fewer subsidies (which destroy alignment) But takes time to sort it out
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webistics scandal
@webisticsdawg
100% Ramez, solar and battery backup here in Texas is powerful stuff. The unregulated market is not without its problems but the upside scales pretty smoothly. Just need to see more collaboration between tech companies and city governments across Texas, like we saw with the new
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d dask 🇬🇷🇺🇸
@DocD19
‘natural monopoly’ranks with ‘conventional wisdom’ as an all time oxymoron
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Garen Checkley
@garencheckley
I don't know why people aren't suggesting this to California's electricity affordability crisis The only solution we hear is converting IOU monopolies to government monopolies Maybe just maybe monopolies aren't what we need???
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kraz
@JeffreyKrasner
Sure, who wouldn’t want deadly blackouts in the winter because the utilities are focused on profit not investing in the grid?
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djsjsjjs
@djsjsjjs369880
‘Underrated climate solution’ is a euphemism for allowing grifters to take to steal from ratepayers, make the grid less reliable, & cut good rural jobs. Look at the TVA and tell me most people wouldn’t want lower rates, no capital returns, more reliability, & less wind/solar.
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