Saw a solar farm go up next to the old coal plant outside Austin in 8 months and it flipped my whole view on renewable timelines

I used to think solar took forever to actually make a dent, but watching them break ground in March and be grid-connected by November, with the old coal stack still sitting there silent, made me wonder if the real bottleneck is just people fighting permits instead of the tech itself.

3 comments

3 Comments

nathan19325d ago

Yeah that coal stack sitting silent really hit me too. Changed my whole timeline view.

miles58125d ago

Michaeljones makes a fair point about the coal plant's 50 year run, but that silent stack changes how I see the timeline in a different way. It's not about erasing what coal did in the past, it's about realizing that timeline had an expiration date built into it from the start. Once renewables got cheap enough and regulations tightened up, that stack was never going to be the final chapter. The industrial revolution needed coal, but the next revolution won't. That stack sitting there quiet is proof that progress doesn't stop, it just shifts to something cleaner.

michaeljones25d ago

Just not sure I see it that way. That coal plant was running for over 50 years before they shut it down. The timeline still shows coal powering the industrial revolution and building modern cities. One silent stack doesn't change that whole picture for me.