Don't fall for the primary energy fallacy. We care about energy services, not how much energy we waste to get them.

1 solar exajoule (EJ) = 3 EJ of primary coal, oil and gas.

Vast majority of "rejected energy" below is waste heat from thermal power plants and combustion engines.

#EnergySky

Am I doing this right? How does a middle-aged energy nerd do memes? #EnergySky

1) people in Boulder are drinking craft beer, not Chardonnay.
2) Solar is less expensive than coal. So pushing coal is likely to drive up electricity prices even faster.
www.lazard.com/media/uounho...

Many of the 287 solar and battery factories threatened by the House reconciliation bill are in parts of the country already known as the rust belt but this term could become much more familiar to the southeast if the current draft becomes law.

underthreat.seia.org/threat/

Solar (66%) and batteries (18%) made up 84% of new capacity on the grid last year! Nothing else can ramp up over the next five years so it is critical we keep solar and storage projects on the rails or else we'll find ourselves paying more for less electricity.
seia.org/research-res...

We need solar and batteries to meet growing electricity demand. Solar is more than twice as fast to build as natural gas combined cycle, four times faster than coal and 10 times faster than nuclear.
seia.org/blog/we-need...

We now have over 50 GWdc of operational PV module manufacturing capacity in the U.S. This was almost unimaginable a few years ago but we now have three critical policies in place that have made the U.S. an attractive place to manufacture solar energy components:

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Latest Solar Data Cheat Sheet

Yep, that's right there are more 5 million solar energy systems in the U.S.
seia.org/research-res...