Solar power has, broadly speaking, won the energy technology race because good, cheap batteries now make it reliable.

Drawn from what Noah Smith said

What this subject means

batteries Storage as the thing that decides how much intermittent generation is worth building.

On the topicHow cheap does solar get, and what does that change?under our view: Somebody has to make the panels, and where they are made decides the price On the topicWhere does the energy come from, and what is stopping it?under our view: Solar and storage have already won on cost, and the price keeps falling

What Noah Smith actually said

Do you hold this korrent?Do you also believe this?

In tension with

Europe cannot meet its energy needs from renewables alone and will need nuclear power, solar power from deserts elsewhere, or both.

MacKay concluded in 2008 that Europe cannot live on its own renewables and needs nuclear power, solar from other people’s deserts, or both. Smith says in 2026 that solar with batteries has won the technological race and passed nuclear for most uses, because storage solved intermittency. Eighteen years separate them and MacKay’s arithmetic was about land and flux rather than cost, so the pair is a tension rather than a refutation — but it is the most consequential disagreement in this archive about what to build.

Shared subject first, then similar wording. They may agree or disagree.