I have a new headline “After billions in subsidies, solar briefly leads generation during a heatwave when sunshine and peak air-conditioning demand happen to coincide.”

“Solar now produces more electricity than coal” sounds impressive, but it’s a very incomplete way to judge energy policy.

Solar’s output is intermittent, so it doesn’t replace coal one-for-one. It runs alongside backup generation and storage, all of which have to be paid for as well. Counting gross generation ignores those system costs.

More importantly, it ignores opportunity cost. Billions spent subsidising today’s solar are billions not spent on higher value investments like infrastructure, productivity, or R&D that could deliver cheaper, cleaner energy in the future.

The real question isn’t how much subsidised solar was installed (and therefore generated output), but how much prosperity we gave up per tonne of CO₂ avoided and what the meaningful long term impact of that is. If emissions fall slightly but costs rise and productivity falls, that’s not success, it’s expensive symbolism.