Understood. It’s my fault for not being clear in my language.

‘Receiving subsidies’ does require the subject in question to be given money, or another object of recompense.

Both fossil fuel production and renewable production receive subsidies.

‘Being subsidized’ is a catch all term to indicate a subject is supported in their actions, not only through direct capital, but also through reduction in CAPEX via tax breaks, advantageous loan terms, cheap land usage rates etc…

Both fossil fuel and renewables are being subsidized in this manner.

Concerning Trump. If he did say it, He was right to tell Europe (and let’s be clear here, in this case it is mostly German industry that is dependent on this) not to hitch their wagon to Russian oil.

But it is a comment that is two decades out of date. German industrialist have been in close ties with Russia since the 90s. Maybe Clinton have the same advice?

Again. The whole point is that fossil fuels, renewables, and most major industries to a greater or lesser degree, are subsidized in one fashion or another.

At the moment, fossil fuels tend to receive vast more subsidization when compared to renewables, and by virtue of them being a long established technology, have received huge amounts of cumulative subsidization.

The fact that renewables are now receiving significant subsidized support, even if the $ to KWh is lower than for fossil fuels, is still a good thing in my opinion. Renewable sources, particularly wind and solar, are a relatively new tech and are making annual leaps in efficiency and cost per KWh.

Offshore wind is a huge EU industry, which is now able to supply almost all of some EU countries energy needs (Denmark). In addition it creates manufacturing jobs, installation jobs, jobs for shipping and doc workers, and it is helping to transition fishing workers to a more sustainable model.

Right now for cheap solar, globally china is king of production. Here is where I see a familiar problem looming. Having one country produce the majority of solar capacity, starts to look familiar to oil and gas monopolies (OPEC). It could certainly use some diversity.

The negatives of all this (aside from lack of baseline capacity without investment in Nuclear energy, not a problem for me in France) is that any energy production requiers a degree of environmental damage and CO2 production. Wind turbines are heavy concrete, copper and plastic users. Particularly off shore. Solar panels are less problematic as they are almost entirely silicone from sand to make the glass. They do use rare earth minerals which can be destructive to mine and politically difficult depending on where they are. However, spent solar panel recycling has already started at small scale.

The key takeaway is that, as a species, we have to get off the oil and gas eventually. For several reasons.

1. It produces CO2 which will change the climate. Probably creating mass migration from central latitudes and a socioeconomic crisis.
2. It is inherently polluting. Aside from CO2, burning fossil fuels creates atmospheric Polly that harms health and stresses medical infrastructure.
3. It’s a finite resource that will not be created again and cannot be recycled. It will run out. Maybe not for us. But for our children. Or children’s children.
4. Local energy independence. Being dependent on hostile neighbors to keep the lights on is inherently bad.