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Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

the-independent.com

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Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#61

Post by pstuart »

direwolf20 wrote: post #46
input_sh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess somewhat of a fun fact: Albania has rented(!) two floating(!) oil-powered power plants near the city of Vlöre that are there in case of emergency. The last time they were really needed was in 2022 (if I remember correctly), but these days they're not turned on any more than they need to be to make sure they're operating properly. That very expensive backup system is basically the only non-renewable source in…

And this is an expected problem with renewables that can be engineered around. It's unlikely the whole world has a drought at once during a calm night, so developing ways to transmit power long distances will be important.

Which absolutely should be done, but having energy sovereignty is never a bad thing.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#62

Post by JoBrad »

phtrivier wrote: post #27

> Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo produced more than 99.7 per cent of the electricity they consumed using geothermal, hydro, solar or wind power. Let's head to electricitymaps.com ! Albania ( https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/AL/live/fifteen_min... ) - On 2026-04-12 16:45 GMT+2, 22,67% of electricity consumed by Albania is imported from Greece, which gen…

Or, more charitably: use the Strangler Fig method to modernize your systems, and start with low-hanging fruit.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#63

Post by BigGreenJorts »

WarmWash wrote: post #45
phtrivier wrote: post #27

> Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo produced more than 99.7 per cent of the electricity they consumed using geothermal, hydro, solar or wind power. Let's head to electricitymaps.com ! Albania ( https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/AL/live/fifteen_min... ) - On 2026-04-12 16:45 GMT+2, 22,67% of electricity consumed by Albania is imported from Greece, which gen…

I'm wondering how this picture holds up if we include cooking and water heating.

And cars. Lots of diesel in Albania.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#64

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #14
darkwater wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why geothermal is not renewable? Earth is not going to cool its magma soon enough

Only as a technicality. If you find a geothermal hotspot and start to extract energy from it, the hotspot will eventually cool down faster than if you hadn't (which of course depends on the size of the hotspot and how much heat you're pulling out). However, given that there's no downsides to cooling down a hotspot other than, well, no longer being able to extract energy from it, geothermal is a bit of an honorary "re…

A lot of hydroelectric depends on snow pack and glacier runoff that is being adversely affected by global warming. Solar and wind are the only robust hedges against a warm up that might ultimately severely curtail river flow.

We have a lot of uranium and nuclear is fairly renewable at least in the span of a few centuries. The waste issue is a problem.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#65

Post by [deleted] »

quickthrowman wrote: post #48
KellyCriterion wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it goes down, what happens to all the buildings using geo/earth heat with these probe heads to collect the energy? Does this effect occur in lets say 10-20 years or is this longterm like 50y+?

At a certain point there won’t be enough heat recovered from the geothermal side of the loop to generate steam on the process side of the loop and power generation will cease. I’m not smart enough to calculate how long that will take, however. I think you could still use the geothermal energy at a lower temperature for district heating and cooling, but a mechanical engineer would be more qualified to answer that.

[deleted]

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#66

Post by ffsm8 »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #49
phtrivier wrote: post #27

> Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo produced more than 99.7 per cent of the electricity they consumed using geothermal, hydro, solar or wind power. Let's head to electricitymaps.com ! Albania ( https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/AL/live/fifteen_min... ) - On 2026-04-12 16:45 GMT+2, 22,67% of electricity consumed by Albania is imported from Greece, which gen…

For some it's an eye-opening experience when they compare the states which are the most vocal about going solar and have a look onto the solar map of the world. Or then they talk about how some countries have miraculous levels of an energy independence and social services and then look at their total population.

Tbf, solar has gotten so much more effective/cost efficient in the last 12-24 months that it's beating pretty much everything aside from hydro in the cost efficiency department at this point - including (most of) northern Europe and Canada.

Most data you find will be using data that's massively out of date and be off by at least 2x though...

I had another facepalm moment when I read about EU planning to go nuclear again. That would've been amazing and smart in 2015 - but now? Yeah, it's dumb af. And that's coming from a German living at the northern end of the country.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#67

Post by delichon »

direwolf20 wrote: post #51
delichon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a new star will eventually form from the debris, so "renewable" is a function of time scale.

And after a hundred generations of this there will be no fusible material left. We can extract energy from rotating black holes until they stop, and then the universe is dead.

So solar energy is renewable over a human lifetime, not renewable over a stellar lifetime, renewable over a stellar formation cycle, not renewable over the lifetime of a universe, and renewable if universes turn out to be cyclical. And all but the first are pendantry in the context of renewable energy conversations.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#68

Post by JoBrad »

leonidasrup wrote: post #15
leonidasrup wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Earth's heat content is about 1×10^19 TJ. This heat naturally flows to the surface by conduction at a rate of 44.2 TW and is replenished by radioactive decay at a rate of 30 TW. These power rates are more than double humanity's current energy consumption from primary sources, but most of this power is too diffuse (approximately 0.1 W/m^2 on average) to be recoverable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_powe…

In comparison, averaged over the year and the day, the Earth's atmosphere receives 340 W/m^2 from the Sun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance#On_Earth's_su...

Thanks for that context.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#69

Post by ptman »

neves wrote: post #52
WinstonSmith84 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fun fact for Paraguay: the Itaipu Dam is one of the largest in the world located between Brazil and Paraguay, where each country gets 50% of the production. But 50% of that production for Paraguay, a country of 7 millions inhabitants, means that it cannot consume that much, so it's essentially reselling that energy to Brazil, a country with 30x more inhabitants. Paraguay only uses about 1/3 of its share (and thus res…

And it means that it has been oil free since the 70's. Brazil, a continental country, has more than 80% of its energy from renewables

Oil free for electricity generation. The media in my country (Finland) also likes to brag about 90+% fossil-free electricity generation. But electricity is under half (30%?40%?) and the rest of that energy isn't fossil-free.

Re: Seven countries now generate nearly all their electricity from renewables (2024)

#70

Post by izacus »

direwolf20 wrote: post #46
input_sh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess somewhat of a fun fact: Albania has rented(!) two floating(!) oil-powered power plants near the city of Vlöre that are there in case of emergency. The last time they were really needed was in 2022 (if I remember correctly), but these days they're not turned on any more than they need to be to make sure they're operating properly. That very expensive backup system is basically the only non-renewable source in…

And this is an expected problem with renewables that can be engineered around. It's unlikely the whole world has a drought at once during a calm night, so developing ways to transmit power long distances will be important.

Having a continent-wide draught (or cold winter or other weather effect) is rather common though. Just a few years back Europe had a massive issue where draught caused both drop of hydro production and cooling for French nukes, causing energy prices to spike.
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