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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)

#131

Post by Tepix »

cyjackx wrote: post #115
jdlshore wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economics of new nuclear plants don't make sense. They take too long to build and cost too much. By the time a new plant is ready, alternate sources (likely solar + battery and long-distance HVDC) will have eaten its lunch.

How much of this is unnecessary regulatory burden, though? There probably is some margin of improvement over what the anti-nuclear lobbyists have imposed.

Is it unnecessary burden? We've had major nuclear accidents despite regulations and that was before 9/11 and dron wars.

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

#132

Post by Tepix »

izacus wrote: post #70
direwolf20 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cooling for French nuclear reactors, yes. More than once since 2020. But nukes?

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

#133

Post by iso1631 »

ambicapter wrote: post #75
direwolf20 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or just use nuclear as base load, and battery storage as much as you can.

Get a drought and you have to shut them down, ask France.

"Base load" is just some nonsense from nuclear fans to get the cost per GWh down.

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

#134

Post by bogeholm »

direwolf20 wrote: post #47
KellyCriterion wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wasnt New Zealand also already far up beyond 90% renewable electricity a couple of years ago?

They are blessed with all three of hydro, geothermal, and wind.

Do we have many countries around where wind is not a thing?

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

#135

Post by iso1631 »

Flere-Imsaho wrote: post #120
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…

Hydro electricity is also one of the most dangerous forms of energy production: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure (This is the worst disaster, but could put Chernobyl to shame?) Full list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_st...

Well most dangerous apart from coal, oil, gas, biomass?

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

And that's before you bring into the deaths due to climate change

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

#136

Post by bluGill »

sph wrote: post #76

Seeing so many sub-Saharan countries generating >= 50% of their electricity from renewables makes me smile: https://static.the-independent.com/2024/04/16/11/renewable%2...

It makes me sad - most of them are fairly poor and so don't use much energy. I want those people to have the wealth to consume as much energy as me. (My city is also 100% renewable but since I live in the us we don't show near as well on the charts overall.

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

#137

Post by setsewerd »

geoduck14 wrote: post #106
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…

>So, the lessons for all other countries in the world is pretty clear: grow yourselves some mountains, dig yourselves a big river, and dam, baby, dam !! It is a relief that Environmentalists have decided that hydro counts as "renewable" energy! When I was in school, hydro was considered really bad for the environment, and projects like the Hoover dam and Yangzie River dam were "not helping"

Reminds me of when Bjork was protesting the construction of a new hydropower plant in Iceland, when the Director of Iceland's National power company (behind the project) was actually her uncle. I used to be romantically involved with someone in his side of the family and noticed Bjork was conspicuously absent from any family gatherings he hosted, of which there were many.

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

#138

Post by thangalin »

Tepix wrote: post #130
ambicapter wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just use nuclear as base load, and battery storage as much as you can.

Nuclear seems to be the worst option: You can't quickly change the amount of power it generates. Which is what you need if you want to use it together with dirt cheap solar. It's very expensive. In fact, noone knows how expensive it will end up being after a couple thousand of years. It's dangerous. For millenia. Vulnerable to terrorism. Enabler of nuclear weapons. It takes a long time to build and bring online. It d…

> It's dangerous. For millenia.

See https://www.jlab.org/news/releases/jefferson-lab-tapped-lead...

> Partitioning and recycling of uranium, plutonium, and minor actinide content of used nuclear fuel can dramatically reduce this number to around 300 years.

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

#139

Post by jacquesm »

pfdietz wrote: post #117
jacquesm wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a few developed countries have privatized their electrical grids. The effects - predictable - were rent seeking behavior without the necessary investments to remain future proof. This is now catching up with us in a big way, the electrification is going to lag behind considerably on account of this. I wrote about that in 2016, https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-problem-with-evs/ , and even though the situation has…

I think we're going to see a lot of grid defection, and not just from little consumers. Corporations won't wait for grid connections and will roll their own microgrids.

There will be serious pushback to that by lobbyists. This is already happening in the form of mandatory participation in 'the market' while at the same time (you can't make this up) having to sell to that market at some kind of arbitrary price that you don't get a say in as producer.

I'm a small step away from going off-grid again, the biggest stumbling block is that - predictably - you can't do any practical small power windmill installations. I've considered a windlass in the basement but my kids wouldn't hear of it ;)

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

#140

Post by tialaramex »

colechristensen wrote: post #90
ambicapter wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just use nuclear as base load, and battery storage as much as you can.

You don't need battery storage if you've got hydro. You need solar. Make hydro the backup, fill reservoirs as your reserve and sell extra energy when they're nearly full.

I can see this makes sense especially for medium term storage. A lot full of batteries is great for the next ten seconds, next ten minutes, even to some extent the next ten hours, but it surely doesn't make much sense to store ten days of electricity that way compared to just keeping the water behind a dam. We know that many of the world's large dams are capturing snow melt or other seasonal flows, running them only when solar or wind can't provide the power you need lets you make more effective use of the same resource.
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