Great news. Now let's surpass coal, the far more insidious and prevalent source!
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Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026
61–70 of 405 posts
Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026
#62I know some people who are adamantly against solar and wind (personally I like both but I can see some shortcomings - for example I have heard that ai datacenters are using gas at times because of its flexibility) So what are some of the best talking points to "sell" solar and wind to the unconvinced? Or will they just adopt it once it's seen everywhere?
I don’t know how you can be against solar unless you’ve been given some uninformed talking points. Are they against solar subsidies or other policy provisions? It’s hard to understand someone who is against passive energy collection.
There's a lot of selective concern. They'll be outraged about the environmental damage from mining and manufacturing needed for panels, but ignore the orders of magnitude worse damage from burning fossil fuels. My favorite is outrage over wind turbines killing birds. Cats kill a thousand times more birds but nobody cares about that.
Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026
#63I know some people who are adamantly against solar and wind (personally I like both but I can see some shortcomings - for example I have heard that ai datacenters are using gas at times because of its flexibility) So what are some of the best talking points to "sell" solar and wind to the unconvinced? Or will they just adopt it once it's seen everywhere?
- cheaper - much less upfront capex, lower operating costs
- removes nasty geopolitical dependencies on eg gulf state oil and gas; costs are more predictable
- easier to plan and build because the base units are much smaller
Variability remains a valid objection, to which the main answer today is "batteries. Lots of batteries. And other cheaper longer duration storage, like sand heat storage, vanadium flow, and good old pumped hydro."
Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026
#64*electricity . Gas is heavily used for heating , cooking & industrial uses (e.g. drying agriculture like hops, boilers etc).
I raise this point since policymakers get confused and try to ban gas, only to realize how critical gas is for food & industrial applications that consumers enjoy after the fact.
Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
If people have strong opinions about renewable energy, just don't waste your breath. You can't reason someone out of an opinion they arrived at unreasonably.
Keep hammering the point that they are cheaper. If they are open to more advanced discussion point to the amazing structural changes that batteries are only starting to bring. Tell them something that sounds mildly like science fiction but is in fact happening already and will be HUGE. E.g. the battery you’ll have in your AC/stove/car will save you money or even make you money when part of a smart mesh of DERs. Maybe…
Let me preface this that I am a huge advocate for renewables, and have been spending borderline unreasonable amounts on turning my home green.
The rub with "solar is cheaper" is that those values are almost always calculated using an ideal environment. Solar is cheapest when you are using flat barren land in Arizona where an acre costs $500, the sun shines 330 days a year, you are bulk buying 750 MW of panels, and the bureaucracy is a single rubber stamp. Those are the numbers that ultimately trickle to headlines.
Things get much more complicated (read: expensive), when you are in the North East, an acre costs $12,000, the sun shines 170 days a year, you're bulk buying a few dozen MW of panels, and the bureaucracy is 6 different government bodies full of permits and assessments.
In that situation, a gas plant that produces 10x more power on 10x less land becomes very appealing to people who are already getting crushed by soaring electricity bills. (My take: we're just going to have to deal with higher costs).
So I am all with you on abandoning fossil fuels, but to someone who is firmly in gas camp, they will have legitimate ground to stand on when balking at costs. "It's cheaper" is unfortunately not all encompassing.
Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026
#66Renewable energy offers a competitive advantage for any energy intensive activity --- like manufacturing or AI. China gets it, the USA doesn't.
The USA get's it. Trump doesn't. Texas is a the leader in wind and solar in the US. Compare generation stats for yesterday between 2021 and 2026 on the Texas grid (ERCOT) * 2021 - https://www.gridstatus.io/live/ercot?date=2021-06-03 * 2026 - https://www.gridstatus.io/live/ercot?date=2026-06-03 Also, the Californian grid (CAISO) shows where everyone is headed with a huge deployment of batteries: * 2021 - https://www.g…
All of that combined is peanuts compared to what's happening in China. Not to mention that all the panels and most of the wind turbines are produced in China. It's not just a question of installing them, it's having the industry and technical know how to make them that really matters.
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-...
Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026
#67I know some people who are adamantly against solar and wind (personally I like both but I can see some shortcomings - for example I have heard that ai datacenters are using gas at times because of its flexibility) So what are some of the best talking points to "sell" solar and wind to the unconvinced? Or will they just adopt it once it's seen everywhere?
> I know some people who are adamantly against solar and wind
let me guess... they sell oil?
Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026
#68More good news from Ember, according to their Global Electricity
Review 2026 [1]:
Solar power increased by a record 636 TWh to reach 2,778 TWh in 2025, a 30% increase from 2024.
Wind saw the second-largest increase, growing 205 TWh (+8.2%)
Driven by record solar growth, low-carbon power generation increased by 887 TWh in 2025, outpacing electricity demand growth of 849 TWh. Solar power alone met 75% of the net increase in electricity demand. Together with wind, the two sources met almost all (99%) demand growth.
For the first time in 100 years, renewables (33.8%, 10,730 TWh) overtook coal power (33.0%, 10,476 TWh) in the global electricity mix as continued rapid growth in solar and wind pushed the share of renewables above a third of global generation. Coal power dropped 63 TWh (-0.6%) in 2025, marking the first fall since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Combined with continued electricity demand growth, this meant coal fell below a third of global generation for the first time in history.
For comparison, I have collated information from the International Atomic Energy Agency's Power Reactor Information System. The fastest that nuclear power generation ever grew was 213 TWh added in 1985. Since the year 2000, the fastest growth year was 2004, with 111 TWh added.
[1] https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/04/Global-Electric...
Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026
#69Renewable energy offers a competitive advantage for any energy intensive activity --- like manufacturing or AI. China gets it, the USA doesn't.
Indeed. Steel mills, aluminum smelters and glass factories really adore the intermittent nature of renewables.
Smelters in Australia are leaning on the fossil-friendly politicians to stop getting in the way of renewables because they can't compete with global prices unless they use renewables.
Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026
#70I know some people who are adamantly against solar and wind (personally I like both but I can see some shortcomings - for example I have heard that ai datacenters are using gas at times because of its flexibility) So what are some of the best talking points to "sell" solar and wind to the unconvinced? Or will they just adopt it once it's seen everywhere?
> So what are some of the best talking points to "sell" solar and wind to the unconvinced?
Increasing utility energy prices worked for me. I wasn't anti-solar, but it didn't seem worthwhile for me. When the utility price doubled over three years (or just about), the math makes sense now. I'm not looking for solar to acheive grid independence though, I already have a whole house generator for that, because utility power is two nines reliable around here.