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IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first

electrek.co

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Re: IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first

#131

Post by JuniperMesos »

XorNot wrote: post #44
childintime wrote: post #18

> And nuclear is making a comeback: More than 12 GW of new reactors began construction in 2025 By the time they are ready they will have contributed so many carbon emissions, that they'll have to run for 25% of their expected life span to get them back. But by the time they are commissioned (~2036), solar + battery + solar-made hydrocarbons will have made them uneconomic, and solar would have made far fewer emissions…

Solar made hydrocarbons are never going to be economical. Confident predictions of the inevitability of renewable diesel at $3 a liter don't add up because diesel is $3 a liter right now . I am literally paying that at the pump. I will actually happily pay more then that if the diesel were actually renewable, but instead it doesn't exist.

Airplane fuel seems like a use case that's likely to be economical even if most of the rest of the economy is no longer using fossil fuels as a source of power. Batteries are heavy and that matters a lot in an airplane. Not to mention all the petrochemical uses of oil.

> Fossil fuels in the last century reached their extreme prices because of their inherent utility: they pack a great deal of potential energy into an extremely efficient package. If we can but sidestep the 100 million year production process, we can corner this market once again.

> —CEO Nwabudike Morgan, Strategy Session

Re: IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first

#132

Post by xbmcuser »

kube-system wrote: post #84
decimalenough wrote: post #8

Very misleading title: it should be "Solar leads global energy growth for the first time". Still good news, but a long, long way from solar becoming the world's primary source of energy.

Yes, from the source report, for total generation capacity, solar is in a distant sixth: Coal: 10858 TWh Natural Gas: 6822 TWh Hydro: 4470 TWh Nuclear: 2859 TWh Wind: 2723 TWh Solar: 2653 TWh Decent growth, but still a long way to go.

Solar generation capacity is growing by 30+% a year with the cheaper grid batteries and the current world political situation the growth might even accelerate. Solar will get ahead of Natural gas by end of 2028 I predict as the next 2 years there will be huge move to renewables in Asia from gas and oil.

Re: IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first

#133

Post by xbmcuser »

iso1631 wrote: post #97
leonidasrup wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can look at coal, oil, gas as form of compressed solar energy, because all of them have biological source, stored millions of year ago. It's just burning coal, oil, gas has nasty side effects. " Volcanic coal-burning in Siberia led to climate change 252 million years ago. Extensive burning in Siberia was a cause of the Permo-Triassic extinction " https://www.nsf.gov/news/volcanic-coal-burning-siberia-led-c...

You can. Oil consumption is about 4,000 TWh per year, or about 10^19 Joules. The Earth receives about 170,000 TWh per year of Solar energy.

The Earth receives approximately 173,000 terawatts (TW) of solar power continuously, not per year.

Re: IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first

#134

Post by rocqua »

Neywiny wrote: post #107
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The energy system has investment cycles counted in decades. Looking at TWh of renewables added each year we will have grids entirely dominated by them in 10-15 years. That is lightning speed for the energy system, and we’re still speeding up.

But people still want results immediately. Which is the explanation I've seen for why nuclear isn't as big. Takes multiple times longer for a nuclear plant to come online vs coal. So some aspects are decades, others are one politician term.

This delay in nuclear means that, by now, nuclear is no longer a solution. Had we started with nuclear somewhere in the first decade of this millennium, then it would have been a good solution to climate change, and we would be in a better position.

But in our current position, nuclear is too slow, and luckily we have alternatives in wind and especially solar. Where the main advantage of solar is how quickly it’s scaling. Notably, the slowness in building nuclear also limits how fast you can improve the process of building nuclear. Whereas solar is so quick to build you can learn lessons and try innovation much faster.

Re: IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first

#135

Post by coumbaya »

locallost wrote: post #110
gregwebs wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 2) is a lot more complicated to the point statements like that are misleading. Take a look Graph of energy consumption of China which is about double the US: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china The energy consumption of the United States has flat lined: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-states One can argue that the US and Europe have maintained a low energy consumption by de-indusr…

Others have touched on the other points, but I would like to point out also that China using 2x the energy with 4x the population speaks more in favour of China than the US. The US also uses fossil fuels to generate more than half of its electricity, and has done so for a long time. Germany for example transitioned from coal to renewables, whereas the US went from coal to natural gas. China is following a similar pat…

Germany didn't transition away from coal. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/all/yearly

Re: IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first

#136

Post by eqvinox »

Lambdanaut wrote: post #75
guepe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuel was created by the explosion of supernovae, still solar but not our sun.

By that logic, all of the Earth and the moon were once parts of stars, so tidal and geothermal are also solar. When people say "solar energy", they are usually referring to first order solar energy, directly from photons, not second or third order solar energy after it has been trapped into other sources of potential energy.

Tidal kinda isn't solar since it's from rotation's and orbits' energies though.

Re: IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first

#137

Post by kilroy123 »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #94
kube-system wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, from the source report, for total generation capacity, solar is in a distant sixth: Coal: 10858 TWh Natural Gas: 6822 TWh Hydro: 4470 TWh Nuclear: 2859 TWh Wind: 2723 TWh Solar: 2653 TWh Decent growth, but still a long way to go.

The energy system has investment cycles counted in decades. Looking at TWh of renewables added each year we will have grids entirely dominated by them in 10-15 years. That is lightning speed for the energy system, and we’re still speeding up.

I think it will happen in the next 5 years. Not 10-15. It's just becoming a necessity for a lot of counties at this point.

Re: IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first

#138

Post by singularity2001 »

kube-system wrote: post #84
decimalenough wrote: post #8

Very misleading title: it should be "Solar leads global energy growth for the first time". Still good news, but a long, long way from solar becoming the world's primary source of energy.

Yes, from the source report, for total generation capacity, solar is in a distant sixth: Coal: 10858 TWh Natural Gas: 6822 TWh Hydro: 4470 TWh Nuclear: 2859 TWh Wind: 2723 TWh Solar: 2653 TWh Decent growth, but still a long way to go.

If the 50-year-old exponential keeps up, we will have 90 percent solar before 2040 though.

Re: IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first

#139

Post by locallost »

coumbaya wrote: post #135
locallost wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others have touched on the other points, but I would like to point out also that China using 2x the energy with 4x the population speaks more in favour of China than the US. The US also uses fossil fuels to generate more than half of its electricity, and has done so for a long time. Germany for example transitioned from coal to renewables, whereas the US went from coal to natural gas. China is following a similar pat…

Germany didn't transition away from coal. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/all/yearly

It's less than half of what it was even 15 years ago. And it didn't replace that with natural gas like the US but with wind and solar.

Re: IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first

#140

Post by the_why_of_y »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #111
the_why_of_y wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subsidies for fossil fuels in 2020 were $5 trillion according to IMF Working Paper: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Sti...

> Just 8 percent of the 2020 subsidy reflects undercharging for supply costs (explicit subsidies) So $400b. Still a lot.

The majority of the subsidies are implicit, in the form of negative externalities that are not priced in.

But I really should locate a more recent version of this report...

https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2025/12/20/und...

In 2024 they found $725bn in explicit subsides, plus $6.7tn in implicit subsidies.

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