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Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't really attribute to someone something they did unintentionally while trying to do the opposite.
i think that's why they used the word "accidentally"
"Overall, renewables and nuclear together met nearly 60% of the growth in energy demand". That's not enough. It's obvious this is going in the right direction but adoption is still too slow, considering how cheap renewables are now (and will be).
Cost is the barrier
> Solar added about 600 terawatt-hours of generation globally > And nuclear is making a comeback: More than 12 GW of new reactors began construction in 2025 Am I reading it right that growth in solar was 50000x that of growth in nuclear? (And those reactors of course won't be finished / online until some years into the future.)
The world did add 3GW of nuclear generation in 2025 but it also closed 3GW.
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Mao's campaign to kill sparrows was a result of a belief that they were a net loss for harvests. Stalin's support of Lysenko was a result of thinking Lysenko was actually able to drive agricultural growth. Both mistakes led to mass deaths. We still tend to attribute those deaths to those leaders, because their brutally authoritarian rule was what allowed those mistakes to go unchallenged and get fixed before they cau…
> We still tend to attribute those deaths to those leaders, because their brutally authoritarian rule was what allowed those mistakes to go unchallenged and get fixed before they caused that level of harm. What is the analogue here for attributing the rise of alternative energy sources to Trump? Being too incompetent to avoid harm isn't the same as being too incompetent to avoid benefit, because your job is to create…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cost is the barrier
Cost is no longer the barrier as today even the upfront cost of solar is competitive against upfront cost for building coal or gas power plant. While there is no cost of fuel for solar. In China and India even solar + battery is cheaper than new coal power plants.
That's good progress but it does raise some new cost barriers to get over for each new thing we electrify.
EVs are over this hump, heat pumps replacing boilers are just about there. Some industrial uses are getting there.
Notably, in electricity renewables went through being cheaper than new build and reduced further in cost to being cheaper than running existing plants.
We're not quite at that stage for many electrification use cases, though for growing nations without lots of existing assets that's not as relevant.
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.
Solar has always been the primary source of energy, Something like 99.95%, with geothermal taking 90% of the rest and tidal being basically zero
Maybe "accidentally killing fossil fuels" will be DT's singular good deed
Greenpeace should name their next ship after him.
> Electric car sales jumped by more than 20% in 2025 to over 20 million vehicles, accounting for roughly 1 in 4 new car sales worldwide. I wonder if included these numbers in that calculation https://electrek.co/2026/04/16/tesla-cybertruck-spacex-1279-... ;-)
What is interesting is that tesla had 1'636'129 deliveries in 2025 which accounts for 8,1% of that number. That means other vendors are healthy and it is a good thing for EV market.
I mean one obvious thing has already started: governments taxing the sun (well, solar panels) pretty heavily (meaning above VAT), which I imagine will increase, and what the result will be. It's weird to say this, but solar panel smuggling is actually already a thing now. I used to have a Louis XIV painting somewhere ...
Oil appears to be 33% of total energy usage, and if you count all fossil fuels (oil, coal, nat. gas) it's 81%. What happens when that starts dropping.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We still tend to attribute those deaths to those leaders, because their brutally authoritarian rule was what allowed those mistakes to go unchallenged and get fixed before they caused that level of harm. What is the analogue here for attributing the rise of alternative energy sources to Trump? Being too incompetent to avoid harm isn't the same as being too incompetent to avoid benefit, because your job is to create…
Trump's stated goal of regime change in Iran would (likely) have been a positive outcome if it has actually happened. The problem is that it hasn't.