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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)

#261

Post by XorNot »

colechristensen wrote: post #218
XorNot wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pumped hydro storage only holds about 8-12 hours of power. To be economically viable to build you need to cycle it daily. It uses enormous amounts of land and capital to build, and is ongoingly dangerous in a unique way. If LiFePO4 can do 4 hours at full output already, and be placed anywhere using volume manufacturing to expand, then batteries are straight up better. Pumped hydro is an expensive dead end.

I'm not talking about pumped hydro.

The you're talking about a geographical limited, extremely finite resource with a substantial ecological footprint.

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

#262

Post by XorNot »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #210
XorNot wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just wrong. Nuclear is perfectly fine for nighttime because nighttime is highly predictable and doesn't fluctuate very much. My state (NSW, Australia) for example uses no less then 6 GW at all times of day. Variable load is on top of that during the day. If we had 6GW of nuclear plants, our grid would be almost completely green and they'd run at 100% utilization.

Now calculate what it costs running a nuclear plant only at night. You’ll end up at $400 per MWh excluding transmissions costs, taxes etc. Your state already has coal plants forced to become peakers or be decommissioned because no one wants their expensive electricity during the daytime. Let alone a horrifyingly expensive new built nuclear plant. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant...

Not what I was responding to. Saying nuclear plants can't ramp for predictable night time demand is wrong.

Nuclear plants can't do instant demand response, but they can absolutely respond over windows of several hours.

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

#263

Post by donkyrf »

graemep wrote: post #145
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…

Sri Lanka used to rely on hydro, with oil as a backup, and has added a lot of coal. I wonder how many other countries are increasing non-renewable output?

Sri Lanka has only one coal power plant (construction began 2006), and the later coal project was canceled.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Sri_...

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

#264

Post by Spooky23 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #147
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.

> They take too long to build and cost too much. The global average to build one is ~7 years. People have been saying they take too long to build as an excuse for not building them for what, two decades or more? It seems to be taking longer to not build them than to build them. > By the time a new plant is ready, alternate sources (likely solar + battery and long-distance HVDC) will have eaten its lunch. Neither of t…

The issue with them in addition to time is a huge capital expense that needs to be amortized. Nobody wants to hold 30-80 year debt on giant capital projects that could be rendered obsolete.

For commercialization, solar makes more sense as there is a much better return on capital.

If I were king, I’d do socialized power and have the government capitalize and own the nuclear plants, and bid out the operations to private entities. Government has better debt economics and doesn’t care about return in monetary means.

Even then, relatively small tweaks to tax law and some grid investment would create a solar boom at lower cost. Every Walmart parking lot and some road infrastructure should be covered with solar. Interstates could be utility and generating corridors - they aren’t because federal law makes any multimodal use very difficult.

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

#265

Post by belorn »

gpm wrote: post #256
belorn wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets put down some Swedish numbers. During the coldest winter month, solar energy produce (as per statistics from the solar industry in Sweden) somewhere around 3-7% of the amount produced during the warmest month. Households also consume around 2-4 times the amount of energy during the coldest month compared to the warmest month. Sweden is a country where only a small minority have air conditioning installed at home…

Yeah but: 1. Sweden is just about the worst case, there's very few countries/people that far north. 2. There's this genius invention called "wires". HVDC has transmission losses on the order of 3.5% per 1,000km. You don't have to colocate the solar.

Wires and HVDC transmissions are nice, but they have a fairly large downside. They are major infrastructure projects that cost a lot of money and they don't produce any energy. Adding that cost to the solar panels makes them significantly more expensive, and solar/wind farms owners are not exactly willing to bear that cost.

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

#266

Post by CMay »

lateforwork wrote: post #72

Meanwhile the US is spending billions to cancel renewable energy. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/climate/offshore-wind-gas...

Climate change policy was a valiant effort to de-influence authoritarian petrostates and prevent Russia from achieving its multi-century goal of expanding its access to actual warm water ports. The major conflicts between Russia and Japan were essentially over that. It's why Japan even attacked Korea, because Russia was trying to gain influence there and it was an essential launching off point if Russia was ever going to attack Japan.

If climate has already changed so much that Russia's ports are no longer going to freeze, then green energy initiatives may just put us at a disadvantage since we don't manufacture most of the products. Solar panels, wind turbines, we don't control a lot of that supply chain which isn't healthy.

There are other advantages to renewable energy, but at the moment the USD benefits from oil reliance and transitioning away from oil while maintaining USD influence is an important goal.

At the same time, oil infrastructure does tend to have a lot of weak points, where renewable energy can be easier to spread out. Eventually I think it will be relegated to military and byproducts more, but for now there is an abundant supply.

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

#267

Post by krupan »

peterashford wrote: post #241
psychoslave wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They certainly can be disastrous in ecological terms, and will disrupt all biotopes along the concerned water flows. But it's extremely renewable none the less.

Its local environmental damage versus global environmental gains

Same as nuclear, right?

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

#268

Post by triceratops »

librasteve wrote: post #204

I see that Norway is big on renewables - great that all that Oil & Gas revenue can be used to build hydro & wind to salve their conscience.

Better than having oil and gas revenue and not using it to build hydro and wind. Like some other countries we can all name.

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

#269

Post by pfdietz »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #259
pfdietz wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_River_Junction,_Rhode_Isl...

If we're going to do things that aren't power plants then aren't you going to get renewables in trouble for needing more raw materials per unit of generation from dangerous environmentally hazardous mining operations?

I was nitpicking.

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

#270

Post by krupan »

sesm wrote: post #165
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> California: 83% renewable, dominated by solar California's grid is pretty decently balanced. Solar isn't even close to 50% - so saying that it "dominates" is pretty misleading. It's like ~30% solar, ~12% hydro, ~10% wind, ~10% nuclear, all other renewables ~8% (~70% renewable, including nuclear) -> ~30% fossil fuels. Are you maybe only counting domestic production and not total consumption? Or are you looking at th…

Nuclear is not renewable though, those isotopes were created when some past generation star collapsed as supernova.

And wood, coal, and oil are renewable. It's funny that we have fixated on "renewable" when carbon in the atmosphere is the problem, isn't it?
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