Sign up for CleanTechnica's Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott's in-depth analyses and high level summaries, sign up for our daily newsletter, and/or follow us on Google News! How much is renewable energy dominating new power capacity worldwide? That’s how much! 92.5% of new power capacity added to the grid ... [continued]
Little to none so far. This might change in the future, but not that quickly.
The additional renewable capacity added year on year is not enough to cover the additional electrical load, which originates mainly from 2 things: transport/infrastructure (including EVs, data centres, AI) & environmental loads (more heatwaves in populated cities, where people then need to cool).
As far as I understood, 2024 was a substantial year for the environmental side of the equation, otherwise additional renewables installations would have been able to cover just about all the additional power load.
So if we’d have started building renewables a couple years sooner, we’d already be fixing the problem and it would be cheaper, but because we waited, we have to pay more?
I think it’s more nuanced than that as the technologies needs time to mature and the supply chains need time to establish. The price of renewables, especially solar and wind, has plummeted faster than anyone ever expected, so arguably it’s cheaper (economically) now.
There’s also the saying “the best time to buy a house is always 50 years ago, the second best time is now”. I don’t see much benefit in regretting yesterday’s decisions.
It’d also be interesting to know how many GW worth of non-renewable energy generation is decommissioned every year.
Little to none so far. This might change in the future, but not that quickly.
The additional renewable capacity added year on year is not enough to cover the additional electrical load, which originates mainly from 2 things: transport/infrastructure (including EVs, data centres, AI) & environmental loads (more heatwaves in populated cities, where people then need to cool).
As far as I understood, 2024 was a substantial year for the environmental side of the equation, otherwise additional renewables installations would have been able to cover just about all the additional power load.
Source: https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review
So if we’d have started building renewables a couple years sooner, we’d already be fixing the problem and it would be cheaper, but because we waited, we have to pay more?
I think it’s more nuanced than that as the technologies needs time to mature and the supply chains need time to establish. The price of renewables, especially solar and wind, has plummeted faster than anyone ever expected, so arguably it’s cheaper (economically) now.
There’s also the saying “the best time to buy a house is always 50 years ago, the second best time is now”. I don’t see much benefit in regretting yesterday’s decisions.
Well the lesson here is twofold.
1: we better put every dollar we have into renewables now, or it’ll take more dollars later on
2: conservative governments who told us they were saving money with climate change inaction are liars and we shouldn’t trust them
Don’t forget
data centersspy warehouses.2GW coal plant (the last in Britain) near me got shut down late last year.
So it’s some at least.
As an added bonus my hayfever hasn’t been anywhere near as bad since they closed it.