| ▲ | runako 2 days ago |
| Pushback against the outliers of small + blessed with hydro and geothermal is overshadowing real wins: - California: 83% renewable, dominated by solar - Spain: 73%, dominated by solar & wind - Portugal: 90%, dominated by wind & solar - The Netherlands: 86%, dominated by solar & wind - Great Britain: 71%, dominated by wind & solar There's real momentum happening. |
|
| ▲ | onlyrealcuzzo 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| > 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 the best time of the year and not the full year? Or am I looking at sources that are >1 year out of date and in one year they've jumped from ~70% renewable to ~83%? |
| |
| ▲ | runako a day ago | parent | next [-] | | EIA puts this out daily: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/daily_... Today was 31% solar, 16% wind, 16% hydro, 6% geothermal, etc. Some of the difference to your numbers will be seasonal/weather-related, but the pace of solar and wind installation is such that data that's even a year or two old can be wildly out of date. | | |
| ▲ | onlyrealcuzzo a day ago | parent [-] | | Yes, but the whole point is daily metrics fluctuate a large amount per day, so I'm more interested in yearly metrics |
| |
| ▲ | sesm 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Nuclear is not renewable though, those isotopes were created when some past generation star collapsed as supernova. | | |
| ▲ | ZeWaka 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Solar will no longer be renewable in 5 billion years as well. | | | |
| ▲ | krupan a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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? | | |
| ▲ | micw a day ago | parent [-] | | No, coal and oil is not. Since we have micro organisms that can consume wood, coal and oil will never be produced again. > During the Carboniferous period, massive amounts of plant matter accumulated to form coal because microorganisms and fungi had not yet evolved the ability to break down lignin, a tough, aromatic polymer in woody plants. | | |
| ▲ | oblio a day ago | parent [-] | | We can make synthetic oil and I think we can also make synthetic coal, too. Though it's close to useless because at that point they're too expensive to be worth it for anything else than very niche uses that absolutely require them. | | |
| ▲ | ben_w a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > We can make synthetic oil and I think we can also make synthetic coal, too. IIRC, that's basically what charcoal is. Except charcoal is cleaner once made, because most of the nasty stuff happens while being made from the source plant material. | |
| ▲ | sehansen a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Sure, but the problem with coal and oil is not their chemical composition, per se. The problem with specifically fossil coal and oil is that the carbon atoms used to be buried deep underground and end up as part of CO2 molecules in the atmosphere. Making synthetic kerosene for jet engines is one of the top contenders for long-distance air travel in a post-fossil fuel world, IMO. |
|
|
|
| |
| ▲ | lokar 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | AIUI, there has been excess solar at peak, but batteries have growing very fast. That might have caused a big change even in a year. |
|
|
| ▲ | offmycloud 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| California is not anywhere near 83% renewable for total electricity generation. [1] Are you just adding up nameplace capacities without capacity factors? 1. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=66704 |
| |
| ▲ | runako a day ago | parent | next [-] | | One thing about power generation stats like these is they are incredibly sensitive to examination dates given the rapid growth of (especially) solar. That EIA site cuts off in August. The same EIA report shows solar grew 17% from 2024-2025. You can plug in your own assumptions to the solar growth curve since then, as well as your assumptions about the natural gas curve given the ride natgas has been on since August. EIA also produces live status on the daily generation mix[1]. 69% today was wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro. 12% nuclear, so some of this is whether you consider nuclear renewable or not. CA's power generation may cost more, but the pricing (for raw power at least) should be a lot more predictable than those of us dependent on fossil fuels. Natural gas, for example, has undergone a ~100% price round-trip in the last 12 months. 1 - https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/daily_... | | |
| ▲ | ZeroGravitas a day ago | parent [-] | | Behind the meter solar, on both homes and factories, is about 5% in California and that gets missed from these stats too. |
| |
| ▲ | dalyons 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 83 renewable isn’t right, but it’s up to 67% clean in 2025, which is still pretty impressive | |
| ▲ | 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
|
|
| ▲ | dalyons 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| California is a huge success story at a massive scale. Looking at Casio right now it’s 92% clean energy. For a state of 39 million people! And batteries keep getting deployed faster and faster 2022 - 48% gas power on grid 2025 - 25% gas power on grid What insane progress. |
| |
| ▲ | mpweiher 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Most expensive electricity in the contiguous United States. By quite a margin. By contrast, Georgia, which has to pay for the "disastrous" Vogtle 3/4 nuclear construction project, pays less than half that. Remember: disastrous nuclear projects are significantly better than renewable successes. | | |
| ▲ | dalyons 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Supply costs have surprisingly not that much to do with Californias silly electric rates. They load into the retail rates all kinds of disaster recovery costs, environmental blah blah costs, distribution upgrades, social programs, the list goes on. Plus straight old fashioned corruption in a state sponsored monopoly. You can get some idea of the BS that gets loaded in by comparing some rates from municipal grids like SMUD vs pg&e. Same supply, fraction of the end user rate. Anyway, that is to say theres very little useful to draw on here in comparing nuke to renewable cost. | | |
| ▲ | oblio a day ago | parent [-] | | > Plus straight old fashioned corruption in a state sponsored monopoly. Why don't they just nationalize it? At that point there wouldn't be a huge incentive to raise prices and increase profits and state control would demand lower prices for residents. | | |
| ▲ | ben_w a day ago | parent [-] | | > Why don't they just nationalize it? Given the general dysfunction in American politics (and I say this as an outside observer), the current owners would raise a stink about it, possibly playing the "nationalize == communism == USSR == gulags" card as a negative campaign in the next election. |
|
| |
| ▲ | runako a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | GA resident here. Let's not close the books on Vogtle yet, as our electricity rates are also moving up quite significantly. Let's get to a steady state before we declare a cost win. IIRC our rates are up ~30% since 2024, and our electricity prices are 5th highest in the nation. I need to underline that this is in one of the lower-wage states in the country, with few state-level labor protections. Also: the finances on Vogtle were sufficiently bad that they led to a rapid run-up in consumer electricity rates that generated political fallout. First: two members of the Public Service Commission lost their seats to Democrats, who do not generally win statewide races here. Second: the Federal government has had to specifically loan money to the operator to subsidize consumer rates. The Federal government could equally subsidize California rates down to the average or below if it so desired. | |
| ▲ | hparadiz 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That's part of why the shift to renewables. I have a 12kw system on my roof and I pay $220 in December and get $150 back in July. The economics are getting interesting cause now you can get a 2kw hr battery for like $350 and plugin 400 watts of panel into it and run at least a laptop and basics peripherals forever so the draw on the grid is gonna diffuse over time. | | |
| ▲ | QuercusMax 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | For peace of mind I'd like to be able to run my EV (24kwh battery) and spare fridge / freezer off home solar. Anything more than that is gravy, and I'd rather invest in things like Oregon Community Solar. |
| |
| ▲ | array_key_first a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Electricity is cheap in Georgia because Georgia is generally not a desirable state for business. Electricity, along with a lot of others things, is expensive in California because it's California. There's a lot of talent in California, a lot of inertia, and a huge economy. | | |
| ▲ | oblio a day ago | parent [-] | | > Electricity is cheap in Georgia because Georgia is generally not a desirable state for business. Are you insulting the great state of Georgia??? Paraphrasing a quote about North Carolina from American Crime Story, season 1, episode 9: > [...] may I state first of all what a pleasure it is to be [...] once again in the great state of Georgia. My heart gladdens [...] when I stand in one of the original 13 colonies. |
| |
| ▲ | mrroper 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | 12 Billion in loan guarantees doesn't get paid in bills and isn't an accounting trick that costs nothing:
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60682 | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 a day ago | parent [-] | | That's a really big and generic article. What are you saying this loan guarantee cost? | | |
| ▲ | runako a day ago | parent | next [-] | | https://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-department-announces-... Basically -- Vogtle drove our power rates up so quickly that the federal government had to step in and subsidize rates. | |
| ▲ | mrroper a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Comparing two numbers because you have them is like looking for your keys at the nearest lamp post because there's light. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm not focused on some random attribute. The cost of this specific plant was a big part of this conversation, so I'm asking what number I'm supposed to use for it. | | |
| ▲ | mrroper 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | I did not make the claim that Georgia and California are comparable energy markets. The cost of that one subsidy is between 1 and 4 billion. The Federal government's handling of the two states is entirely different and the states themselves have entirely different priorities so the cost of something government manipulates heavily is not about production costs from when projects started and certainly not about production costs if new projects started today. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| ▲ | rstuart4133 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There is pushback here against the figures you are quoting. Here is something real. South Australia electricity production averaged 75% from renewables last year. Wikipedia (for 2023) put it at 70%: "70 per cent of South Australia's electricity is generated from renewable sources. This is projected to be 85 per cent by 2026, with a target of 100 per cent by 2027." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_South_Australia They averaged 75% in 2025. South Australia has no hydro to speak of. They have a some local gas, but no local coal. They do have good wind and solar resources. To me it looks like the transition was driven largely by immediate pragmatism concerns, as renewables are so much cheaper than gas. The politicians make a lot of noise about it of course, but I suspect if they had a local cheap source of coal the outcome would have been different. Their electricity prices are high by Australian standards - but they have to pay for the gas they import to cover the missing 25%, and gas is by far the most expensive form of generation in Australia. And they are paying for all the new equipment this transition requires. |
|
| ▲ | bopjesvla 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > The Netherlands: 86%, dominated by solar & wind The Dutch bureau of statistics reports 50%, of which a plurality (one third) is biomass. The Netherlands is also famously gas-dependent. Natural gas isn’t converted to electricity for heating and many industrial applications. Can’t quickly find stats on production here, but renewables are only 17% of total energy usage. Renewables without biomass are ~12% of total energy usage. |
| |
|
| ▲ | NoLinkToMe 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Are you just drawing from today's figures? Or annual figures? I just checked for NL and in the past 12 months it's 50/50 for electricity (fossil/renewable), with about 10% of the renewables being biomass which isn't particularly renewable. For NL for example we import wood pellets from North America and then burn them. Yeah, not great. Essentially it's releasing emissions by burning 30-40 years of American forests, which might be replanted, and will have soaked up the Co2 around 2065. Therefore it gets to count those emissions as zero (renewable), despite having a full effect on climate change in the next half century which is critical. Not to mention there's a 15% roundtrip loss from logging, shipping etc. Agree there's real momentum but these are misleading figures. |
|
| ▲ | jacomoRodriguez 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Where can I look up this numbers? (Just curious) |
| |
|
| ▲ | dyauspitr a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You’re a bit off on the California numbers. It’s off my about 10%. Either ways, what a state. It’s basically a country on its own. |
|
| ▲ | vpribish 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| good hilights! but - and i mean this kindly - you are starting to talk like an AI: "overshadowing real wins" "There's real momentum happening". |
|
| ▲ | KevinMS 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Isn't that the list of high energy prices and blackouts? |
| |
| ▲ | rootusrootus a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Are you referring to California? IIRC the prices are driven by several factors, including expensive payouts for wildfire damage, but there isn't anything suggesting that renewables is a major factor. And rolling blackouts haven't been a thing since 2020. That might have been arguably related to renewables since they were experiencing abnormally hot climate change related heat waves that were extending into the evening hours and driving high air conditioning load beyond the time solar was prepared to handle it. I believe that in the meantime they've installed quite a number of batteries, which is why it is not a problem now. | |
| ▲ | tialaramex 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Although "Getting rid of cheaper electricity generation would make the electricity cheaper" is genuinely an actual right wing talking point in the UK it doesn't make any sense. The reason it's a talking point is that they're funded by billionaires who'd reap the rewards from new fossil fuel licensing. They know they can't deliver, but what they learned from Brexit is that their supporters aren't too smart and simple messages, even if nonsensical, resonate well with those voters. "Drill baby drill" is simple. Wrong, but simple. Right now in a dark and not very windy UK w/ 10GW of gas burners running the spot price for electricity here is almost £150 per MWh, but at 10am it was sunny with a brisk wind and sure enough that spot price was about £25 per MWh. Gee, I wonder whether the wind and sun are cheaper... | | |
| ▲ | philipallstar 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > Although "Getting rid of cheaper electricity generation would make the electricity cheaper" is genuinely an actual right wing talking point in the UK it doesn't make any sense Can you cite this please? | | |
| ▲ | tialaramex 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Specifically both the Tories and Reform pledge to eliminate the "Green levy" funding for renewables. But that funding doesn't just vanish in a puff of smoke after voters pay it, it's paying for us to have renewable energy generation. The very stupid part is that we spent a lot of money already and they can't reverse time's arrow, they can't unspend that money, they can only choose (and at least publicly are choosing) not to reap the reward. Edited: Ah, maybe you want a citation for the specific phrasing, in which case that's fair, I cannot cite a UK politician, on the right or anywhere else, who has said those exact words. | | |
| ▲ | lpcvoid a day ago | parent [-] | | In the UK, Reform probably gets paid by russia to be anti-renewable, I highly doubt they believe that themselves. | | |
| ▲ | ZeroGravitas a day ago | parent [-] | | The anti-renewable policies would cost the UK a roughly similar amount to Brexit. Some random numbers: Renewables reduced UK energy costs by 100 Billion over the 2010-2023 period (despite just getting started and costs continuing to decline) The conservative "cut the green crap" changes around 2013 that are milder versions of what Farage would do, add a cost of about 5-15 billion a year (ongoing) in higher bills. EVs will be 30 to 70 Billion a year savings once you get to 33 million. He's also against grid batteries that will save about 5 to 15 billions per year once scaled. Brexit is about 100 billion a year according to Bloomberg. |
|
|
|
|
|
