Renewables Overtake Coal As World's Biggest Source of Electricity (bbc.com) 70
AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: Renewable energy overtook coal as the world's leading source of electricity in the first half of this year -- a historic first, according to new data from the global energy think tank Ember. Electricity demand is growing around the world but the growth in solar and wind was so strong it met 100% of the extra electricity demand, even helping drive a slight decline in coal and gas use. However, Ember says the headlines mask a mixed global picture.
Developing countries, especially China, led the clean energy charge but richer nations including the US and EU relied more than before on planet-warming fossil fuels for electricity generation. This divide is likely to get more pronounced, according to a separate report from the International Energy Agency (IEA). It predicts renewables will grow much less strongly than forecast in the US as a result of the policies of President Donald Trump's administration. Coal, a major contributor to global warming, was still the world's largest individual source of energy generation in 2024, a position it has held for more than 50 years, according to the IEA.
Developing countries, especially China, led the clean energy charge but richer nations including the US and EU relied more than before on planet-warming fossil fuels for electricity generation. This divide is likely to get more pronounced, according to a separate report from the International Energy Agency (IEA). It predicts renewables will grow much less strongly than forecast in the US as a result of the policies of President Donald Trump's administration. Coal, a major contributor to global warming, was still the world's largest individual source of energy generation in 2024, a position it has held for more than 50 years, according to the IEA.
...but Trump Says (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:...but Trump Says (Score:4, Interesting)
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Who the hell is manufacturing and selling coal furnaces in 2025?
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Re:...but Trump Says (Score:4, Informative)
https://legacystoves.com/produ... [legacystoves.com]
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Me, I cut down the coal bill a little by switching all my lightbulbs to 200w incandescents.
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That site is amazing. I especially love their "why coal" section where they say "coal is cleaner" without saying what it is cleaner than. I notice on the bit where it says coal is hotter they gave comparisons to gas, pellets, wood, etc. You know ... as if the coldest parts of the world weren't perfectly capable heating their house with gas.
I would say that site is gaslighting, but that would imply they support gas instead of coal.
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That is insane on an advanced level ...
Re:...but Trump Says (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing that ChatGPT does well is fact-checking.
It then delves into minutae of Pennsylvanian tax [pa.gov] law [pa.gov], a furnace's impact on assessed property value, and how not even coal refuse (as opposed to ordinary coal) could affect property tax.
Perhaps your grandmother miscommunicated or was even deceived or misled. Are you able to provide any more details?
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Well, Trump dos not work, so takes one to know one?
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If the Ember trend (solar+wind continuing to meet new electricity demand and strongly displace fossil generation) continues and scales up aggressively only in electricity, then by 2100 we’d likely avoid ~0.2–0.35 C of warming relative to a BAU electricity case — a useful and meaningful improvement, but not a return to pre-industrial “normal.” To actually reverse global temperature to pre-industrial levels would require removing thousands of gigatonnes of CO (net) — a feat
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Sure, but it’s still better that the world is switching away from coal to renewables. Every little helps!
Re:...but [the YOB] Says (Score:2)
And I say please don't feed the brand. The YOB doesn't believe there is such a thing as bad publicity, but the only kind he deserves is as the butt of bad jokes.
On the substance of the story, I think one big advantage of renewable energy is for training AI when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. One solution for the storage problem is variable demand, and AI training is something that can be done opportunistically.
Bridging those paragraphs are the results of my latest AI noddy:
The YOB, too, shall pass?
Max YOB Time: Day 3768 of 4968
In-WH YOB Time: Day 3184 of 4384
Adjusted YOB Time: Day 1722 of 2922
Countdown to EO-YOB Jan 20, 2029: 1199d 20h 37m 13s
Now I have to go back
Coal maybe, not gas (Score:3)
As I write this here in the UK sitting under a cloudy high pressure system with not much (inland) wind , 47% of our electricity is being generated by gas, 21% wind and 13% solar. Good, but not great , and there are always planning battles over siting of new wind and solar farms. Wind can be put in the sea (making it more vulnerable to russian sabotage but thats another discussion) but solar can't so we're probably not far off the install limit of the latter unless the government starts compulsory purchasing land for it.
Re:Coal maybe, not gas (Score:4, Informative)
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Wind can be put in the sea [...] but solar can't
It seems it can [oceansofenergy.blue] (although whether it's economical to do it at scale is another question).
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The problem with solar is not the land - they keep finding dual use projects where they add solar to something else (canals, farms, parking lots.
Instead the problem is that solar gives out at the same time. Once you have about 25% solar, you usually do not want more. You are going to need at least 30% of your power to work at night during very hot summers. Similar problem with winter. Once you build the power supply for the night, it's going to stop working during the day, so you really only need another
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One thing you are really good at is building strawmen. Sadly, you have not clue about power engineering and mindlessly replicate propaganda lies.
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I was specific about the things I knew and pretty non-specific about the less certain things. For example, I used words like might. Those are key things that propaganda never does.
I did not mention anything about the reliable power supplies being fossil fuels or nuclear. I allowed for it to be hydro, tidal, geothermal, or anything else.
I am not an expert on power engineering, but I did carefully avoid propaganda.
You did not specify anything I said as wrong, you just emotionally loaded words to insult.
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A balanced mix of energy sources is appropriate, but it doesn't have to mean emitting carbon dioxide.
That balance will vary from area to area.
Norway is 99% renewable.
Denmark is 80% renewable and got 59.3% from wind power in 2024.
Also, electricity is exported and imported between countries due to variations in need and availability.
Denmark is a transit country between itself, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands an
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Energy storage is a high demand technology because of how bad we are at it.
Any technology that allows us to store a significant amount of energy for 24 hours would be world shattering.
I hope that comes about, but it is at least 10 years away.
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By the way, February 2025 was the worst so far at only 42.1% - completely different than February 2024. On the ot
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This is just drivel. There’s no problem with overbuilding, and behind-the-meter solar savings will continue to destroy demand and extend the duck curve everywhere, especially as battery storage costs continue to drop. The main rate limiting step will probably be the challenge of the split incentives in commercial property between landlord (typically would have to pay for installing solar) and tenant (typically pays electricity bills). There are ways round it but they’re hard, and PE houses rare
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Solar is so intermittent that you can't depend on it even during the day. That is, if you build solar so that it will give you that 75% at say 10 AM on a slightly cloudy winter day, then at 2 PM on a sunny summer day it will give you 300% of what you need.
This is actually good for two reasons. Firstly, most renewable energy sources can be trivially and immediately switched off. When you are generating 300% with a nuclear power station, that's a disaster because you have to send that somewhere, so you end up paying people massive quantities of money to use the power that you have nothing you can do with just so that, half an hour later, you can deliver a brief peak. Same happens with solar? Just instantly turn off 75% of your panels and problem solved at no c
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Have a look at this wind speed map: https://zoom.earth/maps/wind-s... [zoom.earth]
There is still a massive amount of on- and off-shore wind that we could harvest to replace that gas, much of it in the shallow waters of the North Sea.
Last year, renewables were 35% of the UK's electricity production. We can easily and cheaply go much higher, which would help reduce bills as it displaces gas.
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I had a very interesting back-and-forth with ChatGPT about what it takes to replace the UK’s marginal gas pricing system. CfDs and PPAs were where it ended up. We had a little speculation about whether or not it would be cheaper to just buy out the older renewables generators from the marginal cost contracts, and concluded it probably would be.
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You need to stop believing Fox news ...
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Re: Coal maybe, not gas (Score:2)
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The UK doesn't (good on you folks, I didn't know that until now) but the EU most definitely does.
Given that the UK buys electricity from the European grid that does sort of mean there's coal in the UKs energy mix as well though.
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Nine European countries have never had coal in their electricity mix; a further six have gone coal free (including the UK); 10 more plan to be coal free in the next five years; 7 more at some point after that; 1 is discussing but hasn’t committed; and 4 have not discussed a commitment. Germany is the most significant laggard due to the size of its economy.
https://beyondfossilfuels.org/... [beyondfossilfuels.org]
So, far too much coal in the mix still, and far too slow, but at least heading in the right direction. I find T
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Yup
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Nine European countries have never had coal in their electricity mix;
If they're buying from the European grid (which after checking looks like most on the "never coal" list do) then arent they buying from a common pot that includes coal? I can't find anything online that suggests they have any way of telling where the power is sourced from. Your citation is big on claims but short on facts in regards to this, I'm betting they're not counting electricity bought from other countries though.
Don't get me wrong, I know Europe has done a lot but overly grandiose claims that arent
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I think reasonable people can reasonably disagree about whether the phrase “their electricity mix” refers to consumption (where you are correct) or generation (where the claim as it stands is accurate). On your second point, the political right has long since stopped giving a shit about what it bases its attacks on. When powerful men wang on about whales and birds to attack wind turbines, getting het up about handing them a free pass with an ambiguous phrase is a waste of energy.
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I think reasonable people can reasonably disagree about whether the phrase “their electricity mix” refers to consumption (where you are correct) or generation (where the claim as it stands is accurate).
"No coal ever in the electricity mix" seems pretty clear to me, they shouldn't have any coal in their mix which means none from external sources in addition to domestic. I'm not getting where your alternative interpretation is coming from.
I feel compelled to say I don't like that site in general either. Notice they give lengthy descriptions on what countries are doing to justify being on their various lists (which is great) except the countries they claim have zero coal in their electricity mix. Not a singl
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Which really does not say what you claim it says.
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Europe and the UK are lagging because they just don't get enough sun to make solar work really well
They get plenty of sun. Solar panels are cheap and there are tons of places they haven't put them yet.
and wind has not experienced anything like the 99.9% price reduction solar has since the 1970's
That's a gross exaggeration of the price decrease, and you also wouldn't expect wind to get cheaper as much as solar because we've been doing wind power for quite some centuries, but solar power for less than one.
Re:Coal maybe, not gas (Score:5, Interesting)
We brits aren't great at rooftop solar - we're getting better, but there's a long, long way to go. The square kilometres of untapped space are many, and if we get to using it, then the demand for grid electricity changes dramatically. Sure, cloudy days aren't as good as sunny ones, but I'll bet a lot of houses are just consuming "power vampires" right now, all of which could be powered by some solar, even on a cloudy day.
Say nothing about our pretty terrible record on insulating our houses - if we do that, then the use of gas drops off a lot, and for those with electrical heating, things improve there too. The government is stuck in a rut of raising taxes until productivity improves, but if they ever get to doing some sort of incentives for domestic rooftop solar and (probably more importantly) thermal performance of our houses, then we could shift our whole grid and carbon discussion by quite a distance.
But yes, our dependence on gas is far too great.
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I agree with everything you have said there. You’d think there was a populist opportunity for the Labour government to offer decent incentives for a mass scheme, but I guess they feel the entire area is off-limits thanks to the wildly shitty schemes the Tories used, which delivered three fifths of fuck all and quite a lot of damp.
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Re: Coal maybe, not gas (Score:2)
Idiot anti nuclear anything pressure groups like CND and ignorant green hippies like Greenpeace and FoTE scared politicians away from nuclear for about 30 years from the 80s onwards. Now our old stations are closing and only 1 new one is being built.
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I'm guessing that 15% of your electricity as you wrote that comment came from nuclear fission, a guess based on the annual average for the last few years. UK could use more nuclear power, and it appears they are dedicated to getting it. They are off to a slow start now but it appears they are taking lessons from South Korea, Japan, and other nations on shortening up the build time and lowering costs.
There's another article on the Slashdot front page as I write this on how UK is lacking in land for produci
In related news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Curious note: the bid came from the Navajo Transition Energy Co.
One more question to commenters (Score:5, Insightful)
So, for those of you into coal, why? There are NO jobs in it.
FACT: in 1972, there were 778,000 coal miners. As of four or so years ago, there were 78,000 miners. Yes, a 90% reduction. Few deep mines, now it's mountaintop removal and HUGE machinery. And the remaining coal companies, in the ongoing war on coal MINERS, keep adding more automation.
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So, for those of you into coal, why? There are NO jobs in it.
So, a lot like software development.
Learn to make solar panels? Doesn't have the same ring.
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China is leading the the way to the future of coal mining. Robotic loaders, robotic excavators, robotic trucks, fully automated processing line, and it's all electric. Watch that 78,000 coal miner number take another 90% drop before all is said and done (assuming we're someday allowed to import Chinese tech again).
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I know that when you write about a war on coal miners, you're only being rhetorical, but that wasn't always so. Take a look at what happened a little over a century ago when mine owners tried to break up a miner's strike in southern Colorado and ended up with the Ludlow Massacre [wikipedia.org]. That day's toll was 21 dead, mostly miners and their families, out of an estimated total of 69 to 199 people killed during the st
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I don't think they're into coal so much as they're against market manipulation. Well, with the exception of West Virginia, where their entire economy is kind of built on coal.
Also, the push against coal pairs with the push against natural gas, and there's way more reasons to be against that push.
Trigger warning icon (Score:2)
cost vs kwh (Score:2)
Seems to me that it's not just quantity supplied, but also cost per kWh that matters. It's often pointed out that fossil plants are still required on standby due to variability of "sustainable" power, which apparently is not necessarily sustainable over a 24 hour period. So, if the cost of idle plants is factored in, as it is into the actual cost of those kWhs, the greater amount supplied by "sustainable" may be a pyrrhic victory.
Re: cost vs kwh (Score:2)
This is one of the reasons most renewable generation gets a much lower price per kWh than, say, gas. The exception is rooftop solar which is very expensive per kWh, but it still viable because it feeds in directly to the consumer, so it reduces expenditure at consumer rates, rather than selling at wholesale. Even with all this renewables still work out as cheaper, and given the falling cost of batteries and renewable generation that is likely to remain true.
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You’re not thinking about this correctly. We already *have* most of those plants that will be kept on standby, they’re just not running only on standby at present. So the capex is largely accounted for, and the idle costs are quite low because the main opex is (surprise!) fuel.