[lifty]

Solar capacity is always misleading because it’s intermittent. Capacity of a gas power plant can’t be compared to capacity of a solar power plant, even though it sounds like you are comparing the same thing. Would love to know total kWh generated.

[adrithmetiqa]

Yep. The key difference is that a gas power plant can be cut off completely at any time. For example if a trigger happy leader decided to cause military mayhem in an unpredictable region supplying a large proportion of the world’s gas. The sun, however, keeps on shining.

[lifty]

I didn’t mean to compare them, implying that gas or anything else is better. I’m a big fan of renewables, especially solar, but just wanted to bring this aspect up. It’s confusing to me because I get excited when I see these numbers only to later deflate when I figure out the total generated kWh quantity. It would be great if there would be a “synthetic” calculation which takes into account the estimated generation and smoothing out using batteries, which would also take into account the extra cost of batteries. That would be a more apples to apples comparison both in terms of net generation and cost.

[_aavaa_]

I understand why people are downvoting you, but we still have a bit to go before renewables make up 50% of yearly electricity generation.

Not as far as you’d think though. According to [0] in 2024 it was 6.9% solar, 8.1% wind, and 14.3% hydro, I.e. 29% renewables. Given the trajectory I wouldn’t be surprised if that total was ~33% in 2025.

[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s...

[cesarvarela]

Sadly, my country (Uruguay) is not on that map. Right now, ~99% of the energy we get comes from renewables.

[rendang]

By your definition/chart, we were 0% solar, 0% wind, and 20% hydro in 1985 for 20% total renewables. So, 20% -> 29% in 4 decades

[myrmidon]

Yes, but thats a bad extrapolation because per-capita electricity consumption was still rising then but is mostly flat/decreasing in western countries since 2000 or so, and the significant rise in reneably fraction mostly started after 2000.

The hydro fraction is also a really bad indicator in general, because it basically just reflects geography of a country and not really its effort to reduce CO2 emissions.

[lostlogin]

> The hydro fraction is also a really bad indicator in general, because it basically just reflects geography of a country and not really its effort to reduce CO2 emissions.

As a ‘clean green New Zealander’, your comment is perfect.

We trash our country in such appalling ways. The fact they there aren’t many of us and that the easy way of getting power is hydro is coincidence, not a national conscience.

[tootie]

IEA had been predicting 2030 as peak fossil fuel usage up until recently. They revised it back upon Trump's election and shifting policy, but it's possible the Iran War has moved it forward again. Either way, it's within reach.

That being said, peak fossil fuels is the future date at which we are burning more than ever followed by the slow decrease. Meaning we are still accelerating CO2 emissions and even if we emit less, every emission is still cumulative so the march towards actually fixing the climate will only start at peak fossil fuels. We still need to remove all that GHG.

[akamaka]

What’s the point of saying one stat is better than another, when all of them are meaningful in a different way? When renewables reach big numbers of TWh, someone will say “total generation is misleading if doesn’t line up with demand; what matters is capacity for power when we actually need it”.

[richwater]

> what matters is capacity for power when we actually need it

uh,...yea?

[ZeroGravitas]

And due to weird nuclear fetishism, people seem unaware that solar lines up really well with when people need power.

Both on daily cycles and seasonally for anywhere that uses airconditioning. It's a good fit for 2/3rds of the global population.

Some people live nearer the poles and wind lines up better with their heating needs. And of course you can combine them because they anti-correlate.