[phtrivier]

> Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo produced more than 99.7 per cent of the electricity they consumed using geothermal, hydro, solar or wind power.

Let's head to electricitymaps.com !

Albania (https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/AL/live/fifteen_min...)

- On 2026-04-12 16:45 GMT+2, 22,67% of electricity consumed by Albania is imported from Greece, which generates 22% of its electricity from gas. Interestingly, Albania exports about as much to Montenegro as it imports from Greece.

Bhutan:

- 100% hydro, makes perfect sense

Nepal:

- 98% hydro, a bit of solar for good measure

Iceland:

- 70% hydro, 30% geo

Paraguay:

- 99,9% hydro

Ethiopia:

- 96,4% hydro

DRC

- 99.6% hydro

So, the lessons for all other countries in the world is pretty clear: grow yourselves some mountains, dig yourselves a big river, and dam, baby, dam !!

(I'm kidding, but I'm sure someone has a pie-in-the-sky geoengineering startup about to disrupt topography using either AI, blockchain, or both.)

[input_sh]

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 the whole country, and most of the time it's just sitting there doing nothing.

Being powered almost entirely by hydro means that the system is highly susceptible to droughts, so then they either have to spin up those oil plants from time to time or import electricity from abroad. I think it's also worth pointing out that nothing really changed because of climate change, the decision to rely on hydro was made in the 90s. The country used to have its own oil power plant that it heavily relied on before that decision, which slowly produced less and less until it was shut down for good in 2007. Some images of it from 2019: https://www.oneman-onemap.com/en/2019/06/26/the-abandoned-po...

[graemep]

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?

[donkyrf]

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_...

[graemep]

You are correct its only one but its gone from zero in 2010 to about half of what hydro produces now, and the proportion from renewables has gone down quite considerably: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Sri_Lank...

[donkyrf]

It is bizarre that you are citing a project that was planned in the 90s, broke ground in 2006 and ended in 2015 as a recent development.

[graemep]

I did not use the word recently, and what matters here are long term trends.

[bartvk]

Not increasing but cancelling plans on phasing out. Here in The Netherlands, an absolutely minuscule country of ~18 million people, two coal plants will remain online that previously would've been phased out.

[direwolf20]

And this is an expected problem with renewables that can be engineered around. It's unlikely the whole world has a drought at once during a calm night, so developing ways to transmit power long distances will be important.

[ambicapter]

Or just use nuclear as base load, and battery storage as much as you can.

[jdlshore]

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.

[AnthonyMouse]

> 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 those have the same purpose. Solar + battery lets you generate power with solar at noon and then use it after sunset. It doesn't let you generate power with solar in July and then use it in January. More than a third of US energy consumption is for heating which is a terrible match for solar because the demand is nearly the exact inverse of solar's generation profile both in terms of time of day and seasonally.

HVDC is pretty overrated in general. It does nothing for the seasonal problem and it's expensive for something that only provides a significant benefit a small minority of the time, i.e. the two days out of the year when the entire local grid has a shortage but a far away one has a surplus. It's also hard to secure because it inherently spans long distances so you can't have anything like a containment building around it and you end up with an infrastructure where multiple GW of grid capacity is susceptible to accidental or purposeful disruption by any idiot with a shovel or a mylar balloon.

[jdlshore]

> It doesn't let you generate power with solar in July and then use it in January.

That’s not necessary. Solar panels are so cheap that you can massively overprovision for winter and still come out ahead of nuclear.

[Spooky23]

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.

[adrianN]

Wind generally works well when solar output is low. That greatly reduces the amount of seasonal storage you need (although you still need some).

[DrScientist]

I think HVDC is a more important component in smoothing out demand/supply than you give it credit for, especially if you add wind into the mix.

In terms of security - one of the reasons nuclear power stations are so expensive is they have to survive a targeted plane crash etc - they are expensive high profile targets.

In the end the renewables model is a much more distributed model of generation, storage and consumption ( rather than a few massive power stations ) - so with a proper grid you could argue you would have fewer single points of failure, and increased resilence.

[cyjackx]

How much of this is unnecessary regulatory burden, though? There probably is some margin of improvement over what the anti-nuclear lobbyists have imposed.

[Tepix]

Is it unnecessary burden? We've had major nuclear accidents despite regulations and that was before 9/11 and dron wars.

[nl]

MIT actually measured this, and the conclusion might surprise you:

> Some of the driving factors are definitely regulatory. After the Three Mile Island accident, for example, regulators “required increased documentation of safety-compliant construction practices, prompting companies to develop quality assurance programs to manage the correct use and testing of safety-related equipment and nuclear construction material.” Putting those programs in place and ensuring that documentation both added costs to the projects.

> But those were far from the only costs. They cite a worker survey that indicated that about a quarter of the unproductive labor time came because the workers were waiting for either tools or materials to become available. In a lot of other cases, construction procedures were changed in the middle of the build, leading to confusion and delays. Finally, there was the general decrease in performance noted above. All told, problems that reduced the construction efficiency contributed nearly 70 percent to the increased costs.

> By contrast, R&D-related expenses, which included both regulatory changes and things like the identification of better materials or designs, accounted for the other third of the increases. Often, a single change met several R&D goals, so assigning the full third to regulatory changes is probably an over-estimate.

> So, while safety regulations added to the costs, they were far from the primary factor. And deciding whether they were worthwhile costs would require a detailed analysis of every regulatory change in light of accidents like Three Mile Island and Fukushima.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-nuclear-plan...

[rtpg]

France is all-in on nuclear. Their reactors are still pretty expensive. Worth it, but expensive. Each reactor is a huge piece of infrastructure where small mistakes compound. No matter how little regulation you have reworking these giant buildings takes a lot of work, if only from the physics of it all.

If there's magic that makes em massively cheaper someone should tell France.

[littlestymaar]

It's not the regulations, it's the financing scheme: if it's not state backed with a long investment horizon, it's very expensive because private investors expect 10% yields in the middle of a ZIRP to cover from the possible political reversal.

The Hinckley Point C EPR reactor would have produced electricity at a rate below £20/MWh instead of a planned £80/MWh if it was financed by government bonds.

[leonidasrup]

Build times and costs of long-distance HVDC is comparable to build times and costs of nuclear power plants.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-starts-construc...

[mpweiher]

Comparable to the build times an costs of badly run FOAK nuclear power plant construction projects.

[ekianjo]

> They take too long to build and cost too much

Not in China apparently

[mpweiher]

Or anywhere where you actually build them in any quantity.

France built 50+ reactors in 15 years. Their entire nuclear industry cost just €228 billion.

[cjrp]

I think that's what Small Modular Reactors (SMR) are hoping to improve? At least the time to build.

[drivebyhooting]

“It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish”, as my old gaffer used to say.

[SoftTalker]

But they work at night

[jcattle]

For countries that can reliably get to 99% hydro, save for some exceptional droughts, "build nuclear" is about the worst advice you can give them.

[leonidasrup]

Building dams is not without environmental costs especially in water stressed regions. Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has long been a source of tension between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt.

https://www.dw.com/en/gerd-grand-ethiopian-renaissance-dam-s...

Motuo Hydropower Station - will overtake the Three Gorges dam as the world's largest. The project has attracted criticism for its potential impact on millions of Indians and Bangladeshis living downriver, as well as the surrounding environment and local Tibetans.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gk1251w14o

[red-iron-pine]

"a source of tension" is a understatement. might have have caused a war, and still could.

[colechristensen]

You don't need battery storage if you've got hydro.

You need solar. Make hydro the backup, fill reservoirs as your reserve and sell extra energy when they're nearly full.

[tialaramex]

I can see this makes sense especially for medium term storage. A lot full of batteries is great for the next ten seconds, next ten minutes, even to some extent the next ten hours, but it surely doesn't make much sense to store ten days of electricity that way compared to just keeping the water behind a dam. We know that many of the world's large dams are capturing snow melt or other seasonal flows, running them only when solar or wind can't provide the power you need lets you make more effective use of the same resource.

[hvb2]

Except that in many cases there's people living downstream doing agriculture using that water for irrigation. There's just this tiny dispute about that in the nile delta between Egypt and Ethiopia

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

[colechristensen]

Except for very short term peaks (less than 15 minutes-ish) it doesn't make any sense at all to use hydro to charge batteries. You've got a dam, you might as well let water through later than incur the losses of a round trip to batteries and back to the grid.

[znkynz]

There are two types of hydro - run of river, and ones with large lake storage. You need the ones with large lake storage, rather that the ones with a lake to build a head.

[XorNot]

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.

[peterashford]

In NZ we're discussing pumped hydro in Lake Onslow which will provides months of backup for the country

[colechristensen]

I'm not talking about pumped hydro.

[1718627440]

Like you wrote you can use nuclear as a base load. It's not really useful as a short-term backup for when other plants don't work. If you need batteries and excess power for backup, you might as well create the excess power without nuclear if you can.

[swiftcoder]

Nuclear doesn't really solve this particular problem - solar is already cheaper than nuclear, so no one is going to replace their entire solar capacity with nuclear. And nuclear doesn't spin up/down rapidly like natural gas, so its a lousy solution for nighttime.

[XorNot]

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.

[ViewTrick1002]

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...

[pfdietz]

Or just gradually taper off fossil fuel use until storage and renewables carry everything.

Exactly what "storage" means there is the key, especially at high latitude. Do not assume just batteries.

[direwolf20]

Nuclear takes a week to restart after a shutdown, due to xenon poisoning. It's not reliable base load.

[peterashford]

Over-provisioning with renewables is cheaper

[hunterpayne]

Which of course is why the countries that do that the most have the highest energy costs in the world. And just for fun, they usually have some of the dirtiest grids because of all the drawbacks of renewables.

[iso1631]

Get a drought and you have to shut them down, ask France.

"Base load" is just some nonsense from nuclear fans to get the cost per GWh down.

[hunterpayne]

Base load is an industry term coined by the very engineers who make the grid work. But I'm sure a random poster on an Internet forum knows more than the engineers who actually do the work.

PS France has the cleanest grid in Europe

[iso1631]

https://www.pembina.org/blog/baseload-myths-why-we-need-chan...

[Tepix]

Nuclear seems to be the worst option:

You can't quickly change the amount of power it generates. Which is what you need if you want to use it together with dirt cheap solar.

It's very expensive. In fact, noone knows how expensive it will end up being after a couple thousand of years.

It's dangerous. For millenia. Vulnerable to terrorism. Enabler of nuclear weapons.

It takes a long time to build and bring online.

It doesn't scale down.

Finally, Kasachstan is the major producer of Uranium. Yay?

[AnthonyMouse]

> You can't quickly change the amount of power it generates. Which is what you need if you want to use it together with dirt cheap solar.

You always need something in the grid that can change the amount of power it generates regardless of what you use in combination with it, because the demand from the grid isn't fixed. All grids need something in the nature of storage/hydro or peaker plants.

The advantage of combining solar with nuclear is that their generation profiles are different. Nuclear can generate power at night and doesn't have lower output during the peak seasonal demand period for heating. Nuclear is baseload; it doesn't make sense to have more of it than the minimum load on the grid, but no one is really proposing to. The minimum load is generally around half of the maximum load.

> It's very expensive. In fact, noone knows how expensive it will end up being after a couple thousand of years.

If you actually reprocess the fuel there is no "couple thousand of years". If you instead put it in a dry hole in the desert, you have a desert where nobody wanted to live to begin with that now has a box of hot rocks sealed in it. It's not clear how this is supposed to cost an unforeseeable amount of money.

> Vulnerable to terrorism.

Nuclear plants are kind of a hard target. The stuff inside them isn't any more of a biohazard than what's in a thousand other chemical/industrial plants that aren't surrounded in thick concrete.

> Enabler of nuclear weapons.

The US already has nuclear weapons and would continue to do so regardless of how much electricity is generated from what sources. The argument against building nuclear reactors in Iran is not an argument against building nuclear reactors in Ohio.

> It takes a long time to build and bring online.

Better get started then.

> It doesn't scale down.

Decent argument for not having one in your house; not a great argument for not having one in your state.

> Finally, Kasachstan is the major producer of Uranium. Yay?

The country with the largest uranium reserves is Australia. Kazakhstan is #2 and has about the same amount as Canada. Other countries with significant reserves include Russia, India, Brazil, China, Ukraine and several countries in Africa. The US has some itself and plenty of other places to source it. It can also be extracted from seawater.

The US is also in the top 4 for thorium reserves with about 70% as much as the #1 (which is India), and thorium is 3-4 times more abundant overall than uranium.

[Tepix]

> The advantage of combining solar with nuclear is that their generation profiles are different.

Nuclear generates a constant amount of power 24/7. If in the near future we generate a lot of power from photovoltaics during the day, we won't need the nuclear base load. We should switch to something that's a better fit: Batteries or perhaps gas turbines.

> > It's very expensive. In fact, noone knows how expensive it will end up being after a couple thousand of years.

> If you actually reprocess the fuel there is no "couple thousand of years".

We've had nuclear power for many decades. Ask yourself: Why isn't reprocessing being done at a scale that's sufficient to get rid of the most problematic waste?

> If you instead put it in a dry hole in the desert, you have a desert where nobody wanted to live to begin with that now has a box of hot rocks sealed in it. It's not clear how this is supposed to cost an unforeseeable amount of money.

Again, it's harder than it looks because despite billions of dollars spent all over the world, noone has managed to create a final disposal site yet.

[thangalin]

> It's dangerous. For millenia.

See https://www.jlab.org/news/releases/jefferson-lab-tapped-lead...

> Partitioning and recycling of uranium, plutonium, and minor actinide content of used nuclear fuel can dramatically reduce this number to around 300 years.

[hvb2]

The word CAN is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

Let's not pretend like the track record of energy production is free of externalities.

We CAN also produce almost all of our plastics from recycled ones. We don't, because those are more expensive than new.

[pstuart]

Which absolutely should be done, but having energy sovereignty is never a bad thing.

[izacus]

Having a continent-wide draught (or cold winter or other weather effect) is rather common though. Just a few years back Europe had a massive issue where draught caused both drop of hydro production and cooling for French nukes, causing energy prices to spike.

[Moldoteck]

No. Cooling french nukes was never a problem. In that period France was net exporting 14GW. Cooling in general isn't a problem - some modulation is done just to save fish.

Maybe you are confusing with 2022 when half of french fleet was shut down to check for potential pipe cracks/corrosion esp in one of their reactor designs due to poor geometry. But that's unrelated to droughts

[derriz]

Happens regularly. Last year’s heatwave caused a bunch of reactor shutdown across Switzerland and France - https://www.euronews.com/2025/07/02/france-and-switzerland-s...

[Moldoteck]

And during that time France was net exporting 14GW to neighbors at dirt cheap prices. There's no reason to fix this. It's a nothing burger pushed by 'concerned' people

[hunterpayne]

All thermal plants have this same issue, not just nuclear. And if you lose the natural gas peakers (which are also thermal and thus has this issue), you lose your baseload renewables too. Not that it matters, renewables used for baseload make more CO2 than just using FFs. Variability is a terrible quality in an energy source.

[izacus]

No, I'm not - https://www.euronews.com/2025/07/02/france-and-switzerland-s...

A lot of NPPs in France are cooled with river water and they need to be kept at low output if the rivers are too warm.

[Moldoteck]

Are you? It impacts 0.02% of annual production and during this time EDF is net exporting 14GW. Does this sound as an issue to you?

[mayama]

Problem isn't nuclear cooling per se. It's the designs of these nuclear reactors which expected to work with mild European weather. India and China have nuclear reactors working in desert without any cooling issues. Of course, as most of EU and west atrophied in building nuclear reactors in general, building new reactors or modifications won't be economical.

[Moldoteck]

it's not economical because in the same period summer prices are dirt cheap. EDF is already maxing export in that period, where do you want to squeeze some extra GW? why would you?

[psychoslave]

That said, cooling does have an effect on ecosystems. Not the worst energy plant impact on that regard, but still not like it's all environmental friendly.

And of course, there is the what to do with the waste dilemma. And at least with current French park, there is a dependence on the rarer kind of uranium.

[Moldoteck]

Waste dilemma? You either bury it (Onkalo, Cigeo, Fosmark, etc...) like any other waste that must be isolated forever (herfa neurode) or you do some recycling one way or another, or both.

Impact on environment from nuclear is minimal per UNECE. And cooling impact is minimal too, esp with towers. Uranium can be sourced from a variety of countries and enriched locally. Nuclear in general needs least amount of mining and materials per kwh

[Tepix]

Cooling for French nuclear reactors, yes. More than once since 2020. But nukes?

[1718627440]

> nothing really changed because of climate change, the decision to rely on hydro was made in the 90s.

Climate change was known well in the 90s, so what is your assumption, that it can't be to help lessen climate change?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> I think it's also worth pointing out that nothing really changed because of climate change, the decision to rely on hydro was made in the 90s.

Why do you think it is worth pointing this out?

[Supermancho]

To assuage any implication that the conversion was based on that concern?

It's helpful to know that there are economics and environmental concerns outside of an existential threat, to galvanize a country's momentum.

[input_sh]

Mostly because when the title says "seven countries now generate...", it sure makes it look like there was some sort of a recent development made in response to climate change, and not something that would've been the case regardless.

[rob74]

Correct for the others, but Ethiopia was only added to this list after GERD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Da...) came online, which is a fairly recent development.

[Shitty-kitty]

Funny, TAP runs straight-thru Albania. They could just build a gas power station. Of course rented rigs line the pockets much better.

[Tepix]

Why would they want to do that?

[AnthonyMouse]

Building something is cheaper than renting it forever?

[WinstonSmith84]

fun fact for Paraguay: the Itaipu Dam is one of the largest in the world located between Brazil and Paraguay, where each country gets 50% of the production. But 50% of that production for Paraguay, a country of 7 millions inhabitants, means that it cannot consume that much, so it's essentially reselling that energy to Brazil, a country with 30x more inhabitants. Paraguay only uses about 1/3 of its share (and thus resells 2/3 to Brazil).

[perlgeek]

Another fun fact: There's a second big dam that supplies Paraguay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yacyret%C3%A1_Dam

It's also a two-country joint venture, this time with Argentina. And again, Paraguay uses much less of the electricity than its bigger partner.

[neves]

And it means that it has been oil free since the 70's.

Brazil, a continental country, has more than 80% of its energy from renewables

[ptman]

Oil free for electricity generation. The media in my country (Finland) also likes to brag about 90+% fossil-free electricity generation. But electricity is under half (30%?40%?) and the rest of that energy isn't fossil-free.

[ZeroGravitas]

Finland has electricified 40% of primary energy which is pretty much world leading (Sweden and Norway are 50%). European average is 19%.

Largest chunk left is transport which can mostly be electrified now. Industrial and home heat too. There are hard to electrify sections in both but overall it's fairly obvious what to do next.

And the easy parts eliminate 3 or 4 units of primary energy for every one they replace, so even 40% primary energy is way over 50% toward the finish line of electrifying all the useful stuff.

I think it's also an interesting question as to whether countries that use a lot of electricity have lower per kWh prices because they spread the fixed costs further.

[sumea]

Yes, ground transport (except long distance trucks) can be electrified now. In principle, most homes could be heated with electricity if we had means to store all the "excess" wind energy or waste heat from e.g. datacenters and use it in district heating. The technology for heat storage is mostly ready but the capacity is not.

But would it be easy or obvious what to do next? Absolutely not. Everything is simple if you have pockets full of money, live in temperate climates and do not rely on energy intensive (and hard to electrify) industries like the Nordic countries.

For example, about 25 per cent of the total energy consumption in Finland is used to heat buildings. Wood burning is about half of the total heating in distric heating systems which account about half of the total heating for buildings. Also heat-storing fireplaces are still a small but a crucial part of the total picture. A lot of extra energy capacity is needed just make sure you stay alive during the coldest months even if some of the systems fail.

Nordic countries have cheap electricity mostly for two reasons: very stable interconnected electric grid and lots of different renewable energy sources. Arguably, hydropower is the most important because it can stabilize the intermittent wind power which in many places we have more than enough already. Nuclear energy is also a major part of electricity production in Sweden and Finland.

And yet our electric grid or electricity production capacity is far from ready to handle even the more realistic dreams of "full electrification" we are told in the media. It will take many years just to get the grid ready.

And what happens if the stablest renewable, hydropower, fails? We might find it out this year as hydropower reserves in Norway are at the lowest level in 20 years. Hydro generates about 90% of Norway's total electricity.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> In principle, most homes could be heated with electricity if we had means to store all the "excess" wind energy or waste heat from e.g. datacenters

Most homes are hundreds or thousands of miles from a datacenter.

[ninalanyon]

> except long distance trucks) can be electrified now.

What do you call long distance? And why do you think it can't be electrified now. Both Volvo and Scania have electric tractor units.

Scania has trucks with over 500 km range at 42 t GTW. In Europe you can't drive more than 360 km in one go. See https://www.scania.com/group/en/home/products-and-services/t...

[grumbelbart]

> But electricity is under half (30%?40%?) and the rest of that energy isn't fossil-free.

The trick of course is that if you electrify heating and transportation they'll need much less energy. Your average car with an ICE has an efficiency of 20-40%, electric cars have 60-80%. Heating your house with gas has an efficiency of around 100%, heat pumps have 300%-500%.

[tialaramex]

In theory gas boilers for heating are above 90% efficient. Not 100% because to achieve 100% what you'd have to do is keep the exhaust gases (which are hot) inside, where the people are, and unfortunately the exhaust gases are poisonous so that's a terrible idea.

To hit 90% the boiler needs to be designed to condense water vapour out of the exhaust gases, this way we'll get back the energy needed to turn water into a vapour which is a large portion of the energy embodied by the exhaust gas. And to do that the vapour needs to pass a low temperature fluid, so we use the input fluid we were about to heat with the boiler anyway, we want this fluid to be cooler than about 55°C but that means if we're using the boiler to heat a home with radiators, rather than to make fresh hot water for cleaning etc. we need our return temperature from the radiators to be less than 55°C which means we need our flow temperature to be lower (than the typical 70-80°C programmed by builders, not lower than 55°©) or else the radiators can't possibly radiate enough heat to hit that number, which means we're actually doing much of the same heating efficiency work we'd have to do to use heat pumps anyway...

[hunterpayne]

Not sure where you get your numbers but they are way off. Natural gas is 90% (nothing is 100%). Heat pumps are geothermal masquerading as electric. And the highest number I ever heard for a heat pump was 135% which was under nearly ideal circumstances. In Finland, heat pumps can't make nearly enough heat to handle a winter there so you need something else too or instead of.

Truth is that electricity is great for kinetic energy but terrible at making heat. Most forms of energy can be transformed into another form of energy at about 50%. Electricity is the weird one where its 90% to motion but only 10% to heat. So if you want heat, you want something that makes heat directly. That's why natural gas heating (for building and homes) is usually lower carbon any other method. When you try to switch to electric, it makes things worse because of these inefficiencies. And heat pumps are great when you are in the right environment for them (like say the UK down to say Spain or so). But in Finland, you are going to need more than just some pipes in the ground and a fan.

[sehansen]

135% is quite low for an air source heat pump. For instance a Samsung HHSM-G600005-1 [0] claims to have been tested to be 485% efficient at heating water to 35°C and 283% efficient at heating water to 55°C, both with 7°C air temperature. For Finland you'd want to find a heat pump with a datasheet specifying SCOP for specifically the EN 14825 Northern Europe climate zone. I couldn't find one with some quick googling, but I found a Swedish site selling a air-to-air heat pump[1] claiming 222% efficiency at -25 °C.

0: The Cop numbers in this product spec: https://www.snhtradecentre.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/...

1: https://varmepumpshopen.se/luftvarmepump/panasonic-hz25zke

[stavros]

Are you saying that, for a given amount of electricity, you can only convert 10% to heat? I can't even think of a way to make this correct, since all forms of energy end up as 100% heat, the question is just whether the heat ends up in your home or not.

So, what do you mean with the 10% metric?

[grumbelbart2]

> Heat pumps are geothermal masquerading as electric

Air-to-air heat pumps are quite common 1-4 family homes. Even in Nordic countries such as Finland: https://www.sulpu.fi/heat-pump-sales-returned-to-a-growth-pa...

> And the highest number I ever heard for a heat pump was 135% [...] Truth is that electricity is great for kinetic energy but terrible at making heat. Most forms of energy can be transformed into another form of energy at about 50%. Electricity is the weird one where its 90% to motion but only 10% to heat.

Sorry but absolutely not, that's wrong on several levels. First off, in its most basic form of resistive heating, electric heating is already close to 100%. Heat pumps are even better, and I'll just quote Wikipedia

> At a cost of 1 kWh of electricity, they can transfer 1 to 4.5 kWh of thermal energy into a building.

[gaigalas]

Brazil has the most advanced biofuels program in the world, by far.

Ethanol alone accounts for roughly 1/5 of all energy in Brazil, with almost 50% of light-vehicle fuels being renewable.

For heavy vehicles, biodiesel is gaining in. Ethanol started in the 70s, the biodiesel program is much more recent (10-15% mixture in regular diesel).

It's not just electricity here, we're doing serious work on the fuel front.

[beAbU]

I presume the other half is residential heating?

[pelasaco]

Yes, https://www.iea.org/countries/brazil

Put the meme of Macron with an old picture saying Brazil is BURNING THE AMAZON

[indigo945]

    (I'm kidding, but I'm sure someone has a pie-in-the-sky geoengineering startup 
    about to disrupt topography using either AI, blockchain, or both.)

Well, there was that plan to use scores of nuclear bombs to alter the geography of Egypt in such a way that the Mediterranean could be drained into the Qattara Basin [1]. I think the story is somewhat well-known now, but it proves, at least, that pie-in-the-sky geoengineering startups are not a phenomenon unique to the 21st century. And given that nuclear bombs essentially were the blockchain of the 1950s, that is altogether unsurprising.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project#Fri...

[valgaze]

https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/453701

“Use of Nuclear Explosions for Excavation of Sea-Level Canal Across the Negev Desert”

[whatsupdog]

> And given that nuclear bombs essentially were the blockchain of the 1950s

They were not destructive enough.

[geoduck14]

>So, the lessons for all other countries in the world is pretty clear: grow yourselves some mountains, dig yourselves a big river, and dam, baby, dam !!

It is a relief that Environmentalists have decided that hydro counts as "renewable" energy! When I was in school, hydro was considered really bad for the environment, and projects like the Hoover dam and Yangzie River dam were "not helping"

[psychoslave]

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.

[peterashford]

Its local environmental damage versus global environmental gains

[krupan]

Same as nuclear, right?

[hunterpayne]

No, you don't have to change any ecosystems to build a NPP. No idea why you would think that in the first place really.

[krupan]

To be clear, I'm in favor of nuclear, but people attack it saying it does change the local ecosystem (heating up water for cooling and pumping the warm water into rivers, and of course the nuclear waste).

Here we just had someone say that hydro is fine because it only changes the local ecosystem so I jumped on that line of reasoning. I would argue with you that nuclear changes the local ecosystem way, way less than a dam does and so it's even better.

[setsewerd]

Reminds me of when Bjork was protesting the construction of a new hydropower plant in Iceland, when the Director of Iceland's National power company (behind the project) was actually her uncle. I used to be romantically involved with someone in his side of the family and noticed Bjork was conspicuously absent from any family gatherings he hosted, of which there were many.

[Gareth321]

Many environmentalists seem completely unwilling to acknowledge the concept of tradeoffs. Unless a solution is 100% perfect in every way, they reject it. Or at least, the committees and infighting become so protracted that they cannot agree no a solution. This is true of our world today. We have limited resources with which to address things like pollution and emissions. We should be focusing on the most impactful changes first, posing the fewest costs. Nothing has zero cost.

[jacquesm]

And have either a small population or a very low per-person energy budget.

But: 7 isn't the number that matters, what matters is that next year it will be 8 or 9. That would be worth documenting.

[tyfon]

There are a few countries just below as well like Norway with about 98% renewables in 2024 [1]. The gas power plant is mostly up north powering the gas compressors that fill LNG ships headed for Europe and the coal I think is for Svalbard but that mine/plant closed in 2025 [2].

[1] https://www.nve.no/energi/energisystem/energibruk/stroemdekl...

[2] https://www.nrk.no/tromsogfinnmark/norges-siste-kullgruve-pa...

[Thlom]

Norwegian electricity prodcution in February this year was 98,8% hydro and wind and 1,1% thermal (mainly gas). I guess the last 0,1% might be the diesel powered generator on Svalbard (the coal one was turned off 3 years ago).

[ZeroGravitas]

With modern tech, these 100% renewable electricity countries have effectively overshot. Many other countries would be better off getting to 85% and then shifting to focusing more on EV and heat pump uptake to get the best bang per buck.

[jacquesm]

Quite a few developed countries have privatized their electrical grids. The effects - predictable - were rent seeking behavior without the necessary investments to remain future proof. This is now catching up with us in a big way, the electrification is going to lag behind considerably on account of this.

I wrote about that in 2016, https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-problem-with-evs/ , and even though the situation has improved it has not improved as much as it should have.

This is quite frustrating because it is blindingly obvious to me that we will need to do better but given the profit angle it remains to be seen if these private entities will now do what's right for all of us. So far the signs are not good. Instead of embracing small scale generation utilities are fighting netmetering laws where ever they can (usually under the guise of not everybody being able to have solar, which is true, but which is not the real reason behind their objections). They're dragging their heels on expansion and modernization of grid infrastructure and the government(s) seem to be powerless to force the now out-of-control entities to live up to their responsibilities.

Couple that with the AI power hungry data centers and the stage is set for a lot of misery. Personally I think privatizing the electrical grid was a massive mistake. The market effects have not really happened, all that happened is that the money that should have gone into new infra has been spent on yachts and other shiny rock goodies.

[derriz]

> In a world where all the cars and trucks are electric you’re going to have to roughly supply your average highway with infrastructure comparable to the energy consumption of the cars on that highway (or the cities around it)

This is not true. Worldwide, typically about 80% of the energy used to charge EVs globally comes from a private connection. And the vast majority of that energy is drawn from the grid off-peak when transmission systems etc. are underutilized. You article reflects a mindset that envisages EVs working like ICE based transport.

[pfdietz]

I think we're going to see a lot of grid defection, and not just from little consumers. Corporations won't wait for grid connections and will roll their own microgrids.

[jacquesm]

There will be serious pushback to that by lobbyists. This is already happening in the form of mandatory participation in 'the market' while at the same time (you can't make this up) having to sell to that market at some kind of arbitrary price that you don't get a say in as producer.

I'm a small step away from going off-grid again, the biggest stumbling block is that - predictably - you can't do any practical small power windmill installations. I've considered a windlass in the basement but my kids wouldn't hear of it ;)

[pfdietz]

Sure, but large corporations have a lot of influence (read: money) to stop that sort of thing, so I don't see it going very far. Those building data centers can always play their trump card: just build the data center somewhere else.

[lxgr]

Don't you need even more than 100% (of your prior consumption) to remain renewable if you also switch to EVs and heat pumps? Why would 85% be enough?

[happosai]

Well hydropower is the "easy" level of the decarbonization game. So it's not really surprising first countries to leave fossil fuels behind are also countries with mountains and rivers.

[ignoramous]

> not really surprising first countries to leave fossil fuels behind are also countries with mountains and rivers

What's surprising is countries sharing natural resources are among the pioneers, despite the geopolitical implication... like Ethiopia testing the Egyptian waters by building dams on the Nile.

[hunterpayne]

Maybe you should lookup when these damns were built. I wouldn't be surprised if in 1970 there were also 9 countries who didn't use any FFs. Same 9 countries of course. If you can build hydro you do. Problem is, we already have them everywhere they can be. And even now, hydro is only about 10% of all electric power production worldwide.

[ignoramous]

Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam opened in 2023 seemingly beginning construction when Egypt was at its weakest post Arab Spring [0].

[0] Ethiopia outfoxes Egypt over the Nile's waters with its mighty dam, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz71zndj001o (2025).

[JoBrad]

Or, more charitably: use the Strangler Fig method to modernize your systems, and start with low-hanging fruit.

[Sharlin]

I guess if you're not allowed to use solar in the form of chemical potentials frozen long ago into carbon-y molecules buried underground, the second best thing is to use solar in the form of gravitational potential stored in water molecules that's constantly getting replenished because the planet just happens to work like that.

[littlestymaar]

> So, the lessons for all other countries in the world is pretty clear: grow yourselves some mountains, dig yourselves a big river, and dam, baby, dam !!

Came to say that, every time you'll see a country running on 100% renewables for an extended period, it's going to be hydro, because it's the only controllable supply among renewables (with geothermal as well, but it's been so niche so far I put it aside, but I hope it will change).

Unfortunately most of the hype and investments go to solar and wind power, which fundamentally don't offer the same capabilities. (Solar is fine as long as you're in q sunny place that is not in Europe though because it can be predictable enough to be relied on, but Solar in above 40° North and wind are borderline scams at this point).

[tootie]

I think they missed Uruguay which is a similar case. They have also traditionally benefitted from a hydro able to cover 80-90% most of their needs but they made a concerted effort to fill the entire remaining gap with wind and solar.

[ZeroGravitas]

Recent video by someone from Puerto Rico comparing their island's renewables with Uruguay and interviewing the guy in charge of their renewables rollout:

https://youtu.be/TsmlyqZJOug

[lostlogin]

> 22,67% of electricity consumed by Albania is imported from Greece, which generates 22% of its electricity from gas. Interestingly, Albania exports about as much to Montenegro as it imports from Greece.

There is solar on my roof. It makes about 125% what we use, but we import power from the grid every day, usually early am before the sun is up, or most days in winter.

In summer we are fully charged and exporting from about 1pm-6pm, with the line out maxed (at a pitiful 5kW, screw you Vector. New Zealand).

I’d guess Albania has the same issue when it isn’t sunny.

[imadhiskenderbe]

It is similar but not because of the sun. It produces around 99% from hydro which means that sometimes during the year it overproduces and sells it and when there is less water they have to buy some.

[3abiton]

> So, the lessons for all other countries in the world is pretty clear: grow yourselves some mountains, dig yourselves a big river, and dam, baby, dam !!

You're forgetting corruption. Many countries can easily go 100% renewable, but there is no profit for dictators/politicians to do so. Most of africa, or the middle east, yet you still have many regions without electricity or water, so that people worry about food for tomorrow instead of better governance in the future.

[hunterpayne]

"Many countries can easily go 100% renewable"

Sorry but no. There are several major issues with that if you want your power to stay on all the time. Storage would be needed which even for the smallest countries on this list would require over a years worth of worldwide battery production. And grid stabilization would be almost impossible and that's just for starters. All 9 of these countries are mostly hydro. The renewables in this case are almost incidental. Also these dams were built decades ago for reasons that have nothing to do with the environment.

[WarmWash]

I'm wondering how this picture holds up if we include cooking and water heating.

[BigGreenJorts]

And cars. Lots of diesel in Albania.

[KellyCriterion]

wasnt New Zealand also already far up beyond 90% renewable electricity a couple of years ago?

[direwolf20]

They are blessed with all three of hydro, geothermal, and wind.

[bogeholm]

Do we have many countries around where wind is not a thing?

[peterashford]

And sun isn't uncommon. I was chatting with a person in Auckland, NZ. He said it was a cloudly day and he was producing much more solar power than he needed. His take: the panels are the cheapest part of the system so they just over-provisioned. We can all do that - it aint hard

[aitchnyu]

Our rainy day production is still a fifth * of our peak in Kerala, India. Wish all inverters support 5x overprovisioning, current ones support 1.5x and suffer lower life. Seems 1.1x is the recommended provisioning guideline.

* UK internet stranger said he gets negligible output when it rains

[peterashford]

Thanks for the feedback about inverters - I was unaware.

[devilbunny]

I'd imagine quite a lot of smaller ones don't have anything. Take a look at https://energy.usgs.gov/uswtdb/viewer/ and notice that huge swaths of the US have almost no wind turbines.

[weezing]

>So, the lessons for all other countries in the world is pretty clear: grow yourselves some mountains, dig yourselves a big river, and dam, baby, dam !!

And have basically no meaningful industry and small population.

[Flere-Imsaho]

Hydro electricity is also one of the most dangerous forms of energy production:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

(This is the worst disaster, but could put Chernobyl to shame?)

Full list here:

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

[iso1631]

Well most dangerous apart from coal, oil, gas, biomass?

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

And that's before you bring into the deaths due to climate change

[Flere-Imsaho]

I should have pre-fixed it with "out of renewable energy".

[lxgr]

Sure, if you consider only local dangers and don't care at all about regional or global externalities.

[iso1631]

Yes, there are no global externalities from coal, oil and gas...

[_blk]

Makes me wonder why solar is not on the list.. I thought all gore said that was gonna solve all energy problems. (Of course not, he's a politician, but I'd have expected to at least see it with some relevant percentage in the African countries) Or could it be that solar is distributed enough to not appear because it's set up directly by/with the consumer rather than the grid producer?

[justsomehnguy]

For some it's an eye-opening experience when they compare the states which are the most vocal about going solar and have a look onto the solar map of the world.

Or then they talk about how some countries have miraculous levels of an energy independence and social services and then look at their total population.

[ffsm8]

Tbf, solar has gotten so much more effective/cost efficient in the last 12-24 months that it's beating pretty much everything aside from hydro in the cost efficiency department at this point - including (most of) northern Europe and Canada.

Most data you find will be using data that's massively out of date and be off by at least 2x though...

I had another facepalm moment when I read about EU planning to go nuclear again. That would've been amazing and smart in 2015 - but now? Yeah, it's dumb af. And that's coming from a German living at the northern end of the country.

[Moldoteck]

Germany spends 10x more than france on transmission and curtailment each year. Households have highest prices in EU per Eurostat despite EEG subsidies. Even if everything goes well gas expansion is still required to firm renewables. All this while it still burns coal and gas.

Going nuclear was sane in the past and sane now. If Germany wants to prove expanding nuclear is dumb it should try first to have lower annual emissions, while spending less than double the cost of entire french fleet.

France is the biggest winner in EU- it'll build both nuclear and renewables achieving deep decarbonization

[mastermage]

EEG Subsidies no longer exist. Germany's high electricity price is due to the weird af Laws on Renewables, terrible planning, and well Gas Power, which is just expensive as shit.

[Moldoteck]

eeg still exists. It just moved to state expenditure when before it was paid directly. "weird af Laws on Renewables" - which laws? Gas firming was planned long time ago and mentioned even by fraunhofer

[mastermage]

Specifically alot of the laws on Windpower. Where it has to be amount x away from any populated place. Meaning there is only something like 0.1% of the area of Germany where you would be allowed to built Windparks.

My bad on the EEG i thought that stopped since I do not pay it anymore directly.

[mono442]

Can batteries store enough energy for dunkelflaute in winter? I don't think it's possible with the current technology.

[pfdietz]

Batteries are not appropriate for dealing with Dunkelflauten. There's very little energy flowing through there, so what you want to do is trade lower round trip efficiency for lower capex. The high capex of batteries is best amortized over many charge/discharge cycles, for example for daily storage.

[dalyons]

I mean, who cares? Fire up the gas plants in the one week a year you have weather anomalies. We’d still be 90+% carbon free which would be incredible. The last gap can be solved at a later point as technology evolves

[pfdietz]

And replacing the natural gas burned in those turbines with hydrogen won't be very expensive, since they will be used so infrequently. Storing energy as hydrogen is much cheaper than storing it in batteries, as measured by cost of storage of capacity.

[hunterpayne]

My friend, renewables only have a capacity factor of .1 (10%). That means those "gas plants" (really coal, and the worst quality coal on the planet too) are running 90% of the time. There is a reason why France's grid makes 7x the power for the same CO2 emissions as Germany.

[jondea]

A single energy source having a capacity factor of 10% does not imply that gas plants will have to run 90% of the time.

It ignores storage, over-provisioning, aggregation of uncorrelated sources etc.

Not to mention that wind typically has a much higher capacity factor than 10%.

I don't know what the true number is, but I think this is a low effort take.

[Moldoteck]

It's not. Germany would need an insane amount, about 3twh based on recent data and much more looking at 30y weather data

[marcosdumay]

Batteries can store as much energy as you are willing to buy.

[wolfhumble]

> I had another facepalm moment when I read about EU planning to go nuclear again. That would've been amazing and smart in 2015 - but now? Yeah, it's dumb af. And that's coming from a German living at the northern end of the country.

In 2015, Germany produced about 650 TWh of electricity. In 2025, it’s around 507 TWh, a drop of roughly 22–23%.

Consumption has also declined, mainly due to efficiency improvements, higher energy prices, and weaker industrial demand.

Per person, that’s about 7,900 kWh in 2015 vs ~6,000 kWh in 2025. France is at roughly 8,000 kWh per person today, so basically where Germany used to be.

This happened despite adding about 100 TWh from wind and solar combined over the same period.

Wind is still volatile and hasn’t really ramped much in recent years, while solar is growing steadily, but mostly helps in summer.

And that’s the core issue. Solar output in summer is roughly 3× higher than in winter, so just adding more solar doesn’t solve those cold, dark winter periods without massive storage or backup.

To get back to 2015 production levels of around 650 TWh, Germany would need to increase output by about 30%. With solar growing by roughly 13–14 TWh per year and wind not increasing much recently, that puts you close to a decade just to get back to where you were, while 2030 demand is already projected at 700–750 TWh.

Given that Germany still imports around 70% of its total energy, it’s hard to call it a “facepalm” to suggest nuclear as part of the mix.

Also worth noting that Germany is still slow on smart meter rollout, with only around 2% of metering points using smart metering systems so far. That limits how much consumers can respond to real-time prices. During tight periods, this can increase reliance on imports and contribute to higher prices in connected markets such as the Nordics.

[mastermage]

Wind has a problem in Germany thats true, but the problem is not volatility its the maddening regulations that basically only exist because nimbys do not want Windparks built anywhere.

[phtrivier]

What I'll watch which great interest is how big an improvement in interseason storage you need for the situation to flip on it's head entirely.

If sodium-ion, or some kind of thermal, or some kind of gravitationnal (except pumped hydro), or whatever techno comes up that makes it possible to handle this dunkleflaute thing (i learned that word today, love it already :) [1]), then Germany will already have the panels and windmills.

If for some reason, there is a great chemistry already advanced in the labs, is it possible that Germany buys a GWh battery before the first few EPR-2s come out of the ground ?

That's one hell of a bet to make. By refusing to reconsider nuclear, Germany is basically betting on some sort of breakthrough (or continued gas supply, which, well, is betting on geopolitics...)

So maybe "carving up mountains" isn't such a crazy plan, after all...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute

[tim333]

A jolly pie-in-the-sky one is to dam the red sea which could produce 50 GW. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sea_Dam)

[kilzimir]

Portugal doesn't have any mountains and most of the electricity still comes from hydro! (Not saying you can build hydro everywhere, but you certainly don't need the Himalayas)

[harrouet]

100%

Writing such an article without mentioning nuclear power is a sign of dishonesty.

Wind and solar can't live alone, since they only operate when nature wants it. Perfect match for hydro, but we don't all live in the Hymalaya. Most (e.g. Germany) burn gas and coal to supplement.

Nuclear is the only tech suited for decarbonation, and once you have it, you don't need solar and power because 95% of the cost is in the construction. Since you'll build it to sustain peak demand, wind or solar are just extra costs.

[tracker1]

I'm with you... beyond that, there's a lot of other costs involved with solar and in particular wind. Least of which is disposal/recycling on top of the materials and transport for assembly. I think that especially in areas that don't have extreme storms or earthquakes, that nuclear is the most sane answer for electricity generation.

I think another pressing issue would be a resurgence of natural airflow usage from underground exchanges instead of relying solely on air conditioning.

[harrouet]

Totally agreed.

The fallacy comes from the fact that few people know how to dimension an infrastructure. When you want electricity 24x7, you have to engineer the infra for peak demand. In Europe where I live, it is during winter around 6pm. It's night, and many times we have high pressure with no wind (inland).

Since hydro is reserved to particular land topologies, most countries have coal and gas ready to kick-in. France chose nuclear, which has proved to be a clear winner. Meanwhile Germany spent €500B (read it twice: €500B) and has got one of the most carbonated electricity generation -- at a high cost.

[LastTrain]

They worked within the constraints of their own topography - good and bad - to make it work. That is too hard for everyone else?

[phtrivier]

It is indeed harder if you topography writes off certain kind of electricity production.

But of course, good for them that they used their mountains / rivers ! All all power to them to electrify their economies if they have surplus ! And even better if they can use some reservoirs and pump to store, because it means they can diversify their productions by adding wind / solar and store a lot, until batteries of seasonal scale become more widespread.

[dagurp]

Iceland has been selling credits aggressively so my electric bill will include nuclear and coal power

[cm2187]

Also half of these countries have frequent outages. Not sure it is much of an example for anyone else (though I frequently hear experts advocating for outages in western countries, i.e. you won't be able to run your washing machine when you need it, it will be up to how much electricity there in the grid - they call that progress).

[pelasaco]

wondering why isn't Brazil in this list https://www.iea.org/countries/brazil

[jmyeet]

Ultragrav (YC S27). We plan on generating the geographic tyranny of who has rivers and mountains and who doesn't by seeking to use ultrasonic audio to disrupt gravity so you don't have to hear it. We're hiring in Kansas city, KS.

In all seriousness, thereis of course a list on Wikipedia of countries by renewable electricity production [1]. China leads here but also has 1.4B people and still has significant coal usage and oil and gas imports. But they're working really hard to wean themselves off of fossil fuels while still rapidly industrializing.

China does have mountains and has built the Three Gorges Dam, which is just massive and produces ~22GW. They're building a dam that'll produce almost three times as much power, the Medog Hydropower Station [2], which is planned for ~60GW.

The part that annoys me about a lot of developed nations is that they engage in greenwashing by simply exporting their emissions to poorer countries eg [3]. Let's at least be honest about what fossil fuels we continue to use and the emissions we indirectly create.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medog_Hydropower_Station

[3]: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/4/18/1533104...

[sourcegrift]

Why biased against. Clouds, SSR, and quantum?