[HN Gopher] Seven countries now generate 100% of their electrici...
___________________________________________________________________
Seven countries now generate 100% of their electricity from
renewable energy
Author : mpweiher
Score : 445 points
Date : 2026-04-12 13:21 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.the-independent.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.the-independent.com)
| saidnooneever wrote:
| i love that in a lot of countries people think these other
| countries are in the sticks and that they are modern... (ofc
| depending who u talk to but im sure we all know such a person...)
| :) a lot of perceptions based on old world views. Love to see
| these countries do so well on it. There might be many problems to
| solve still but it provides a degree of self reliance for energy
| that is really important today for a country i'd think
| giantg2 wrote:
| It's contrary to what most people think, but the later a
| country modernized, the better the infrastructure (generally).
| You basically get to skip the innovation stages where you have
| a hodgepodge of systems that eventually coalesce into one and
| all the upgrading required to bring it up to the newest
| standard. If you have a lower population and smaller geography,
| it is often easier to upgrade as well.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Those "countries in the sticks", one report says that the DRC
| only has at most 20% of the households on electricity. This
| report says only 10% https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-
| guides/democratic-r...
|
| On the other hand, balcony solar power will be a game changer
| for the world, provided your neighbors won't steal the panels
| like they do the catalytic converters in my neighborhood.
| mpweiher wrote:
| Albania: 90% Hydropower, $12150 GDP/person
|
| Bhutan: 99% Hydropower, $ 4700 GDP/person
|
| Nepal: 23% Imported $ 1381 GDP/person
| rest Hydropower (2/3 of energy: firewood etc.)
|
| Paraguay: 100% Hydropower, $ 7990 GDP/person
|
| Iceland: 99% Hydry/Geo, $90000 GDP/person
|
| Ethiopia: 88% Hydropower, $ 1350 GDP/person
|
| DR Kongo: 98% Hydropower, $ 760 GDP/person , 13% of country has
| electricity
|
| Not sure how this is applicable (and in many cases: desirable)
| for countries that do not have significant hydropower potential
| or maybe want a GDP greater than $760 per person per year.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Specifically Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia
| and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
|
| Not to downplay the positive steps that are being taken towards
| using renewable energy worldwide, but one must point out that all
| those countries except one are almost exclusively using
| hydroelectric power, whose availability at such scale is a
| geographical lottery. As for Iceland, which also relies mostly on
| hydroelectric power but not in such great a proportion, it makes
| up for it thanks to easy and abundantly available geothermal
| power (which, though environmentally friendly, is arguably _not_
| technically renewable).
| darkwater wrote:
| Why geothermal is not renewable? Earth is not going to cool its
| magma soon enough
| left-struck wrote:
| "Technically"
| mr_mitm wrote:
| Then no power source is "technically" renewable.
| ahhhhnoooo wrote:
| Then solar and wind aren't technically renewable either,
| because the sun is going to eventually consume the earth
| and explode.
|
| Geothermal is renewable.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| However much solar or wind energy we use, the Sun will
| last exactly as long. This is not a matter of scale. Even
| if we were to build a photovoltaic Dyson sphere around
| the Sun, it would have the same lifespan.
|
| That is not the case for geothermal. It could in theory
| be cooled down if exploited at a massive scale.
|
| Saying geothermal is not renewable is not an indictment
| nor a criticism. Geothermal is great and we should use it
| more. It's just _technically_ not renewable, but that
| doesn 't matter.
| delichon wrote:
| And a new star will eventually form from the debris, so
| "renewable" is a function of time scale.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| And after a hundred generations of this there will be no
| fusible material left. We can extract energy from
| rotating black holes until they stop, and then the
| universe is dead.
| delichon wrote:
| So solar energy is renewable over a human lifetime, not
| renewable over a stellar lifetime, renewable over a
| stellar formation cycle, not renewable over the lifetime
| of a universe, and renewable if universes turn out to be
| cyclical. And all but the first are pendantry in the
| context of renewable energy conversations.
| leonidasrup wrote:
| The Earth's heat content is about 1x10^19 TJ. This heat
| naturally flows to the surface by conduction at a rate of
| 44.2 TW and is replenished by radioactive decay at a rate of
| 30 TW. These power rates are more than double humanity's
| current energy consumption from primary sources, but most of
| this power is too diffuse (approximately 0.1 W/m^2 on
| average) to be recoverable.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power#Resources
| leonidasrup wrote:
| In comparison, averaged over the year and the day, the
| Earth's atmosphere receives 340 W/m^2 from the Sun.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance#On_Earth's_s
| u...
| JoBrad wrote:
| Thanks for that context.
| pfdietz wrote:
| This leads naturally to "artificial geothermal", where
| solar energy is used to heat rocks or soil, and the heat
| is later extracted. It doesn't have to be anywhere near
| as deep as ordinary geothermal, which had to accumulate
| that heat over many thousands of years. Just ~10 meters
| is about enough.
| lxgr wrote:
| That's not where natural geothermal energy is from. It's
| residual heat from planetary formation and some natural
| radioactivity.
|
| This form of storage also unfortunately only yields heat
| (via heat pumps or directly), not electricity, as the
| temperature difference is much too low in comparison to
| meaningfully run any heat engine from it.
|
| Great if you need to heat houses; not so great if you
| were hoping to store the solar energy for a rainy, or
| rather cloudy, day (or night).
| pfdietz wrote:
| No, that is how natural geothermal energy works. Perhaps
| you mistakenly thought I was saying the heat comes from
| sunlight? I didn't. The heat comes from below (or, in
| some cases, from internal radioactive decay). And this
| delivery of heat from below (or from decay) is a slow
| process, taking a very long time, which is why geothermal
| resources have to be buried deeply (otherwise, that heat
| just leaks out and the temperature of the geothermal
| resource is too low).
| lxgr wrote:
| Yeah, "accumulate the heat over thousands of years"
| indeed sounds a bit misleading to me. The heat is largely
| already there (or is generated pretty uniformly through
| radioactive processes), it's just slowly transmitted
| outwards down a gradient.
| pfdietz wrote:
| No, the heat is not already there. The heat comes in and
| goes out; the heat energy initially in the crust decays
| away exponentially with time and has no effect on the
| steady stage temperature gradient.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Heat is extracted at geothermal wells much faster than it
| is being replenished by the average rate of heat flow from
| the deeper Earth. It's effectively "heat mining". Granted,
| there's a lot of heat to be mined.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Geothermal is powered by fission Uranium and other heavy
| atoms deep in the Earth.
|
| Solar is powered by fusion of Hydrogen in the Sun.
|
| I'd use the same classification for both.
| leonidasrup wrote:
| About 20% of this is residual heat from planetary
| accretion; the remainder is attributed to past and current
| radioactive decay of naturally occurring isotopes.
|
| Most of the radiogenic heating in the Earth results from
| the decay of the daughter nuclei in the decay chains of
| uranium-238 and thorium-232, and potassium-40.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiogenic_heating
|
| Potassium is more or less distributed in the body
| (especially in soft tissues) following intake of foods. A
| 70-kg man contains about 126 g of potassium (0.18%), most
| of that is located in muscles. The daily consumption of
| potassium is approximately 2.5 grams. Hence the
| concentration of potassium-40 is nearly stable in all
| persons at a level of about 55 Bq/kg (3850 Bq in total),
| which corresponds to the annual effective dose of 0.2 mSv.
|
| https://www.nuclear-power.com/nuclear-
| engineering/radiation-...
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| No, not quite. Geothermal is powered by _the accumulated
| heat stored in rocks from_ fission Uranium and other heavy
| atoms deep in the Earth (and other phenomena).
|
| Geothermal hotspots do not reheat by fission or otherwise
| at the same speed that we extract their energy (if they did
| we'd be in trouble if we _weren 't_ extracting it!).
|
| As I mentioned in another comment, build a Dyson sphere of
| solar panels around the Sun and it will last just as long.
| Build an all-Earth geothermal plant and the heat will be
| depleted.
| patall wrote:
| By that definition, hydroelectric dams are not a
| renewable energy source for most of the year.
| secondcoming wrote:
| How long would it take for the heat to be depleted?
| Humans have only managed to drill something like 12km
| into the earth because it gets too hot to go further.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| If it were possible to access all of the Earth's stored
| geothermal energy, probably a very, very, _very_ long
| time.
|
| But if we're open to applying a quantitative timescale
| threshold to the thought experiment, at which we can
| argue geothermal is renewable, that raises the question
| for nuclear. If we could access all fissile uranium and
| thorium on Earth, how long would it take for us to
| deplete its stored energy? Does that mean nuclear energy
| is renewable?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Almost none of it is from fission. Fission is a very rare
| natural decay mode of uranium and thorium. Most of their
| radioactive energy output is from ordinary non-fission
| radioactive decay.
| Y-bar wrote:
| Can't speak for large scale sites with abundant volcanic
| activity... But for residential geothermal the bore hole has
| a lifetime based on how much ground water there is and how
| active usage it sees.
|
| This is because using it cools the hole slowly and after a
| few decades (depending on how quickly ground water can
| dissipate heat gradient) a new hole need to be drilled a
| distance away.
| analog31 wrote:
| Can we cycle the holes? Use one while the other one is
| warming back up.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Only as a technicality. If you find a geothermal hotspot and
| start to extract energy from it, the hotspot will eventually
| cool down faster than if you hadn't (which of course depends
| on the size of the hotspot and how much heat you're pulling
| out).
|
| However, given that there's no downsides to cooling down a
| hotspot other than, well, no longer being able to extract
| energy from it, geothermal is a bit of an honorary
| "renewable".
|
| Actual renewables ultimately all come down to recent[0] solar
| energy, which will never deplete their source however much
| they are used. All the energy in wind, hydroelectric and
| biofuels has recently originated in the Sun.
|
| [0] I say "recently" because fossil fuels are all also
| derived from the Sun, but their rate of regeneration is a bit
| too slow compared to the speed at which we use them.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| If it goes down, what happens to all the buildings using
| geo/earth heat with these probe heads to collect the
| energy?
|
| Does this effect occur in lets say 10-20 years or is this
| longterm like 50y+?
| quickthrowman wrote:
| At a certain point there won't be enough heat recovered
| from the geothermal side of the loop to generate steam on
| the process side of the loop and power generation will
| cease. I'm not smart enough to calculate how long that
| will take, however. I think you could still use the
| geothermal energy at a lower temperature for district
| heating and cooling, but a mechanical engineer would be
| more qualified to answer that.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| A lot of hydroelectric depends on snow pack and glacier
| runoff that is being adversely affected by global warming.
| Solar and wind are the only robust hedges against a warm up
| that might ultimately severely curtail river flow.
|
| We have a lot of uranium and nuclear is fairly renewable at
| least in the span of a few centuries. The waste issue is a
| problem.
| adev_ wrote:
| Contrary to a popular belief, most high temperature
| Geothermal plants have a predicted death date.
|
| This is due to the physics reality of the ground itself:
| Power of a Geothermal well will decay over time to a point
| where the well become unusable and need to be closed.
|
| It is due to the fact underground water is rich in minerals
| and raw elements. This soup will slowly but surely cement the
| well itself and its associated underground.
|
| There are techniques (similar to 'fraking') to extend the
| lifetime of a well but only to some extent.
|
| If the topic interests you (and you can bear artificially
| translated English), a French content creator did a pretty
| good video on the topic:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q4xZArgOIWc
|
| Additionally, Geothermal plants can emit CO2 (even _a lot_ of
| CO2) in some geological configuration.
|
| All of that makes Geothermal (for electricity) a bit
| controversial as "Renewable".
|
| I precise that there is absolutely nothing wrong about low
| temperature Geothermal energy for residential heating and we
| should do more.
| IneffablePigeon wrote:
| Well yes, hydro and geothermal are the easiest (and earliest
| perfected) renewable sources to provide consistent base load.
| It would be odd if the first countries to achieve fully
| renewable power weren't making use of those technologies.
|
| Other countries will have to be more reliant on interconnects,
| diverse renewable mixes and batteries. Luckily this is now
| almost always cheaper and more secure than fossil fuels and the
| trend lines point towards that continuing to be more and more
| true over time.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Well, when geothermal stops being renewable there will be no
| humans around to need energy generation.
|
| You are still technically correct, which is the best kind of
| correct.
|
| But if we follow that rationale, in a long enough timeline,
| solar and wind is also not renewable.
| nine_k wrote:
| Also, many of these countries are tropical or subtropical, with
| optimal conditions for solar energy year round. Nepal and
| Bhutan are relatively far from equator, but have many days of
| unobstructed sunshine.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| The vast majority of humans live in regions with plentiful
| sun for solar.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| >at such as scale
|
| Not to downplay the positive steps that are being taken but we
| are conveniently skipping over the denominator here at least in
| the case of Ethiopia and DRC who both have a grid that is only
| serving their full population at a fraction of the level needed
| to make this story one about geographical lotteries and
| abundance instead of one about poverty preventing them from
| access to the traditional carbon power generating routes to
| server the rest of the population.
| goldenarm wrote:
| This article omits important context : these 7 countries have
| massive hydro power (+geothermal for Iceland) for very little
| demand.
|
| The only countries with <100 g CO2/kWh and >10TWh/y are using
| nuclear. Large scale batteries are exciting for the future but
| need more development. The 2 biggest battery investments in the
| world are being made in Australia and California, yet still
| produce 4x the g CO2/kWh of France.
|
| https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/5y/yearly
| realo wrote:
| Perovskite Tandem are the best , according to the graph.
|
| Why is it that those are reserved for ultra-big utility companies
| and I cannot buy those for my home or even my balcony?
| philipkglass wrote:
| At present, those tandem cells are still experimental. Nobody
| is manufacturing them on gigawatt scale like for other solar
| cell technologies.
| realo wrote:
| Well... if you go to the web site , they seem to welcome very
| large orders. Just not mine or yours.
|
| Might be experimental and unavailable, but just for small
| orders? Come on ...
| wpm wrote:
| Time for a group buy
| nicoburns wrote:
| They're much more expensive than traditional silicon cells,
| they often use toxic materials (lead, cadmium, etc), and IIRC
| their lifespans aren't as long. Unless you have significant
| space constraints it's usually better just to get twice as many
| traditional panels.
| aqua_coder wrote:
| I live in one of those countries, and while renewable electricity
| helped to cushion the concern for house electricity, most of the
| logistics (that being the supply chain for basic commodities) are
| transported by oil (specifically diesel). Which further increases
| inflation for import dependent countries. Meaning even for those
| states (except those that don't import oil to move cars in the
| country) it will regardless cause an economic crisis.
|
| One state is considered to be fully 'renewable' if the means of
| transport (excluding Airplanes since I can't find a suitable
| alternative ) for land is done via electric cars
| cenamus wrote:
| Or just trains
| phtrivier wrote:
| > 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.)
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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/stroemd
| ekl...
|
| [2] https://www.nrk.no/tromsogfinnmark/norges-siste-
| kullgruve-pa...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| pfdietz wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| derriz wrote:
| > 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.
| lxgr wrote:
| 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?
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| 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).
| neves wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 55degC 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 55degC which means we need our _flow_ temperature to
| be lower (than the typical 70-80degC programmed by
| builders, not lower than 55deg(c)) 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...
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| wasnt New Zealand also already far up beyond 90% renewable
| electricity a couple of years ago?
| direwolf20 wrote:
| They are blessed with all three of hydro, geothermal, and
| wind.
| bogeholm wrote:
| Do we have many countries around where wind is not a thing?
| input_sh wrote:
| I guess somewhat of a fun fact: Albania has rented(!) two
| floating(!) oil-powered power plants near the city of Vlore
| 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...
| direwolf20 wrote:
| 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.
| pstuart wrote:
| Which absolutely should be done, but having energy
| sovereignty is never a bad thing.
| izacus wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| psychoslave wrote:
| 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.
| derriz wrote:
| 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...
| izacus wrote:
| 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.
| Tepix wrote:
| Cooling for French nuclear reactors, yes. More than once
| since 2020. But nukes?
| ambicapter wrote:
| Or just use nuclear as base load, and battery storage as
| much as you can.
| colechristensen wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| colechristensen wrote:
| 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.
| hvb2 wrote:
| 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...
| znkynz wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I'm not talking about pumped hydro.
| pfdietz wrote:
| 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.
| jdlshore wrote:
| 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.
| cyjackx wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Is it unnecessary burden? We've had major nuclear
| accidents despite regulations and that was _before_ 9 /11
| and dron wars.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| The definition of "major accident" used in nuclear is
| orders of magnitude more strict than in any other
| industries though, which distort the picture.
|
| The worst nuclear accident involving a nuclear plant
| (Chernobyl, which occurred in a country without
| regulation for all intent and purpose) killed less people
| than the food processing industry cause every year (and
| I'm not counting long term health effect of junk food,
| just contamination incidents in the processing units
| leading to deadly intoxications of consumers).
|
| In countries with regulations there's been 2 "major
| accidents": TMI killed no one, Fukushima killed 1 guy and
| injured 24, in the plant itself. In any industries that
| would be considered workplace safety violation, not
| "major accident"... And it occurred in the middle of, and
| because, a tsunami which killed 19000!
|
| I'm actually happy this regulation exist because that's
| why there ate so little accidents, but claiming that it's
| still hazardous despite the regulations is preposterous.
| watwut wrote:
| I am pretty sure we dont need to evacuate large areas and
| keep sarcofag over former food processing plants.
|
| The chernobyl was poisoning Russian soldiers by the start
| of Ukrainian invasion when they were dumb enough to sleep
| there.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > I am pretty sure we dont need to evacuate large areas
| and keep sarcofag over former food processing plants.
|
| If we only tolerated the same long term risk level for
| food, you wouldn't be be eating anything but organic
| vegetables. The fact that we put a sarcophagus to prevent
| material from leaking is just the reflection of the
| accepted limits. Flint water crisis was much more
| dangerous than leaving Chernobyl without the latest
| sarcophagus but nobody cared for a decade.
|
| > The chernobyl was poisoning Russian soldiers by the
| start of Ukrainian invasion
|
| The stories of acute radiation poisoning have been
| debunked repeatedly, there simply isn't enough
| radioactive material left there to cause such symptoms
| (it's still a very bad idea to eat mushrooms or the meat
| of wild animals living there, you'd risk long term
| cancer, but nothing close to acute radiation poisoning,
| it's simply not possible from a physics standpoint).
|
| And again, we're talking about an accident that happened
| in Soviet Union on a reactor absolutely not designed with
| safety in mind and with a Soviet party member who
| threatened the engineers into bypassing safety mechanism
| in order to operate outside of the design domain of the
| plant. And the resulting accident was nowhere near close
| to the Bhopal catastrophe.
|
| Chemical site have deadly accidents every other years and
| nobody seems to care but they'll obsess about nuclear
| ones even when they barely kill anyone. And chemical
| plants accident do leave long lasting pollution with
| durable health effect, but we don't permanently evacuate
| the places because we tolerate the risk.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| What's the fatality rate per GWh of civilian nuclear
| power in the US vs. other forms of power generation?
| lxgr wrote:
| Are you rhetorically or actually asking? I'd guess
| significantly lower than coal and gas, and in the
| ballpark of (but still higher than) solar and wind
| combined (in the expected value, i.e. probability of a
| Chernobyl-like disaster times the death toll of that).
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| No member of the public has died from civilian nuclear
| power in the US. Significantly more people have died
| installing solar panels by falling off of roofs.
| lxgr wrote:
| That's why I mentioned expected values. Historical data
| alone is too sparse.
|
| I don't doubt that that resulting number is still very
| low, or there (being intentionally optimistic about
| politics and society here) wouldn't be any nuclear
| plants.
|
| Especially long-term storage is tricky, and if you need
| to consider time horizons of millenia, even small risks
| add up.
|
| > Significantly more people have died installing solar
| panels by falling off of roofs.
|
| In fairness, you then also have to consider "regular"
| industrial accidents at nuclear plants, which are
| probably still much lower (due to the presumably much
| higher energy output per employee hour than other forms).
| But that's besides the larger point of low probability
| and historical risk.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Nobody has died from _nuclear_ accidents. If we're
| including workers falling off of roofs then we should
| include nuclear power plant workers dying from mundane
| industrial accidents which has happened in the US.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Tiring with arbitrary limitations to exclude major
| accidents of a fleet in the hundreds.
|
| The difference between renewables and nuclear power is
| who gets harmed.
|
| When dealing with nuclear accidents entire populations
| are forced into life changing evacuations, if all goes
| well.
|
| For renewables the only harm that comes are for the
| people who has chosen to work in the industry. And the
| workplace hazards are the same as any other industry
| working with heavy things and electric equipment.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| 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 PS20/MWh instead of a planned
| PS80/MWh if it was financed by government bonds.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| "If we compare apples to oranges nuclear power is cheap".
|
| You can finance the competition in the same way and get
| similarly cheaper prices.
|
| Hinkley Point C just got a loan at a 7% interest rate to
| finish the plant. That is after about all uncertainty
| should already have been discovered.
|
| Now add making a profit and factor in the risk on top and
| you'll end up with electricity costing $400 per MWh
| thatcat wrote:
| If risk and disposal is factored into coal, gas, solar
| power, what would be cheaper? Nuclear has recyclable fuel
| processes and fail safe systems available.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| That cost doesn't even factor in disposal because no one
| knows the true cost yet.
|
| Not sure what risk you think come from renewables and
| storage?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| "It's the job that's never started as takes longest to
| finish", as my old gaffer used to say.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| But they work at night
| Tepix wrote:
| 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?
| thangalin wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| XorNot wrote:
| But who cares? Plastic in stabilized landfill is behaving
| better then the oil in the ground it was manufactured
| from. It doesn't matter.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > 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.
| iso1631 wrote:
| 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.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
| Shitty-kitty wrote:
| Funny, TAP runs straight-thru Albania. They could just build
| a gas power station. Of course rented rigs line the pockets
| much better.
| Tepix wrote:
| Why would they want to do that?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Building something is cheaper than renting it forever?
| graemep wrote:
| 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?
| bartvk wrote:
| 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.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| WarmWash wrote:
| I'm wondering how this picture holds up if we include cooking
| and water heating.
| BigGreenJorts wrote:
| And cars. Lots of diesel in Albania.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| mono442 wrote:
| Can batteries store enough energy for dunkelflaute in
| winter? I don't think it's possible with the current
| technology.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| It's not. Germany would need an insane amount, about 3twh
| based on recent data and much more looking at 30y weather
| data
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Batteries can store as much energy as you are willing to
| buy.
| dalyons wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| pfdietz wrote:
| 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.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| 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
| tootie wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| happosai wrote:
| 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.
| JoBrad wrote:
| Or, more charitably: use the Strangler Fig method to modernize
| your systems, and start with low-hanging fruit.
| LastTrain wrote:
| They worked within the constraints of their own topography -
| good and bad - to make it work. That is too hard for everyone
| else?
| geoduck14 wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| 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.
| setsewerd wrote:
| 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.
| Sharlin wrote:
| 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.
| Flere-Imsaho wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I should have pre-fixed it with "out of renewable energy".
| lxgr wrote:
| Sure, if you consider only local dangers and don't care at
| all about regional or global externalities.
| _blk wrote:
| 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?
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > 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 40deg North and wind
| are borderline scams at this point).
| jmyeet wrote:
| 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...
| 3abiton wrote:
| > 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.
| dagurp wrote:
| Iceland has been selling credits aggressively so my electric
| bill will include nuclear and coal power
| lostlogin wrote:
| > 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.
| cm2187 wrote:
| 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).
| ilitirit wrote:
| Probably at least slightly misleading, just reading the names of
| some of the countries in the list (I am from South Africa).
|
| Just because a country generates 100% of its energy from
| renewables, it doesn't mean that its enough to power the entire
| or even majority of the country. Case in point: DRC. I believe
| only half of the population has access to electricity. It's been
| a while since I've looked into continental stats, but a quick
| Google search suggests the situation hasn't changed that much in
| the last few years.
| runako wrote:
| 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.
| jacomoRodriguez wrote:
| Where can I look up this numbers? (Just curious)
| arrosenberg wrote:
| For California, CAISO publishes a ton of data. Here is daily
| fuel mix - https://www.gridstatus.io/charts/fuel-
| mix?iso=caiso
|
| You can also see Texas (ERCOT), New York and a few other
| operators.
| Tade0 wrote:
| https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes
| marcocaccin wrote:
| This is a goldmine of data, how did you find out about it?
| Thank you so much for sharing
| Tade0 wrote:
| By accident really - I heard that electricity prices were
| decided in hourly auctions, started googling it and there
| it was.
|
| The project is (partly) open source and whenever some
| data provider changes their API, they welcome
| contributions to address that:
|
| https://github.com/electricitymaps/electricitymaps-
| contrib
| vpribish wrote:
| good hilights! but - and i mean this kindly - you are starting
| to talk like an AI: "overshadowing real wins" "There's real
| momentum happening".
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > 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%?
| lokar wrote:
| 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.
| sesm wrote:
| Nuclear is not renewable though, those isotopes were created
| when some past generation star collapsed as supernova.
| ZeWaka wrote:
| Solar will no longer be renewable in 5 billion years as
| well.
| zekrioca wrote:
| But it is today
| KevinMS wrote:
| Isn't that the list of high energy prices and blackouts?
| tialaramex wrote:
| 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
| PS150 per MWh, but at 10am it was sunny with a brisk wind and
| sure enough that spot price was about PS25 per MWh. Gee, I
| wonder whether the wind and sun are cheaper...
| philipallstar wrote:
| > 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?
| bopjesvla wrote:
| > 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.
| IshKebab wrote:
| This is just goalpost moving. Only a couple of decades ago we
| were at a solid 0% everywhere.
| bopjesvla wrote:
| > The Netherlands: 86%, dominated by solar & wind
|
| The Netherlands: 50%, of which one third is biomass.
|
| As someone living in the Netherlands, I would love to live
| in energy utopia, but stats reported by people who can't
| read Dutch government reports are usually wrong.
| NoLinkToMe wrote:
| Nah about 5% of electricity is from biomass, not 33%. The
| 33% figure is regarding gross energy production, not
| electricity. Otherwise agreed.
| teamonkey wrote:
| https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/NL/12mo/monthly
| bopjesvla wrote:
| That's just a random website. Dutch bureau of statistics:
|
| https://www.cbs.nl/nl-
| nl/longread/rapportages/2025/hernieuwb...
| NoLinkToMe wrote:
| It's not just 'a random website' and it aligns with CBS
| numbers.
| erooke wrote:
| It seems to disagree with Dutch statistics because the
| linked view is for April 2026. While the article cited is
| talking about all of 2024.
|
| If you change the view to look at the year 2024 [1] it
| claims 53% carbon free with 2.5% of that coming from
| nuclear. This seems to line up with the cited statistics
| of 50% of consumed electricity produced by wind,
| hydropower, solar, and biomass in 2024.
|
| [1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/NL/5y/yearly
| ?signal...
| dalyons wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| hparadiz wrote:
| 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.
| mrroper wrote:
| 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
| dalyons wrote:
| 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.
| offmycloud wrote:
| 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
| NoLinkToMe wrote:
| 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.
| PowerElectronix wrote:
| Sadly these are edge cases due to either a lot of hydro, which is
| terrible for the environment in most cases or having neighbors
| that buy the renewable and help stabilize the grid with
| conventional energy.
|
| The best way to go green is still going green yourself. Get some
| panels, batery, inverter and go where no government wants you to
| go, off-grid. (And a gas generator, too, just in case...)
| lateforwork wrote:
| Meanwhile the US is spending billions to _cancel_ renewable
| energy.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/climate/offshore-wind-gas...
| pfdietz wrote:
| King Canute Trump trying to order back the tide.
| LastTrain wrote:
| Blows me away that energy policy is so political, and that
| somehow self-styled libertarians who don't say a peep about oil
| subsidies are deeply offended by renewable ones. It you
| consider yourself libertarian can you at least be forward-
| thinking enough to see that shifting to renewables is also a
| step towards decentralization?
| sph wrote:
| Seeing so many sub-Saharan countries generating >= 50% of their
| electricity from renewables makes me smile: https://static.the-
| independent.com/2024/04/16/11/renewable%2...
| bluGill wrote:
| It makes me sad - most of them are fairly poor and so don't use
| much energy. I want those people to have the wealth to consume
| as much energy as me. (My city is also 100% renewable but since
| I live in the us we don't show near as well on the charts
| overall.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| Is the glass half empty or half full?
|
| If they're able to produce clean energy to cover a large part
| of their needs, then that's a reason to be happy. We can also
| hope their quality of life improves without having to waste
| as much energy as people in the US do. The amount of
| electricity, gas, etc, used just to heat or cool down
| houses... if they can be smarter and do it while using less
| energy, then good for them.
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| All these industrial powerhouses like Iceland and Albania!
| efitz wrote:
| Mixing in geothermal and hydro really distorts the story.
| Although technically correct, the common usage connotation of
| "renewable energy " today is "wind and solar".
| Lichtso wrote:
| > the common usage connotation of "renewable energy " today is
| "wind and solar"
|
| Hydro, wind and solar. Hydro is often even more important
| because it runs more steadily than the other two.
|
| Geothermal and nuclear are neither fossil nor renewable, they
| are their own category.
| mentalgear wrote:
| What a great beacon of hope to consider that we are closer than
| we thought in the clean energy rollout ! I read somewhere, not
| sure though how it is assessed/how valid it is, that last year
| 50% world-wide came already from clean power, with countries like
| the UK around 50% in the middle and others like Spain far ahead.
| esskay wrote:
| Yeah UK's currently going through the biggest rollout of
| renewable energy ever, the pace is insanely high. Theres new
| rules to allow plug in solar coming into effect too with kits
| already available for renters and such.
| jonatron wrote:
| They announced they're thinking about amending regulations to
| allow plug in solar at some point. Hopefully something
| eventually actually gets done.
| mentalgear wrote:
| Article from 2024: still super impressive in 2024 yet I'd like
| more recent numbers to see the progress.
| dalyons wrote:
| Worse, the summary article makes claims using 2022 data which
| is so out of date to be useless
| birktj wrote:
| This is a bit of a weird list. This looks at the percentage of
| electricity generation that is renewable. But some of these
| countries are net importers. I think the final row in the table
| from the report [1] is more interesting. It compares the
| generation of renewable energy as a percentage of demand. There
| are quite a few countries that don't quite have 100% renewable
| generation, but generate way more than 100% of their demand as
| renewable energy.
|
| [1]:
| https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/WWSBook/Countri...
| amarant wrote:
| Honestly surprised Iceland doesn't rely more on geothermal, the
| entire country is a volcano! I had expected a 70-30 split in the
| other direction
| yownie wrote:
| most people from abroad do, but most of that geothermal goes to
| home heating and not power generation too.
| svth wrote:
| Geothermal is fantastic for heating. Speaking as an Icelander,
| we have so much hot water in Reykjavik that we even use the
| residue to keep our pavements clear of ice in winter. Pipes
| under the sidewalks carry exiting geothermally heated water
| from nearby houses. It's great technology and has served us
| well.
| flakiness wrote:
| Japan used to have many dams for the electricity but then scaled
| them down (or not scale it up) due to environmental concern. I'm
| not sure it was a right call given the limited availability of
| options there. They are also strong anti-nuclear sentiment which
| I have some sympathy. However you need something you have to make
| a call.
|
| This map says hydro share is like 8%.
| https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/JP/live/fifteen_min...
| leonidasrup wrote:
| The article cites research publication by Stanford University
| professor of civil and environmental engineering Mark Z.
| Jacobson, very famous 100% wind, water, and sunlight (WWS)
| advocate.
|
| His past research was already cited by Leonardo DiCaprio on Sept.
| 23 2014, during opening of the UN Climate Summit.
|
| "The good news is that renewable energy is not only achievable
| but good economic policy," DiCaprio told the more than 120 world
| leaders assembled. "New research shows that by 2050 clean,
| renewable energy could supply 100 percent of the world's energy
| needs using existing technologies, and it would create millions
| of jobs."
|
| https://cee.stanford.edu/news/what-do-mark-z-jacobson-leonar...
|
| The 100% renewable papers by Mark Z. Jacobson were subject to
| strong criticism. Jacobson filed a lawsuit in 2017 against the
| Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Christopher
| Clack as the principal author of the paper for defamation. In
| February 2024, Jacobson lost the appeal and was required to pay
| defendants more than $500,000 in legal fees.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Z._Jacobson
|
| Jacobson is also very strong critic of nuclear energy. In
| calculating CO2 emissions from using nuclear energy, he includes
| carbon emissions associated with the burning of cities resulting
| from a nuclear war aided by the expansion of nuclear energy and
| weapons to countries previously without them.
|
| Jacobson assumes that some form of nuclear induced burning that
| will occur once every 30 years.
| raptor99 wrote:
| Whew, very glad that a leading scientific voice like DiCaprio
| is speaking of this to world leaders. Solid foundations.
| hbarka wrote:
| Link to the source data:
|
| https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/WWSBook/Countri...
| librasteve wrote:
| I see that Norway is big on renewables - great that all that Oil
| & Gas revenue can be used to build hydro & wind to salve their
| conscience.
| chinabot wrote:
| Interesting looking at the data, that Norway generates 4x the
| electricity of NZ and they are roughly the same size and
| population I assume it exports most.
| MandieD wrote:
| It's not (mostly) to salve their consciences; it's fundamental
| to their avoidance of the Resource Curse/"Dutch Disease".
| Norway, unlike just about everywhere else "blessed" (and I use
| those scare-quotes intentionally) with oil and gas, anticipated
| the value of not getting high on one's own supply: they have
| some of the most heavily taxed vehicle fuel in Europe, as well
| as strict limits on how much oil/gas tax revenue can be spent
| each year with the rest going into an enormous investment fund.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| About 80% of global primary energy consumption comes from fossil
| fuels [1]. With renewables growing at 10x the rate of demand
| growth, we're moving in the right direction. But it's dishonest
| to frame it as a "tipping point."
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consum...
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| I don't think countries with rolling blackout should count.
|
| Unless the point here is "if we accept rolling blackouts we too
| can go full solar"
| tensor wrote:
| Funny, the last time there was a blackout, I still had power
| due to my solar, while all the gas people sat in the dark and
| pouted.
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