Americans always like to point out how much nuclear power china has. Meanwhile they have the biggest growth of solar installation worldwide too.
The Chinese have figured out that installing shit that gives you energy for free is pretty good.
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@silas China is fully aware that a robust energy sector will vastly improve their outcome in the future and they don’t care where it comes from. I believe you’ll find they are also building more coal plants than anywhere else.
Actually 2025-2026 is the first time growth of coal generation in China has stopped.
The problem with coal is you have to buy it, ship it, burn it, and then deal with the health problems and dark skies in the area where you do... They don't care about environmentalism in an abstract sense, but they want to have blue skies over their cities...
Nuclear and solar don't have any of these problems. Solar is intermittent, nuclear is expensive.
The problem with coal is you have to buy it, ship it, burn it, and then deal with the health problems and dark skies in the area where you do... They don't care about environmentalism in an abstract sense, but they want to have blue skies over their cities...
Nuclear and solar don't have any of these problems. Solar is intermittent, nuclear is expensive.
@cjd the internet led me astray?!
The problem is that the narrative that solar is Hippy Shit WAS 100% correct, about 20 years ago. But what happened was the price of cells fucking collapsed and nobody was paying attention.
You have to really watch out for technological shifts because this sometimes happens where an over-hyped / unusable technology suddenly becomes very realistic and nobody notices...
Now the hippies are whining about farmland getting plastered over by giant solar farms - which alone should tell you that the rules have changed...
You have to really watch out for technological shifts because this sometimes happens where an over-hyped / unusable technology suddenly becomes very realistic and nobody notices...
Now the hippies are whining about farmland getting plastered over by giant solar farms - which alone should tell you that the rules have changed...
@cjd @maxburn Free cells, the ultimate cell price collapse, would be great for power you only need when the sun is shining, unfortunately on average there are 4 hours of usable sunlight / day that are direct enough for full power production, that's worse in the winter when the energy is needed most. Presently we've got between 10-20 minutes of global energy storage, enough to level transient events, not enough to provide power when the Sun is hiding. In a world where everyone wasn't trying to kill each other we could create an intercontinental HVDC supergrid and utilize renewable sources much more effectively but that's not the world we have today.
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The fact that you need stable power generation doesn't mean that power is *free* when the sun is shining, so solar still makes value even if it can't be the only source.
Solar + hydroelectric is a great combination because the less hydro you need, the less water you need out of your dam. Furthermore, if you're able to pump water back up into your dam, then you have an ~infinite scale battery.
Pic rel is a simulation of a 22kw system based on real 2025 solar irradiation data where I live (France). I have not started installing this, but pricing out the hardware it looks like it'll be about 8k.
Solar + hydroelectric is a great combination because the less hydro you need, the less water you need out of your dam. Furthermore, if you're able to pump water back up into your dam, then you have an ~infinite scale battery.
Pic rel is a simulation of a 22kw system based on real 2025 solar irradiation data where I live (France). I have not started installing this, but pricing out the hardware it looks like it'll be about 8k.
Well sure, but I mean CARS aren't sufficient for reaching all places - there are places only reachable by boat and/or plane. But they're still absolutely dominant.
My take is that this crazy chart is probably NOT going to stop until coal has become marginalized.
I think gas is not going away soon because there's no real mining to do once you complete the well, it just comes out. Also gas power plants are small, efficient, and can be quickly ramped.
Hydro is certainly not going anywhere - but we already have pretty much all the hydro we're going to have. Nuclear will continue to grow, but it's super expensive to build and that cost needs to come down.
Geothermal is a big unknown. If they manage to make it economical it could largely replace nuclear, but it's still not proven...
My take is that this crazy chart is probably NOT going to stop until coal has become marginalized.
I think gas is not going away soon because there's no real mining to do once you complete the well, it just comes out. Also gas power plants are small, efficient, and can be quickly ramped.
Hydro is certainly not going anywhere - but we already have pretty much all the hydro we're going to have. Nuclear will continue to grow, but it's super expensive to build and that cost needs to come down.
Geothermal is a big unknown. If they manage to make it economical it could largely replace nuclear, but it's still not proven...
@cjd @maxburn The thing is your every day existence doesn't require reaching all places, so if your car doesn't get you there it's not the end of the world, but growing food requires fertilizer, ammonia, presently usually ammonia derived from natural gas and nitrogen, farm equipment is required to prepare, plant, maintain, and harvest it, this equipment is powered by diesel, there are industrial processes that can create hydrocarbons of any length from captured CO2 and water and electricity but these do not work well, or at all, with intermittent power, then you also need diesel to get the food to market. My point, we need infrastructure to replace fossil fuels for these functions before we exhaust that which we have and we are closer than people might think because they mistake fossil fuels in the ground from those which are useful and economically recoverable.
I think you're reading things into what I'm saying that I never said.
I don't see oil being disused any time in this century. I also don't believe in Peak Oil because it's like Climate Crisis, it was supposed to happen every decade since the 80s and it still hasn't hit. We still keep making MASSIVE new oil discoveries about once every 2 years.
I do think EVs are going to replace ICEs in most applications - but the reason I think so is because electricity is just cheaper than fuel.
I don't see oil being disused any time in this century. I also don't believe in Peak Oil because it's like Climate Crisis, it was supposed to happen every decade since the 80s and it still hasn't hit. We still keep making MASSIVE new oil discoveries about once every 2 years.
I do think EVs are going to replace ICEs in most applications - but the reason I think so is because electricity is just cheaper than fuel.
To this:
Hydro is only limited by precipitation. Any unused drop is a waste.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrale_hydro%C3%A9lectrique_de_Birsfelden