Clean Energy Powered 40% of Global Electricity in 2024, Report Finds (theguardian.com) 84
The world used clean power sources to meet more than 40% of its electricity demand last year for the first time since the 1940s, figures show. The Guardian: A report by the energy thinktank Ember said the milestone was powered by a boom in solar power capacity, which has doubled in the last three years. The report found that solar farms had been the world's fastest-growing source of energy for the last 20 consecutive years.
Phil MacDonald, Ember's managing director, said: "Solar power has become the engine of the global energy transition. Paired with battery storage, solar is set to be an unstoppable force. As the fastest-growing and largest source of new electricity, it is critical in meeting the world's ever-increasing demand for electricity."
Overall, solar power remains a relatively small part of the global energy system. It made up almost 7% of the world's electricity last year, according to Ember, while wind power made up just over 8% of the global power system. The fast-growing technologies remain dwarfed by hydro power, which has remained relatively steady in recent years, and made up 14% of the worldâ(TM)s electricity in 2024.
Phil MacDonald, Ember's managing director, said: "Solar power has become the engine of the global energy transition. Paired with battery storage, solar is set to be an unstoppable force. As the fastest-growing and largest source of new electricity, it is critical in meeting the world's ever-increasing demand for electricity."
Overall, solar power remains a relatively small part of the global energy system. It made up almost 7% of the world's electricity last year, according to Ember, while wind power made up just over 8% of the global power system. The fast-growing technologies remain dwarfed by hydro power, which has remained relatively steady in recent years, and made up 14% of the worldâ(TM)s electricity in 2024.
Great! (Score:3)
Once we can cheaply and efficiently store enough of the power we generate during daylight and high wind hours we solve two problems at once:
Inexpensive, clean power as primary baseline power and distributed power sources that can be applied flexibly to do resource leveling and serve as backup power for unavailable power sources.
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The good news is that Li battery storage prices have fallen consistently for decades, and will continue to fall. It's been 19% per doubling of capacity. 2024 saw the largest drop in prices for seven years. We're now at about 115 USD per kWh. I imagine things will change quite substantially when we get to say 50 USD per kWh.
Re:Great! (Score:5, Interesting)
Lithium will soon be on its way out for energy storage. Sodium ion will be way cheaper to purchase and the reduced energy density doesn't matter so much when the batteries are sitting in a shipping container. I expect LFP batteries to be the norm in cars until something better shows up although there are use cases for it there too - budget EVs and EVs destined for cold climates.
Re:Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we'll have a mixed economy of energy storage solutions for many decades, because there are trade-offs that make many different solutions viable for particular niches. Lots of battery chemistries, plus also compressed air, gravity systems, thermal stores, etc.
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Absolutely. I think we're in something of a Cambrian explosion of tech at the moment with new announcements left, right and centre but things will likely settle down. Eventually I imagine we'll have solid state for cars and fixed storage will use whatever is cheapest over its lifetime for the task at hand - surges, long term storage etc.
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Re:Great! (Score:5, Informative)
We already have that. There's a reason grid scale battery projects are going in everywhere around the world. Even poor African nations are investing in batteries, and I see 2 battery farms being built by CATL near our wind farms when I drive to work.
Also you don't just need the grid to accept this. The cheapest electricity plan available for commercial customers where I live provides an 85% availability with 1 day notice of up to 15% outage the following day during peak hours. That is, if you can run your business off a battery for 3 hours you get to sign up for an electrical plan that pays off that battery very quickly.
At home the rise of plug-in battery storage solutions is also taking effect as companies are starting to either massively limit the amount they pay for your home solar energy, or worse, charge you for exporting it to the grid rather than self consuming.
Batteries are an industry growing massively already.
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I just did a little bit of research, inspired by this, and UK prices seem to vary between 200 and 400 USD per kWh, vs underlying costs of about 115. So there’s clearly a lot of variability and some pretty chunky markups out there, even allowing for packaging costs
I’m looking forward to prices becoming less scalp-y in years to come!
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If you don't mind assembling them yourself (takes about 2 hours, 3 if it's your first time, and they are very heavy) then you can get Seplos 15kWh battery kit for about £1,500 with grade A cells. That's £100/kWh, and they get very good reviews.
Pre-assembled ones are around £2,000, £133/kWh.
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"£1,500 with grade A cells"
What currency is that? /. doesn't seem to know those special characters.
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Here commercial users pay a different rate to domestic ones, which is based on both the 15 minute price of electricity and things like power factor. For them solar and battery storage are huge benefits because they reduce their costs far more than they do for domestic users. The main issue they face is that a lot of them rent their properties, so can't just install it.
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"while hydrogen is experimental."
Thats a pretty long running experiment, 13.8 billion years so far.
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'hydrogen '
You meant to write 'fusion'. FTFY.
Seriously, combusting hydrogen I doubt will work out. Fusion yes, burning hydrogen, no. Though, to understand my doubt, just name the first commercially viable car to run a hydrogen engine the 'Pinto'.
And go from there.
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Confused about your comment.
a) The Pinto never ran hydrogen. There are several other commercial hydrogen cars but the Pinto wasn't one of them.
b) No vehicles are proposed to burn hydrogen. They use hydrogen fuel cells to generate electricity and then run electric motors.
c) The problem with this is nothing to do with the car and everything to do with the generation, transport and storage of hydrogen infrastructure combined with the fact that they can't fix the refueling speed (non)issue of EVs since local st
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Actually:
a) The Pinto has a place in legend of poor design, exposing the fuel tank to damage and explosion, and with disastrous results. I know full well the Pinto was not a hydrogen-fueled vehicle, I was alive back then. I drove one.
b) Burning hydrogen? Many projects to build hydrogen-combusting engines. example: Popular Mechanics [popularmechanics.com]
c) If hydrogen combusting engines are indeed produced, the fuel storage issue will be paramount. It is being considered, and there have been several technologies proposed. Patienc
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Hydrogen for grid scale storage has a problem. A bi safety problem. The "safest" way to store grid scale volumes of energy in Hydrogen is in Ammonia form, and a large ammonia tank anywhere near a built up population should scare you. That shit is nasty. The associated equipment required to produce and use it is nasty. The standards planning to be adopted in Europe for the management of this include safety systems that border on the upper limit of what IEC61508 considers viable.
There are safer ways to store
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I expect sodium ion batteries and thermal energy systems will become predominant for storing energy from the day to use at night. Sodium ion battery production is ramping up and may eventually cost half per kwh compared to lithium ion. Thermal energy systems are literally just a mass of rock / sand which is heated up and the large volume means the heat is retained for a very long time and can be converted back to energy with a turbine, or pumped through pipes to heat businesses & households.
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It's unfortunately not a viable retrofit, but thermal storage is such a game changer for new building construction.
Literally just make your foundation slab the thermal battery and poof, you slash winter heating needs with basically no install footprint required. It's not like they need any significant maintenance.
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Thermal storage is absolutely available as retrofit for existing buildings.
"Zero emission boilers" exist. They use a thermal storage medium that's heated with cheap electricity when it's available, to provide home heating when cheap electricity is not available.
There's also something to be said for additional hot water storage for domestic use.
=Smidge=
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Sure, everything has a scale of use
The issue is usually size. Long term thermal storage needs significant size to be economical and for a single family home it would take up a large part of a basement. I'm mostly talking saving summer heat for winter, multiple month storage vs a few hours.
Just vs literally zero footprint if it's built into the foundation.
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You are not "saving summer heat for winter" by simply pumping the heat into the foundation walls. Heat leaks out at an alarming rate even with the best insulated foundations. Even industrial scale thermal storage systems, like the molten salt tanks used by solar thermal powerplants, only have a useful energy storage period measured in days.
Might as well just use the planet as your thermal battery, relying on the naturally near-constant ground temperature as a source/sink for a heat pump.
=Smidge=
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Sand my dude. Sand. Can literally hold heat for up to 5-6 MONTHS. It's a terrible heat conductor which is great for this purpose.
https://www.smart-energy.com/i... [smart-energy.com]
And not just any sand. Wait, yes ANY SAND even junk stuff dredged from a river.
Literally *months* storage time with minimal losses. Hence why building your foundation out if it it is basically win win. And bigger is better as it scales faster with bigger diameter.
As long as it's just for heating (and not conversion to electricity) the eff
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> Can literally hold heat for up to 5-6 MONTHS
I don't know where you get that figure from. The siet you linked only says "months" and doesn't specify how many. According to the manufacturer of these systems, they are designed to cycle "between 20 and 200 times per year"
https://polarnightenergy.com/s... [polarnightenergy.com]
Which suggests they don't design them to store energy for more than a month, let alone multiple months. I'm sure if you pile up enough sand there will be plenty of heat left after six months of course; sur
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re: ground source heat pump. Yes, basically the same concept with the exception of needing either a big open yard for the loops or very expensive drill rig to go down.
Vs a sand battery which is just sunk into the ground via an excavator you already have on site to dig the basement etc. Given you can source all the material locally (any sand) it's, ahem, dirt cheap in comparison.
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Now I'm waiting for the next revolution...inexpensive, efficient, large scale electrical charge storage.
We have.
It is just that US media is lying about it, and the manufacturers are mostly Chinese, and can not even bother to try to sell it to you.
Solar with storage in Thailand: costs close to nothing. However I live rural. For your energy bill, only the sky is the limit.
For $1000, I am autark until the panels or battery declines.
Re:Great! (Score:5, Informative)
It's already happened. For around £12k you can have a massive solar and battery storage system on a new build home. In the warmer months with a south facing roof you won't need grid energy at all, and in the colder ones the battery can be charged on the cheap overnight rate.
Given the cost of a new build and the huge savings, it's crazy that it's not standard now... But our house builders always look for maximum profit, not decent quality housing.
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Depends on the local climate to some extent. In the southern half of the US it's not viable to be entirely grid free due to AC needs, even with avg US house/mansion sizes and good roof angles. And thanks to stupid GOP policies the US gave up a chance to build out the initial solar panel mfr'ing.
Add in uber cheap US natgas prices and the break even cost wise on solar+battery can be 15-20 years. Not terrible but not 'print money' easy with a 5 yr payoff scenario.
I'd love to go solar/battery but my county i
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It's viable in the south, you just need to insulate your homes better and install a few passive measures to reduce the need for AC. Look at homes in southern Europe for examples.
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Come down a few degrees in latitude lol
yeah there's room for improvement, but for the average existing suburban home, there's just not enough viable solar panel space to offset usage. Based on numbers a few years old I could basically zero out my winter usage (gas heat) but summer was barely half. Increased panel outputs will def help close the gap.
New construction can probably do it, especially if the house is oriented properly for maximized solar potential
Re: Great! (Score:2)
Why would I insulate a house that is going to be knocked down by a tornado or flooded and filled with mold? These tightly buttoned up homes are making people sick because they trap humid air which forms moisture near any chilled parts of the home. Drafty is best.
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We have rules about ventilation to prevent that. The key is to control the airflow and humidity. In places that are very cold a heat exchanger can be used too.
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Also we prefer cheap, shitty homes in the US. We'll still be making stick homes even though lumber has almost doubled (+90%) in 10 years, adjusted for inflation.
And there is the issue that the majority of Americans buy a used home for their first home. And you're often left with what's available. In many markets that's a stick home. In the South and Southwest there is minimal insulation. My first home in California simply had air gaps between the exterial walls. No foam, blow in, or fibre glass except in th
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I hate bricks. We should build using steel frames, like the Japanese do. But yes, by comparison to American houses, apparently European ones are way ahead.
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That surprises me that you say that. Japanese homes are so drafty and cold in the winter.
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The older ones, the traditional design ones are. Modern Japanese homes are well insulated though.
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That makes no sense, AC needs match solar power availability very well. Heating is the problem. 15 hour days with a 30 degree temperature differential (80 to 110 F ) in the summer vs 9 hour days and 70 degree differential (-5 to 65 F) in the winter. It's not even close.
My all-electric house with heat pump used 2000 Kw-hr during the coldest winter month, and 750 Kw-hr last July, including the irrigation pump.
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We have a gas furnace so we haven't seen that side of it but yeah that would be a problem as well. We run upwards of 1700 kwh in the hottest months (Virginia).
There just isn't usually enough roof space for enough panels to cover full sunny day usage let alone a cloudy one.
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forgot the part about solar matching AC needs. It's close but doesn't cover the hottest part of the day - the late afternoon and early evening. Temps are still blasting hot but production drops off. Have to have enough over production from 10-4 and have storage for it.
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Lucky for us (at least for this topic) we live in the 21st century. Where Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries, are cheap, have good energy density, and are very safe.
Best thing is, it's not just developed countries (Score:5, Interesting)
While it's great to see that wind and solar are growing fast in the developed world, it's the developing world where the transition is really exciting. For example, Pakistan is already the sixth largest solar market worldwide. It has a shitty, expensive grid prone to lots of blackouts, so behind-the-meter is where the growth is at, and it's moving from solar alone to solar+battery as those prices decline dramatically. Reminds me of how mobile phones dominate in many African countries, and the landline stage has just been skipped out (there's lots of solar growth across Africa, too)
I expect that all this will only intensify as US tariffs push Asian solar manufacturers to look for new markets.
Re:Best thing is, it's not just developed countrie (Score:4, Insightful)
I am unclear what you think you're trying to say here.
Pakistan is importing cheap solar PV and storage from China, almost exclusively driven by the private sector buying this stuff to deliver cheap reliable power for both commercial and residential settings. Much though the Trumpistas may wish it otherwise, it is in fact more efficient and creates more prosperity for nations to engage in some trade than to attempt to become entirely self-sufficient, and the value of having cheap electricity in Pakistan today far exceeds any putative additional future value that could be gained by Pakistan only installing domestically produced solar and nurturing this into an industry of its own. Pakistan deployed upwards of 22GW of solar in 2024! It would have taken literally decades for a Pakistani solar industry to be able to deliver that amount, and the electricity being produced by that solar is being used right now to deliver huge value to the Pakistani economy.
Re:Best thing is, it's not just developed countrie (Score:4, Insightful)
He's a troll/contrarian.
Note the utter vapid conflation of 'using' a product vs 'building' one
Solar PV and batteries are technologies that require a lot of skilled labor, mining and refining of many different minerals
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This is a completely bizarre take.
All power generation requires machinery and fuel. In the case of renewables, the fuel is free and not subject to control by hostile actors. China can't prevent Pakistan's access to the sun. But nuclear and fossil fuels require access to the fuel, and that fuel would be coming from abroad, making Pakistan *more* subject to the whims of hostile state actors. If you're preaching energy independence, then stop pushing for power generation types (nuclear, fossil fuels) that crea
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While it's great to see that wind and solar are growing fast in the developed world, it's the developing world where the transition is really exciting. For example, Pakistan is already the sixth largest solar market worldwide.
Did this use of solar power develop naturally? Or were the developing nations somehow coerced into using solar power?
Naturally.
Developing countries don't have the pre-existing infrastructure of a reliable electrical grid. When you don't have a grid to start with, solar looks much better.
Likewise, developing countries don't have the pre-existing investment in large-scale power plants. More critically, they have economic problems exacerbated by having to find money to import fossil fuels. They really like new infrastructure that doesn't require buying fuels.
And finally, not to be ignored: a lot of developing countries are i
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equally important, they don't have the entrenched politics of regulatory capture by the existing grid infrastructure operators.
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Pakistan and India probable have the best conditions in terms of sunshine and wind to exploit renewables but they need their respective governments to back it. They also have the most to gain considering the demonstrable harm fossil fuels and pollution are causing to their countries.
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The governments in Asia are not "backing" much.
If there is something to regulate, they simply set the guide lines.
And often the government itself provides a basic service for everyone. The "free market" is free to compete on price and quality.
If I would only use Government services in Thailand (I do not qualify, e.g. I would not get a bank account at a government bank), I would have top notch service, for nearly no money payment. Many things like health care are included in taxes. The motor bike nurses come
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It would certainly help if the Pakistani and Indian governments built out large scale and low corruption programs to deploy renewables, but in the meantime this is being driven by the private sector. And the Pakistani government has a terrible track record with electricity -- the national grid is awful, which is why precisely why the private sector has been focusing on buying in solar and storage. This in itself is making the grid problems worse (demand is actually declining!), but the only way to solve thi
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I expect that all this will only intensify as US tariffs push Asian solar manufacturers to look for new markets.
There is actually no "new markets" to be had. The USA investment in solar on a global scale was actually quite abysmal. Asian manufacturers already have massive business interests the entire world over including Europe and Australia, as well as the developing world. I suspect the tariffs won't impact this at all, not the least because investment in solar in the USA has already cratered in the past couple of months thanks to political uncertainty around green ideology. Now lets talk about the global demand f
Re: Best thing is, it's not just developed countri (Score:2)
It's not that stupid. It's incorrect of course. But millions of ordinary people struggle to understand fascism and its loser idealology. People voted for these things BECAUSE they are losers. They didn't want to blame themselves, so they blamed Mexicans, China, NATO, federal employees, etc.
And as expected from a murderous loser idealology, they accept accomplishing their goals by any means necessary. That goal, is put losers back on top in America, like in the good old days.
If they have to promote loyal inc
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The thing with renewables is that it's available to basically everybody. Coal, oil, gas power is only available to those countries which have them as resources, or can arrange trade for those resources. And as you can see these days, trade is a hot topic.
But solar is available to basically all countries through the year, as are wind and other renewable sources. Other than perhaps having to buy the equipment, it's standalone. You can train your people in the upkeep and maintenance and not be dependent on oth
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Renewables are also an inherently more distributed power source than fossil fuels and nuclear, and thus more resilient against malicious acts
I wouldn't call that dwarfed (Score:2)
Wind + solar matching hydro isn't what I'd call being dwarfed. Seems like a great milestone really.
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Wind + solar matching hydro isn't what I'd call being dwarfed. Seems like a great milestone really.
I was thinking the same thing. Wind+solar seemed to actually be a tiny bit more than hydro.
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Re: Sure, Jan. (Score:2)
Because we aren't fining coal, oil, and gas an amount equivalent to the cost incurred by the commons. Earth shares the same air, nobody can own it but we all use it.
Goes to show that complacency ... (Score:2)
... was and is the actual problem. We just need to get our collective sh*t together and could've had the eco-turnaround decades ago. But we have to get knee-deep into a global ecological tilt before we start looking alive. It's kinda pathetic if you think about it.
Re:Goes to show that complacency ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it was even that. Tech has improved so much that even with the massive direct and indirect fossil fuel subsidies and support, renewables are cheaper and especially easier to scale in both directions (small amounts in many places).
At this point from a purely economic perspective you have to have a deeply contrarian streak to not see the value. I don't think it's that prior have realized anything deep unfortunately.
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Pundits often talk about the "base load". Coal and nuclear can not do anything else than base load, because they are too inert for anything e
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They are definitely base load plants yeah, though the weather is somewhat predictable and they can be ramped up and down over the timescale of accurate weather predictions, and of course predictive novels of grid power usage.
They also add spinning mass which is important, though that can of course be added by other means in the form of synchronous condensers.
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Coal and nuclear can not do anything else than base load, because they are too inert for anything else.
You are mixing up power plants that intentionally where build to be not able to follow load, like German nukes, with power plants that can. E.g. German coal plants.
Being baseload is a technical/business decision made during plant design. French nukes have for example limited load following capacities. Makes them "challenging" to orchestrate, but for France it works just fine.
German Coal plants in general w
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What Germany is doing is letting steam pressure go to waste if there is not enough demand for electric power at the moment. This stabilized the network frequency of 50 Hz, but essentially, the coal plant is not running at maximum efficiency. From a cold start, a German lignite power plant (the slowest type because of the low energy content of lignite) needs
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and even a so called hot start for a hard coal power plant until maximum capacity takes about two hours
That is not relevant.
You know hours in advance that you want to use the plant.
From a cold start, a German lignite power plant (the slowest type because of the low energy content of lignite) Has nothing to do with energy content. The plants are intentionally designed as base load plants. They were never supposed to load follow.
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I don't think it's that prior have realized anything deep unfortunately.
Parsing ... parsing ... parsing ... what?
How? (Score:4)
Hydro 14%
Nuclear 11%
Wind 8%
Solar 7%
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Oh, they are counting nuclear as renewable. Greenpeace would argue with that, but they argue with everything.
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No, they counted it as "clean" energy. In other words carbon-neutral.
...at a cost... (Score:1)
...At a cost 100% higher.
Clean (Score:2)