This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I wish people would stop conflating energy with electricity.
So Germany had ⅔ of it's electricity from renewables, but still has gas for warming homes, petrol for cars, diesel for trucks, and so on.
That's fair, but it's still a very relevant metric. It shows the automatic transition made in electrification when people switch over to heat pumps, electric stoves or EVs.
It skews the metrics though. By the title you'd think Germany is already more than halfway through to become carbon neutral, when it is obviously still extremely far away from that goal. People read this and think we're actually doing okay.
The hell is "doing okay"?
I am so frustrated by the discourse around renewables and climate change. Everybody online seems to be treating it like a puzzle or a board game, where you "win" at climate change when you find the "right" solution.
That's not how it works. I don't care about the "carbon neutrality" of Germany any more than I care about the "carbon neutrality" of a patch of the Atlantic Ocean. It's a global process that is never going to end. We're always going to need energy, it's always going to come from a mix of sources and we need to eventually find a global equilibrium we can strive to maintain.
Data is data, but taking issue with news, and particularly positive news, as if they were propaganda in a campaign where eventually people will have to elect the one source of energy they consume is kind of absurd. Yes, renewables are gaining ground, solar is moving faster than expected and no, that doesn't make the issue go away and we still need to accelerate the process and remove additional blockers to that acceleration. There are no silver bullets and there never will be.
Exactly. Both numbers are interesting, because electricity will likely be scaled up in the same proportions. If we're comparing countries, we should use total energy, but if we're just looking at progress within a country, looking at electricity generation is totally valid.
You're right, but if you read beyond the title it's clearly stated that it's about electricity generation.
For anyone who is interested in a detailed view of these stats worldwide in real time and cross-border with carbon intensities and individual breakdowns by electricity source: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/72h
WTF is Australia doing? Aren't they aware they have plenty of sunshine and an insanely long shoreline?
Australia is just an oil company, a coal company, and a mining company disguised as a trench coat. The Liberal party (essentially just American Republicans opposed to guns) spent 2 decades killing any green energy initiatives in favor of fracking the Outback
IIRC Australia mines a huge amount of coal
Shame, innit? They could be the n1 Solar panel producers per capita and panel exporters...oh well. This is why the charge against fossil fuels has to be led by net consumers (in the name of defense against geopolitical risk) and the producers will inevitably reduce extraction for export...but local consumption of coal probably will never disappear completely unless locals complain about air pollution and lag in exportable tech.
Really cool. Thanks for the share. Also quite depressing, most countries (even rich ones who have like triple responsibility) are barely even trying.
Meanwhile, the USA is 24%-ish renewables and 60%-ish fossil fuels. Damn fossil fuel industry and anti-progress politicians.
One of the nicer upshots of cutting the cord with Russia is the sky high price of electricity incentivizing big investments in renewable energy.
next up: zero teslas.
if germans chose a route, they, walk. (ww2, manufacturing cars, end of nuclear power..)
so fuck you elon. we hate you so much.
UK for comparison (Average over year)
| GW | % | |
|---|---|---|
| Coal | 0.18 | 0.6 |
| Gas | 8.31 | 27.7 |
| Solar | 1.52 | 5.1 |
| Wind | 9.36 | 31.1 |
| Hydroelectric | 0.41 | 1.4 |
| Nuclear | 4.36 | 14.5 |
| Biomass | 2.15 | 7.1 |
Edit: Imports are the remainder
The sum of those percentages is 87.5%. So what's the rest, maybe import from France or Norway?
There's a joke in there about the power of hot air but I'm not confident enough in my knowledge of British politics to make it
Biomass may well be renewable, but I still don't think it counts as green.
Nice graph with no freaking labels.
