World passes 30% renewables milestone for the first time
www.euronews.com
A decline in fossil fuel power is now ‘inevitable’, the report's authors say.
  • golli@lemm.eeEnglish
    5·
    5 months ago

    Gas, oil and coal demand is reducing globally; however global investment in fossil fuels is increasing, albeit at a far lower rate than renewables.

    For coal the summary definitely seems to support the reduction in themand, but at least for the next few years gas and oil still seem quite stable to me.

    I suspect this is driven by third world countries, where the initial cost can put off investment in renewable infrastructure;

    Shouldn’t it be the other way around, particularly for solar? Easy to set up, cheaper, flexible to scale, and the more decentralized setup might even help with poor electricity grid, since you can just set them up whereever needed and even have them work insular without connection the the network.

    Also this report suggests that energy production from coal, gas, oil, hydro and nuclear have starting to plateau from 2021, with solar still showing an marginal increase alongside wind, bio energy and ‘other’: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked

    Imo the recent events have made it a bit hard to judge trends just from a few years. 2021 you are right in the middle of covid screwing over global trade, following that you have russia invading ukraine and the subsequent shift in europe (will be interesting how that plays out once the conflict ends), and as the main article of this thread suggests hydro was heavily affected by recent droughts (although those might become the norm). Only nuclear might be somewhat easier to extrapolate, since new capacity doesn’t just magically appear, but involves long term planning.

    • YungOnions@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      5 months ago

      Shouldn’t it be the other way around, particularly for solar? Easy to set up, cheaper, flexible to scale, and the more decentralized setup might even help with poor electricity grid, since you can just set them up whereever needed and even have them work insular without connection the the network.

      Yeah, I would’ve thought that to, but according to the following report apparently not: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/renewables-are-the-key-to-green-secure-affordable-energy/

      But in developing countries, lack of access to finance under reasonable terms makes the costly upfront investments in renewable energy unaffordable. In addition, macroeconomic and political uncertainties discourage private sector investors from supporting renewable energy.

      • golli@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        5 months ago

        Interesting. Now that you mention it, i remember listening to a podcast that mentioned financing being a big obstacle for wind turbines, particularly the offshore projects, due to exactly that upfront cost. And i can imagine that for developing countries that is even worse.

        Still i’d have thought that solar wouldn’t quite have this same kind of problem, but i guess as the article suggests fossil fuels were cheaper, there’s a political angle, and things are slowly improving.

        • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          5 months ago

          Yes and no. Yes there were big issues blamed on financing but I understood it as contracts that were profitable at low interest rates suddenly weren’t when interest rates rose quickly.

          If the customer won’t re-negotiate when conditions change, since that’s the point of a contract, at some point it’s cheaper to just break the contract and take whatever the hit is.