UN says booming solar, wind and other green energy hits global tipping point for even lower costs

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

NEW YORK (AP) — The global switch to renewable energy has passed a “positive tipping point” where solar and wind power will become even cheaper and more widespread, according to two United Nations reports released Tuesday, describing a bright spot amid otherwise gloomy progress to curb climate change.

Last year, 74% of the growth in electricity generated worldwide was from wind, solar and other green sources, according to the U.N.’s multiagency report, called Seizing the Moment of Opportunity. It found that 92.5% of all new electricity capacity added to the grid worldwide in that time period came from renewables. Meanwhile, sales of electric vehicles are up from 500,000 in 2015 to more than 17 million in 2024.

The three cheapest electricity sources globally last year were onshore wind, solar panels and new hydropower, according to an energy cost report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Solar power now is 41% cheaper and wind power is 53% cheaper globally than the lowest-cost fossil fuel, the reports said. Fossil fuels, which are the chief cause of climate change, include coal, oil and natural gas.

“The fossil fuel age is flailing and failing,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in Tuesday morning speech unveiling the reports. “We are in the dawn of a new energy era. An era where cheap, clean, abundant energy powers a world rich in economic opportunity.”

https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-solar-wind-power-fossil-fuels-6aca4846e594ea8405f91edda39a03ad

Meanwhile Donny Shit for Brains wants to double on fossil fuels.

[vayeah2]

1. about issue

good

[hunter]

2. Funny how the places with the most aggressive renewable energy programs...

... tend to have the most expensive electricity.

At the moment 82% of my electricity is coming from "renewable" sources but I still have to pay for gas power plants that are idling, ready to pick up the load when the weather changes or the sun goes down. I also have to pay for the additional infrastructure required to bring me this "renewable" electricity.

https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply

None of this shit is going to "save the world." It might even be accelerating the inevitable collapse of our world civilization as it dangles a false hope in front of us as our consumption of fossil fuels increases.

A comparison of France to Germany, Denmark, or England is always informative.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR/72h/hourly

[NNadir]

3. One hears this stuff year after year after year.

Meanwhile year after year after year the rate at which the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide accumulates increases.

Systems that require redundancy are neither cheap nor clean. The claim that they are "cheap" entirely apply when they operate only, the problem being that they are unreliable. They exhibit appalling capacity utilization, generally at best 30%. The other 70% they rely on access to fossil fuels.

Over five trillion dollars has been squandered on solar and wind infrastructure in the last decade to produce less than 20 exajoules of energy each year on a planet now with an energy demand close to 650 exajoules. Even the wires to connect all this junk together are unsustainable never mind the cost of the rickety short lived infrastructure itself.

The European electricity prices this past winter went through the roof when the so called "renewable energy" infrastructure in that coal dependent hellhole Germany was producing nothing much during a few months of Dunkleflaute, causing the German word to become internationally known. German industrial infrastructure is extremely stressed by energy costs. Their carbon intensity is appalling, disgraceful.

Still we hear this religious chants to aeolian and sun gods, claiming they are affordable and clean. They are no such thing. All of the solar and wind infrastructure on this planet will be vast piles of waste before today's newborns finish college, if there are colleges from which to graduate.

It's more than a little late to still hear these chants, whether they come under the aegis of the UN or anyone else. The scheme has failed. The world is burning. Enthusiasm for so called "renewable energy" was never about fighting fossil fuels. In my opinion one needs to be as dumb as the orange pedophile in the White House to think that. It was always about attacking the only truly sustainable form of energy ever invented, that invented by some of the finest minds of the 20th century, nuclear energy.

The Germans didn't shut their coal plants or coal mines. They embraced them, especially after they were embarrassed out of funding Putin's war machine, which was another result of their "renewable energy is cheap and clean" lie. They shut their nuclear plants.

So called "renewable energy" isn't cheap; it isn't clean; it isn't sustainable. It's overly expensive rise is as reactionary as the rise of the ugly specter of fascism worldwide, which may be a function, if only subtly apparent, of the on going collapse of the planetary ecosystem:

Fascism is driven by fear. The failure of our energy system almost certainly drives fear. Terrified masses are not prone to rationality. There is, in these times, much to fear, the result of big lies, not only those on the right, but those we tell ourselves on the left.

History will not forgive us nor should it.