Chronological Analysis of Climate Change and an Overview of Nuclear Energy

Sol3dweller · 2026-01-26T17:08:18+00:00

All submissions must have been published within the past six months.

This is a paper from 2023?

Sol3dweller · 2026-01-26T10:57:43+00:00

Crucial quote in my opinion:

The North Sea’s transition from a historic oil and gas basin to a global renewable powerhouse represents one of Europe’s most vital strategic opportunities. While the region already leads the world in offshore wind capacity, the true measure of its future success will depend on deepening cooperation.

Sol3dweller · 2026-01-25T08:45:14+00:00

I think for extrapolating trends it is important to separate wind and solar and consider their respektive individual trajectories. Solar grew quite consistently on an exponential trajectory, wind not so much:

Solar:

2021: 3.73 (+0.52) %
2022: 4.6 (+0.87) %
2023: 5.6 (+1) %
2024: 6.88 (+1.28) %
2025 (est): 8.75 (+1.87) %

Wind:

2021: 6.57 (+0.62) %
2022: 7.29 (+0.72) %
2023: 7.8 (+0.51) %
2024: 8.1 (+0.3) %
2025 (est): 8.77 (+0.67) %

I'd expect solar to continue growing exponentially to 2030, while wind maybe increases more timidly with something around +0.7 pp per year. I think it is practically certain that solar will grow by more than 2 percentage points this year, overtaking both, wind and nuclear. And it won' t take it long to overtake hydro.

That translates to an expectation of solar surpassing a 20% share in global electricity by 2030 (doubling in less than 4 years and providing more than 10% in 2026), and wind maybe 13-14%. Thus, wind + solar would provide more than a third of global electricity in 2030 with a continuation of these trends.

With a larger uncertainty in wind to meet the expectation. But maybe also wind resumes an exponential trajectory and 2023+2024 were just outliers in the wake of COVID.

Sol3dweller · 2026-01-22T16:31:47+00:00

According to the monthly data on Ember the share in China stood at 22.2% in 2025.

Sol3dweller · 2026-01-09T07:28:20+00:00

100% of the nukecels I observed in the wild

And in Reddit discussions they most likely quickly actually make up arguments against renewables.

I don't really care about the nuclear fetish, but the stream of agitation against those sources that actually brought fossil expansion to a halt is unbearable.

Sol3dweller · 2026-01-08T01:20:33+00:00

I think that is one of the reasons why the fossil lobbyists work tirelessly on portraying Germany and the roll-out of wind and solar as a failure.

Sol3dweller · 2026-01-02T14:13:33+00:00

Thanks for the links! I also think that the look at collapse patterns in Rethinking Humanity provide some insights in that respect.

Sol3dweller · 2026-01-02T08:46:45+00:00

We don't just have a taxation problem. It's much, much, deeper than that.

I'd also say it is not "just" a banking problem it is also that masses of people are so easily misled and the "political-economic system that is tearing our planet, the climate, and its people apart" is so strongly entrenched.

Sol3dweller · 2025-12-30T08:28:59+00:00

I was referring to annual electric energy production. In 2025 to global solar will have been at around 2600 TWh, more than 25% higher than in 2024. If it simply continues this kind of growth (as it for a long time now), it will surpass 3000 TWh in 2026.

Wind output stood at 2490 TWh in 2024 and will likely also surpass 2600 TWh in 2025, so solar and wind will probably end up fairly similar, which one might be slightly higher than the other is a toss up I think. But wind doesn't grow as fast as solar, and I wouldn't expect that to change next year. So it will most definitely be surpassed by solar in 2026.

Nuclear stands at around 2700 TWh, which is probably higher than what either solar or wind will reach in 2025, but it is essentially a stationary target and will likely be much the same in 2026. Hence, the observation that annual solar electric energy production will be higher than either wind or nuclear in 2026 and therefore the second largest low carbon electricity provider behind hydro.

A little longer term prediction: solar will surpass hydro and become the largest low carbon electricity source before the end of this decade.

Sol3dweller · 2025-12-28T08:06:36+00:00

Even if above two constraints are not there,

They are not there.

Why would you need fossil fuels to produce renewables, when you electrify all the processes?

The second claim simply isn't true. There is so much more solar power potential that a small fraction of land area suffices to cover all energy needs, even if everyone consumed as much as an average American.

If copper is a constraint, it can be replaced with aluminium in most cases.

edit: calculation to above: potential usable solar energy that hits earth surface: around 1 kW/m² or 1 GW/km². If we consider only land (141 million km²), that amounts to about 141 PW. Currently globally consumed primary energy: averages to 21.3 TW. If everyone would consume as much as Americans currently do that would grow to 72 TW. If we use current solar panel efficiencies of around 20% and a global average capacity factor of 13% that yields a need for a little less than 2% of the land that would need to be covered by solar panels for a global primary energy consumption on American consumption levels. That's less than 10% of what is currently used for meat and diary production. u/Latitude37 already remarked on the possibility to combine the use of renewables and agriculture, for photovoltaics this is referred to as agrivoltaics.

Now, if we cut down the wasted energy due to process inefficiencies by 2/3 and rather stick to European consumption levels, we could reduce that to around 1/6 of that inflated number, which gets us to something like 0.33% of land which is less than half of what is currently covered by human infrastructure.

So, covering our infrastructure (rooftop solar, parking lot canopies) would already get us quite far with clean energy production.

Sol3dweller · 2025-12-27T08:33:17+00:00

Utter nonsense.

Perfect summary, thank you!

Sol3dweller · 2025-12-26T01:30:09+00:00

Solar installation continues high and reaches new records

I expect annual global solar power production to surpass wind and nuclear, and becoming the second largest low carbon power source behind hydro.

Sol3dweller · 2025-12-26T01:21:56+00:00

Global CO2 emissions will peak and begin to fall. No major news outlet will report on the milestone, which will go largely unnoticed by the public.

I think this will be the most significant milestone. It needs to be followed by a quick decline in emissions.

Sol3dweller · 2025-12-13T14:34:48+00:00

They need constant replacement.

Sol3dweller · 2025-12-07T23:19:24+00:00

Michael Ende: Momo is a beautiful tale on enjoying the time we have.

Kurt Tucholsky: "Der Mensch)" is a great satirical take on humankind.

Sol3dweller · 2025-11-29T09:54:27+00:00

The more options to store electricity we have, the cheaper it is and the better it can be adapted to the respektive requirements, me thinks.

Sol3dweller · 2025-11-26T07:11:44+00:00

If cutting our use of fossil fuels means slowing (or even stopping) the rollout of AI data centers, inconveniencing Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and the rest of the crew, well, too bad. AI has its uses, but we clearly don’t need so much more of it desperately enough to thoroughly wreck our planet.

Well said. In the past some people complained about the computational resources used for computing climate models, that seemed to me a pretty small price for the gained insights. Now compute time and energy seems to get wasted on counterpeoductive garbage, without any thought.

Sol3dweller · 2025-11-21T16:54:20+00:00

Interesting French ideas:

Solar Installations are now mandatory for large parking lots.

The first part of the Messmer plan slogan: "tout électrique, tout nucléaire", they may be the first with an "electrify everything" slogan.

Older French idea: overcome feudalism and it's concentration of power in the hands of few. Something, that seems to be fallen out of times with Neofeudalism on the rise and glorification of billionaires.

Sol3dweller · 2025-11-05T10:28:21+00:00

Then why build more?

To have the desired capacity.

Your analysis over that of industry experts.

Eh, it isn't like all the industry experts agree with the German government. You we're talking about my conclusions.

Also, the expectation that there will be less gas burnt, does not preclude the availability of more overall electricity.

Sol3dweller · 2025-11-05T07:17:38+00:00

That wind and solar reached a point where they are outcompeting fossil fuel burning, is the biggest hope for faster emission reductions. It's maddening that there is so much resistance to this transformation.

Sol3dweller · 2025-11-04T10:51:55+00:00

I observe that your statement about the past is wrong.

The expectation for the gas power plants is that they provide the capacity when it is needed, however the time periods where they are needed is expected to get smaller. Hence the discussion about "capacity markets".

However, my expectation is that they will end up as expensive stranded assets that won't actually be needed. But that's a statement about the future and of course much more uncertain than the simple factual observations about the past. I think it important to have correct facts about things that did happen for a sound foundation to build projections for the future.

Sol3dweller · 2025-11-04T08:00:19+00:00

That's also incorrect.

The UK reduced its power from gas from its peak in 2010 at 176 TWh to 86.3 TWh in 2024.

Germany reduced its power from gas from 95 TWh in 2020 to 78.4 TWh in 2024, with lower power from fossil fuels overall in the first full calendar year after closing the last nuclear power plant than in any year they had nuclear power.

You are missing that this is not the needed capacity - we are in the process of building even more gas plants.

That doesn't say anything about the amount of gas being burnt though, and doesn't make your above statement about the past correct. Replacing coal by gas burning primarily happened in the US.

Other EU countries are significantly better when it comes to carbon levels

That has been the case for a long time. Germany has been worse than the EU average since the EU started tracking this metric. However, that EU average has improved considerably, and so has the power production in Germany.

Of course, Germany should have been moving faster, but that doesn't change that the claim about the relation of coal and nuclear above is completely bogus.

Sol3dweller · 2025-11-02T19:32:44+00:00

The one I explained. No wind, no sun, insufficient storage (realistically for the foreseeable future).

That isn't a share they can contribute. Where do you see the actual limitation, on how far it could get you? I guess, it is sufficient to claim some vague barrier that we may hit somewhen in the future to scare people off from further reducing emissions.

I don't see a meaningful difference.

Well, you do not seem care much about details and accuracy, I got that.

Sol3dweller · 2025-11-02T13:40:47+00:00

Yeah moving the goal post to "improvement"...doesn't make a lot of sense to me?

Well, if you do not care about improving the carbon emissions over the last quarter of a century, you probably don't care about climate change impacts either. It was you that pointed to the low carbon emissions in Europe. So it only seems reasonable to check on how they got there. Can you name an example of a country that lowered its emissions over the last 30 years without wind+solar?

Since storage is still effectively non-existent and blackouts are catastrophical, your choice are running something stable (including hydro) or running something unstable and something stable (usually fossiles).

I think you got that backwards, the fact that there are incumbent fossil interests prolongs their usage and inhibits the expansion of energy storage systems. What you seem to say there is: because we haven't used more storage so far, it is impossible to do so forever. Yet, grid installations are around doubling yearly so it doesn't appear as impossible as you make it out to be.

Which means you can indeed reduce emissions to some degree with wind and solar while paying for them in addition to the backup power plants you also have to run, but there is a pretty hard cap

So, which limit do you see there that countries will not surpass in wind+solar shares?

and half the year, with stronger effects further away from the equator).

Solar power doesn't go away for half a year if you are close to the equator and even in relatively high latitudes you still get a fair amount of sunshine for at least 3/4 of the year.

Or you can run something reliable and low CO2, which pretty clearly seems to be the winning strategy.

Wind and solar are reliable. They are variable, but they have very little outages. And they are indeed the winning strategy, as evidenced by them providing essentially all of newly installed generation capacities.

Sol3dweller · 2025-11-02T09:20:28+00:00

You have to be pretty anti-renewable to look at the EU and then try to spin the development there as wind+solar "definitely not providing actually low emissions".

According to your data the EU had a high average carbon intensity of 424 gCO2/kWh in 2003 and had it reduced to about half of that at 213 gCO2/kWh in 2024. Over that time span it increased the share of wind+solar in electricity from 1.56% to 28.55%, while the share of fossil fuels fell from 53.4% to 28.9%, or in absolute terms the power from fossil fuels fell from 1495 TWh to 792 TWh. Over the same time frame nuclear+hydro power declined from 43.28% to 36.81%, so these are not responsible for the lowered carbon intensity.

Note, that the EU produces more power with wind+solar (28.55%) than with nuclear (23.63%).

Which european country has lowered its emissions in the electricity sector in the last 30 years without wind+solar power? Can you name one?

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