Progress has been incredibly rapid. Solar power in particular has gotten exponentially cheaper and more widely deployed. We are in an incredibly deep hole and are aiming at a rapidly moving target (energy demand is growing rapidly due to AI) but we've already hit our first inflection point in terms of renewables making up almost of our added capacity and it's within reach for fossil fuel usage to peak and start falling. Of course, that's still only early milestones since we will continue to add GHGs even as the pace slows. But right now it actually really seems like we have a grip on the problem and are moving in the right direction. It's really not the time to despair, but to double down.
Absolutely hilarious to me that the biggest catalyst toward global attention to renewables in the last two decades is Trump's ridiculous adventure in the gulf.
Treating alternative energy and PHEVs/EVs as a core national security concern should have started in the early 2000s. Yes, the PV revolution hadn't happened yet, but the hybrid auto was released in 1998 or so, and a PHEV is a natural extension to that.
I'm weak on recollection as to when PV and wind started their big price plummet, but it was certainly in the 2010s.
It's still not too late for ... everyone.
In particular, I think PHEVs should be an regulated requirement for all consumer (and probably semis, why aren't they hybrids yet just so they can have better acceleration/torque and regen braking) vehicles in ten years, with a 10-year decreasing subsidy for PHEV and a 10-year increasing penalty for car registration and new car purchases of pure ICE.
PHEVs will maximize available battery supply to the most electrification of transport.
I also think home solar+storage should be heavily subsidized, because you don't need to do nearly as much grid adaptation and, keeping with national security, it makes communities much more disaster resilient if homes are somewhat power independent and they can charge a vehicle for trips.
> “The mere fact that the conference is happening is already a success,” said Claudio Angelo, senior policy adviser at Brazil’s Climate Observatory, a network of environmental, civil society and academic groups
The bar has been set so low that talking about it is seen as success now.
Sometimes I think the only way we'll really make meaningful progress is if we simply run out of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, we're just too good at getting them and too motivated to do so.
There is so much coal. There is at least 130 years worth at current consumption levels. And despite what everyone says about renewables and green energy and etc, world use still hit a high in 2024. We aren't going to run out of (coal at least) for a long time--and usage is still going up!
If the world is to stay within a range of carbon emissions that avoids catastrophic global warming, 80 percent of the fossil fuel industry’s reserves must remain unused in the ground.
If we "run out" we'll have done ourselves terrific injury.
I've seen this succintly and accurately described this way: "No One Goes to War Over a Solar Panel" [1].
If you think about it, once you build a solar panel, it just produces power for the next 20-30 years. Then you buy another one and replace it. To get oil or natural gas, you need to drill a well. That well requires constant labor. What many don't seem to know is that oil wells decline in production over time. It's called the "decline rate". For the Permian Basin (source of the US shale revolution), the decline rate is 15-20% per year. So a well producing 1000bpd (barrels per day) will be producing ~500bpd in 3 years. That means you have to constantly be drilling new wells.
Oil wells (and resource extractors like mines in general) are great wealth concentrators. Solar panels are not. So the point of that quote is that a limited resource creates wealth and is limited but also war is profitable (for the weapons manufacturers) so every incentie lays in continued fossil fuel use because it's constantly minting new billionaires.
One thing I'll add here is that there are a lot of energy usages for fossil fuels for which we have no alternative. Aviation is a big one. To some extent, so is truck freight (although China is busy electrifying this too [2]). There are a lot of non-energy uses too eg plastics, industrial, chemicals, construction. So fossil fuels aren't going away anytime soon but we sure could take a leaf out of Chin's commitment to renewable energy [3][4][5].
Instead we get nonsense like warnings to Europe of a dangerous dependency on Chinese clean tech [6].
Interesting that Colombia is currently powering more than 70% of their electrical consumption on hydropower. They currently have about 65 TWh of hydropower capacity; the total feasible generation potential is around 200 TWh. Makes then an interesting country to host such talks.
Good for them, but for most of the world there are no good hydropower locations left. And even when they exist building them is a local ecological disaster.
Most of South America has worked like this for decades. Hydropower is king even in Venezuela. It's altruistic on their part, but it may have reduced their long-term economic growth. Viewed in terms of GDP per capita, South America is a laggard. But if you change the denominator and look at GDP per kWh (energy intensity) they are surprisingly close to the rich world.
There is a hidden upside to all this hydro: it could potentially be upgraded to pumped storage and support a massive expansion of solar and wind. However, no SA country has such a forward-looking energy policy.
That's not really relevant. Even if you look at countries like Norway that have gone all in on EVs and decarbonizing rapidly, they still export oil faster than ever. So long as no one interrupts the global trade of fossil fuels, they don't care.
internal consumption engines (ICE), are rapidly becoming niche power sources
sodium batteries and solar pv, will take over most of the worlds grids quite quickly now, there are no bariers left
any country that resists will be left behind
and suffer the consequences of uncompetitive
costs
The remaining barriers elsewhere are often policy related.
There are many examples across the world where countries are doing very sub optimal things that simply don't make any economical sense. Germany has a lot of industry close to where coal used to be mined that is very energy intensive that is now being powered with expensive gas. Likewise, instead of using electrical heat pumps, most of their buildings still use gas boilers. Worse, they are not even fixing that in new buildings they build.
The UK has lots of wind power. But it prices its electricity based on the highest cost generation on the grid, which is usually gas. So, data centers get built close to London because the electricity isn't any cheaper in Scotland where all the clean renewable power is. And since they have too much of that, they actually just curtail it instead of giving a little discount to the locals (or just pricing it negatively and paying them to consume the power). So, like the Germans, the Scots also use gas for heating their houses.
Germany has a few million apartment blocks. They pretty much all run on gas. There is no plan to fix that. You might have noticed that gas is really expensive and has to be imported in LNG form as of a few years ago. That's costing many billions per year. Even if they would build gas power plants and converted all those buildings to use electrical heat pumps, it would still save billions in less imported gas (heat pumps are amazingly efficient). And of course they have a lot of frequently curtailed wind power as well. Germany is too busy spending money on gas to fix the problem that they need so much gas.
Policy changes could straighten inefficiencies like these out in a relatively short time. But those are controversial because high prices mean high profits for incumbent companies. So governments are dragging their feet and are not doing anything about this. Those big companies are lobbying to protect their profits. And the fossil fuel industry is cheering them along and pitching fantasy schemes about hydrogen to delay their inevitable demise. The public spending on that is insane if you understand how piss poor the economics around hydrogen are. Incentives are completely misaligned, policy prevents a lot of otherwise very rational/economical action, and a lot of that is perpetuated by companies that thrive on the expensive status quo and the politicians they have in their pocket.
The current crisis in the Gulf is probably going to accelerate a lot of policy changes by quite a lot. Nothing like a good crisis to force some changes.
Maybe he has been installed by the renewable energy sector actually to get the whole world onto renewables as soon as possible.
Of course, they had to give up on or delay America’s renewable future, but that may be a small
Price to pay, and anyways renewables are growing in the U.S. despite the administration’s frankly insane efforts to block it
22 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 48.7 ms ] threadhttps://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/solar-surge-halts-fo...
I'm weak on recollection as to when PV and wind started their big price plummet, but it was certainly in the 2010s.
It's still not too late for ... everyone.
In particular, I think PHEVs should be an regulated requirement for all consumer (and probably semis, why aren't they hybrids yet just so they can have better acceleration/torque and regen braking) vehicles in ten years, with a 10-year decreasing subsidy for PHEV and a 10-year increasing penalty for car registration and new car purchases of pure ICE.
PHEVs will maximize available battery supply to the most electrification of transport.
I also think home solar+storage should be heavily subsidized, because you don't need to do nearly as much grid adaptation and, keeping with national security, it makes communities much more disaster resilient if homes are somewhat power independent and they can charge a vehicle for trips.
The bar has been set so low that talking about it is seen as success now.
Sometimes I think the only way we'll really make meaningful progress is if we simply run out of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, we're just too good at getting them and too motivated to do so.
Less oil, more wars about it.
If we "run out" we'll have done ourselves terrific injury.
If you think about it, once you build a solar panel, it just produces power for the next 20-30 years. Then you buy another one and replace it. To get oil or natural gas, you need to drill a well. That well requires constant labor. What many don't seem to know is that oil wells decline in production over time. It's called the "decline rate". For the Permian Basin (source of the US shale revolution), the decline rate is 15-20% per year. So a well producing 1000bpd (barrels per day) will be producing ~500bpd in 3 years. That means you have to constantly be drilling new wells.
Oil wells (and resource extractors like mines in general) are great wealth concentrators. Solar panels are not. So the point of that quote is that a limited resource creates wealth and is limited but also war is profitable (for the weapons manufacturers) so every incentie lays in continued fossil fuel use because it's constantly minting new billionaires.
One thing I'll add here is that there are a lot of energy usages for fossil fuels for which we have no alternative. Aviation is a big one. To some extent, so is truck freight (although China is busy electrifying this too [2]). There are a lot of non-energy uses too eg plastics, industrial, chemicals, construction. So fossil fuels aren't going away anytime soon but we sure could take a leaf out of Chin's commitment to renewable energy [3][4][5].
Instead we get nonsense like warnings to Europe of a dangerous dependency on Chinese clean tech [6].
[1]: https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar...
[2]: https://prospect.org/2026/04/29/aftermath-china-electrifying...
[3]: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/12/china-adding-more-re...
[4]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/26/china-breaks-m...
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping_Thought_on_Ecologic...
[6]: https://renewablesnow.com/news/europe-getting-dangerously-re...
There is a hidden upside to all this hydro: it could potentially be upgraded to pumped storage and support a massive expansion of solar and wind. However, no SA country has such a forward-looking energy policy.
There are many examples across the world where countries are doing very sub optimal things that simply don't make any economical sense. Germany has a lot of industry close to where coal used to be mined that is very energy intensive that is now being powered with expensive gas. Likewise, instead of using electrical heat pumps, most of their buildings still use gas boilers. Worse, they are not even fixing that in new buildings they build.
The UK has lots of wind power. But it prices its electricity based on the highest cost generation on the grid, which is usually gas. So, data centers get built close to London because the electricity isn't any cheaper in Scotland where all the clean renewable power is. And since they have too much of that, they actually just curtail it instead of giving a little discount to the locals (or just pricing it negatively and paying them to consume the power). So, like the Germans, the Scots also use gas for heating their houses.
Germany has a few million apartment blocks. They pretty much all run on gas. There is no plan to fix that. You might have noticed that gas is really expensive and has to be imported in LNG form as of a few years ago. That's costing many billions per year. Even if they would build gas power plants and converted all those buildings to use electrical heat pumps, it would still save billions in less imported gas (heat pumps are amazingly efficient). And of course they have a lot of frequently curtailed wind power as well. Germany is too busy spending money on gas to fix the problem that they need so much gas.
Policy changes could straighten inefficiencies like these out in a relatively short time. But those are controversial because high prices mean high profits for incumbent companies. So governments are dragging their feet and are not doing anything about this. Those big companies are lobbying to protect their profits. And the fossil fuel industry is cheering them along and pitching fantasy schemes about hydrogen to delay their inevitable demise. The public spending on that is insane if you understand how piss poor the economics around hydrogen are. Incentives are completely misaligned, policy prevents a lot of otherwise very rational/economical action, and a lot of that is perpetuated by companies that thrive on the expensive status quo and the politicians they have in their pocket.
The current crisis in the Gulf is probably going to accelerate a lot of policy changes by quite a lot. Nothing like a good crisis to force some changes.
Maybe he has been installed by the renewable energy sector actually to get the whole world onto renewables as soon as possible.
Of course, they had to give up on or delay America’s renewable future, but that may be a small Price to pay, and anyways renewables are growing in the U.S. despite the administration’s frankly insane efforts to block it