One thing which has not been mentioned in this discussion is that the wholesale market price of power at any given time is substantially driven by the marginal cost of generation.
When renewables (including storage) can't take up the entire load of the system, that marginal generation is nowadays going to be gas power, and right now the global price of gas is unprecedentedly high.
To simplify things somewhat; the larger the fraction of the time gas generation can be turned off, the lower the annualised price of electricity will be. At the moment, we are already seeing renewables taking up 100% of the load for short periods. As more renewable capacity gets built, those periods will get longer and longer, this effect will get ever larger. In some countries this effect is expected to become significant within the next five years, even at current rates of progress, and will only get better as time goes on.
Lower annualised electrical prices will be good for the economy and the individual, and encouraging this should be a priority for any rational government which thinks more than a few years ahead.
One important point that’s not obvious from this article: U.S. pollution from fossil fuels isn’t actually decreasing.
From what I understand (and please correct me if I’m wrong), overall energy demand in the U.S. continues to grow year over year. Most of the additional energy needed is now being supplied by renewables.
So while we’re adding less new pollution—because the new energy is cleaner—we’re still producing the same amount of fossil fuel pollution as before.
The baseline pollution hasn’t gone down; we’ve just slowed the rate at which it increases.
Energy is a frustrating topic because people have some very entrenched but uninformed opinions about it, like hte "energy independence" argument. We're clearly energy independent but people will look to see that we still import oil and natural gas and say we're not. That's a business. Refining is a business. Making LNG is a business. Canada has no real way of exporting oil and natural gas so we buy it, process it and either use it or export it.
Another: peak total and per-capita greenhouse gas emissions in the US peaked in about 2007 and has decreased ~10% since then [1]. We still produce the most per-capita so there's a long way to go. China leads the world on renewable energy builds by a mile. It's not even close. Yet their usage of coal is still increasing as is their greenhouse gas emissions (total and per-capita) due to a still industrializing population.
Electricity costs continue to increase [2]. Some blame this on renewables. It's not. This is a longstanding trend. It goes beyond inflation though. Utilities are generally regional monopolies. For some reason we've decided that privatizing these is somehow a good idea (it's not). The need for ever-increasing profits just means things will continue to get more expensive.
I'd like to get solar, but I'm starting with a battery pack and a smaller solar install to cover those things that I would normal use a diesel generator for. It's amazing that the "cleaner" energy deniers won't be able to hold back cheaper energy.
Oh man, didn't the president just re-activate coal mining? What are they going to do with all that coal? Asia might of wanted it before the trade war, but not anymore?
Oh. I guess we can feed it into the AI data center generators.
What does "clean" mean here? Wind and solar are 24.4% and "fossil" is 49.2% so what's the remainder? Are they counting natural gas as "clean"? It's not...
Drill baby drill. 401k retirement savings being drilled right now.
There's less oil drilling than Biden's time. Weirdly a good thing for the planet, just like Covid allowed many ecosystems to recover.
I am no degrowth fan. However I do believe we ought to use our brains to build technology that allows us to live sustainably with the planet while harnessing more energy and automation.
Is it bc solar is subsidized or is it bc it's cheaper? Every time I walk into Lowes I'm sold on solar but they say it's bc the government is heavily subsidizing it
Fossil fuels fall below 50% of US electricity for the first month on record
(ember-energy.org)341 points by xnx 21 April 2025 | 344 comments
Comments
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/fossil-fuels-generat...
When renewables (including storage) can't take up the entire load of the system, that marginal generation is nowadays going to be gas power, and right now the global price of gas is unprecedentedly high.
To simplify things somewhat; the larger the fraction of the time gas generation can be turned off, the lower the annualised price of electricity will be. At the moment, we are already seeing renewables taking up 100% of the load for short periods. As more renewable capacity gets built, those periods will get longer and longer, this effect will get ever larger. In some countries this effect is expected to become significant within the next five years, even at current rates of progress, and will only get better as time goes on.
Lower annualised electrical prices will be good for the economy and the individual, and encouraging this should be a priority for any rational government which thinks more than a few years ahead.
From what I understand (and please correct me if I’m wrong), overall energy demand in the U.S. continues to grow year over year. Most of the additional energy needed is now being supplied by renewables.
So while we’re adding less new pollution—because the new energy is cleaner—we’re still producing the same amount of fossil fuel pollution as before.
The baseline pollution hasn’t gone down; we’ve just slowed the rate at which it increases.
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/19/zero-emissions-electric...
Another: peak total and per-capita greenhouse gas emissions in the US peaked in about 2007 and has decreased ~10% since then [1]. We still produce the most per-capita so there's a long way to go. China leads the world on renewable energy builds by a mile. It's not even close. Yet their usage of coal is still increasing as is their greenhouse gas emissions (total and per-capita) due to a still industrializing population.
Electricity costs continue to increase [2]. Some blame this on renewables. It's not. This is a longstanding trend. It goes beyond inflation though. Utilities are generally regional monopolies. For some reason we've decided that privatizing these is somehow a good idea (it's not). The need for ever-increasing profits just means things will continue to get more expensive.
[1]: https://www.wri.org/insights/charts-explain-per-capita-green...
[2]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU000072610
Winter: Not a lot of sunlight, and I heat with a heat pump.
Summer: A lot of sunlight, but my AC eats a lot of the power.
Oh. I guess we can feed it into the AI data center generators.
US sets tariffs of up to 3,521% on South East Asia solar panels
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ygdv47vlzo
Renewables (110.6 TWh) = Wind (51.6 TWh) + Solar (31.1 TWh) + Hydro (27.9 TWh)
Clean = Nuclear (61.8 TWh) + Renewables (110.6 TWh)
There's less oil drilling than Biden's time. Weirdly a good thing for the planet, just like Covid allowed many ecosystems to recover.
I am no degrowth fan. However I do believe we ought to use our brains to build technology that allows us to live sustainably with the planet while harnessing more energy and automation.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SEHF01