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graeme | 1 month ago

Highly misleading stat. That's referring to capacity expansion, not new construction.

Prior energy assets go offline and are replaced each year. The report you cite is discounting all of that, looking only at expansion above the baseline, then taking total renewable construction and calcuating renewable total construction's share of expansion. Apples to oranges.

If you look at the chart in your own link you'll see that carbon construction investment exceeds renewables still.

Chart: "Annual energy investment by selected country and region, 2015 and 2025"

I would love for what you say to be true but it just isn't, even by that agency's own stats.

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cycomanic|1 month ago

Not sure I understand your point. In the plot you mention what the OP said certainly holds true for China and Europe (less so for the US). Also the Charts plot investments not just new capacity investments, I'm not even sure how you distinguish between the two?

graeme|1 month ago

The OP said new carbon sources are not competitive.

ANY investment is by definition creating capacity that would not be there without the investment. If carbon were not competitive it would not get investment.

If you sum up all of the carbon and compare to renewables in the chart there's more new carbon investment annually globally than renewables. (Comparing the dark lines vs the green line)

Also this is ignoring "low emission fuels", which are still carbon sources, natural gas and the like.

If you check the chart "Global electricity generation of zero-carbon sources vs. fossil fuels, 2000-2024" you can see that carbon sources were at an all time high in 2024. Growing slower is still growing.

We ought to be shrinking these to zero. I'm very glad to see solar and wind growing but my point is nuclear is worth supporting as an non-carbon energy source that could replace some of this carbon load because of its baseload characteristics.