I'm also glad to see attention brought to the Savannah River site's challenges even if not directly impacted by this work. Nuclear can be done cleaner than we have done in the past.
Not only is this providing a false binary, it’s also a pretty great example of the sunk cost fallacy. The article itself describes that the projects were abandoned due to cost reasons, why would it cost any less now.
Depending on how SC prices electricity, it might not be able to compete with wind/solar/batteries.
More importantly for California it is also a wildfire Mecca, which is what is driving a large amount of those cost increases. You can see if if you grab electricity prices and plot them versus renewable penetration and notice the lack of a trend: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/us-states-electric...
The rate increase in Georgia was around 1¢ per kWh, from 14¢ to 15¢.
The electricity price in California is 32¢ per kWh, due primarily to generating and transmission costs, not due to wildfires. Yes, wildfires contribute, but only around 10%. So without any of those, you'd still have 29¢.
For some reason you find the 1¢ increase horrible, but see no problem in the 17¢ difference.
Electricity prices correlate with intermittent renewables buildout worldwide.
https://stopthesethings.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cost-...
The biggest issue with comparing electricity rates across countries is that they have wildly different taxes included in the prices. So direct comparison of the prices is an apples-to-oranges comparison.
To say nothing of the fact that prices in many countries are often set by the marginal generator, which in the case of say Germany on that graph is oil, gas, or coal. Most of which is imported from other countries as fluctuates wildly with fuel costs (e.g. price shocks after Russian’s invasion of Ukraine).
And what is your claim with the taxes? That taxes correlate so strongly with intermittent renewables that they override a trend for the cost of intermittent renewables that actually goes in the opposite direction? That is a very bold claim that would need to be backed by some extremely strong evidence. You provide none. If, as you claim, there are "wildly different" taxes, then this would be a random overlay that wouldn't really affect the positive correlation that we see.
And of course a lot of renewable subsidies are financed with these taxes, so a positive correlation between taxes and intermittent renewables does not get intermittent renewables off the hook.
And no, just claiming, again without evidence, that a site "peddles anti-renewable talking points" is not a refutation. In fact, it is a big nothing-burger. I'd say that this site, which I don't know, I just did a quick search for a linkable version of the correlation that I am well aware of from other sources, simply collects and publishes the widely available and extremely obvious evidence against high penetration of renewables.
And the energy crisis 2021-2023 affected the entire world, yet for some reason the countries with intermittent renewables were worst affected? How is that, when the intermittent renewables were supposed to remove those dependencies on fossil fuels?
All these non-sensical talking points you peddle, the narratives you spin to protect renewables from the cold, hard evidence just don't add up.
And I notice that you dropped your equally evidence-free claims about GA vs. CA.
Narratives don't work. You need to look at the numbers. And the numbers don't add up for intermittent renewables above a certain percentages of generation. The numbers do add up for nuclear.
It is not a nothing burger. If the rest of the site is full of falsehoods and fallacies (e.g. (front page article about the “large” amounts of waste from use wind turbine blades) then anything else they post is also dubious by default. I’m sure they also have articles about how much waste solar panels produce at the end of their life, or the whales “hurt” by offshore wind, or the birds hurt by onshore wind, or any number of other outright falsehoods or bad faith arguments. One does not have time to read every source and regenerate every figure themselves to verify, so picking reliable sources is important.
> I am well aware of from other sources
Then post it from a more reputable source.
> And the energy crisis 2021-2023 affected the entire world, yet for some reason the countries with intermittent renewables were worst affected?
Other than the US or Australia all the other countries are in Europe. Conspicuous given that this should be a trend that hold worldwide. The countries worst affected are those that are most reliant on fossil fuels but produce none of their own. “high fossil fuel prices were the main reason for upward pressure on global electricity prices, accounting for 90% of the rise in the average costs of electricity generation worldwide (natural gas alone for more than 50%).” [0]
Feel free to pursue at your pleasure some articles on how renewables have positive impacts on the grid and lower costs. [1-5]
> The numbers do add up for nuclear.
Yes, unfortunately the cost does keep going up and up and up.
> the numbers don't add up for intermittent renewables above a certain percentages of generation.
Yes yes yes. A few years ago it was that renewables would never work. Then it was that it would have to be a very small percentage of the grid. Now it’s that it’s a certain (slightly higher percentage).
Someone better tell the Chinese that they should slow down their exponential renewable rollout and instead wait for their slow nuclear one to hopefully catch up.
In the meantime I hope us in the rest of the world don’t get left behind chasing a predatory delay strategy: why build renewables now when we can wait another decade or two for nuclear. “Look at China’s large nuclear buildout”, forget for a second that its orders of magnitude smaller than their renewable buildout.
[0]: https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-global-energy-crisis-pu...
[1]: https://www.bde.es/f/webbe/SES/Secciones/Publicaciones/Infor...
[2]: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/utilities/dont-blame-cl...
[3]: https://ieefa.org/sites/default/files/2025-03/BN_Why%20are%2...
[4]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-025-01704-0
[5]: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26941899.2022.2...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_energy_crisis_(2021–202...
Here a summary of the regional effects in, er, all parts of the world
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_effects_of_the_2021–2...
Including the US, including Asia and Africa and Europe. Hence "global energy crisis". It's kind of obvious from the name.
2. The site is correct about wind turbine blades whereas you are wrong.
In fact, blades currently cannot be recycled, whereas the largest part by mass, the base, could be but routinely is not. So only a small part of a wind turbine is actually recycled.
Applying your own standard, which you incorrectly applied to this site, should we now ignore everything else you write?
3. So a bunch of mostly advocacy sites trying to convince us that the higher prices that are invariably happening at the same time as we put in intermittent renewables are hand-wavingly but obviously caused by something else entirely. Riiiight.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03605...
"...which challenges the economic sanity of 100% intermittent renewable targets."
And of course you still haven't provided any "proof" that the chart, which is so "easily disproven", is actually wrong. Because you can't. Because that's empirical data across many countries and across time, none of which was addressed, never mind challenged by the stuff you posted.
4. The Chinese are massively investing in everything that produces electricity, including huge numbers of coal plants. They also just dropped some of their subsidies for PV, which resulted in the bottom falling out of that market, and massive layoffs.
https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/renewable/c...
"Solar panel installations in China fell precipitously in June..."
https://www.semafor.com/article/07/29/2025/chinas-solar-inst...
Nothing to see here, move along!
Oh, and China invests massively in nuclear, currently approving about 10 plants a year, rate increasing, plants that they build in around 5 years.
And please don't make the usual mistake of confusing installed capacity with actual power delivery. Well, that actually works for nuclear, because of capacity factors usually in the 90% range, but not for wind and solar.
In Germany, intermittent renewables actually produced less power than three years ago, despite a massive increase in capacity.
Capacity factors are dropping, partly because of unfavorable weather (yikes!), partly because all the favorable locations are already gone.
And partly because at this point, what we are building is overcapacity, IIRC correctly we already have 3x the maximum power usage installed. This overcapacity is almost entirely useless, as it has to be curtailed when sun and wind are cooperating, and still doesn't provide any electricity when they are not.
Have you read the summary? (Or even the IEA link I posted?) Because the shock in every single one of those countries was because of fossil fuel prices/shortages or climate change, not renewables.
> In fact, blades currently cannot be recycled, whereas the largest part by mass, the base, could be but routinely is not.
Hence the bad faith arguments and misinformation. Suddenly there’s all this care about lack of recyclability when it comes to clean energy, but not a care in the world about the pollution put into the air by fossil fuels. Or the coal ash from coal plants. Or electronic waste. Or municipal waste.
Of course there are no such concerns since this isn’t a serious argument. It’s put forth by people who already have their conclusions (renewables bad) and are looking for any reason to believe this.
Wind and solar produce a fraction of the amount of waste that fossil fuel sources produce per unit of energy created, and produce a minuscule amount of waste in absolute terms.
As for wind turbine blades, they are inert composites. Bury them and move on, they are about as best case scenario for garbage as we can get.
> which challenges the economic sanity of 100% intermittent renewable targets.
A) Don’t move the goal posts. We aren’t talking about 100% intermittent renewables.
And B) did you read the paper you posted or simple find the first one that confirms your biases? I’ll quote: “The LFSCOE are defined as the costs of providing electricity by a given generation technology, assuming that a particular market has to be supplied solely by this source of electricity plus storage”
Advocates of renewable energy are not advocating for using a single source, I.e. just solar and no wind nor hydro, or solely wind, or solely hydro.
This paper attempts to show that it is uneconomical to pursue a plan nobody is arguing for.
> Solar panel installations in China fell precipitously in June
… to 15GW. They installed only 16% of Germany’s total capacity in a single day.
Why did it fall so much? Per your own linked article: because a subsidy ran out last month which always causes demand to be pulled forward. It is the April and May number who are out of norm, per the graph you sent. The June numbers are in line with last year’s.
Nothing to see here indeed.
> Oh, and China invests massively in nuclear, currently approving about 10 plants a year, rate increasing, plants that they build in around 5 years.
And yet is behind on it’s nuclear target by 5 years [2] while it’s wind/solar/hydro are growing exponentially, far ahead of target and each one produces >2x more energy every year than nuclear [3].
Pointing to them and saying that nuclear is the way to go is not only not supported by the data, but is actively refuted.
> In Germany, intermittent renewables actually produced less power than three years ago, despite a massive increase in capacity.
A great way to misrepresent the fact. In Germany, all sources of electricity produced less energy than they did 3 years ago. Germany simply used less power. [1]
> overcapacity
So what? The sun shines and the wind blows for free, it costs nothing. If the plant is economical with this overcapacity, even before adding storage, I don’t see what the problem is.
> This overcapacity is almost entirely useless, as it has to be curtailed when sun and wind are cooperating
Another tired point. Install storage. Increase demand side flexibility. People already use time-of-day prices in many parts of the world. Incentivize them to use it when it’s more plentiful.
[0]: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/renewables-wast
[1]: https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/germany/
[2]: https://cleantechnica.com/2024/12/27/china-hits-ev-target-10...
[3]: https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/china#electricity-...
> Because the shock in every single one of those countries was because of fossil fuel prices/shortages or climate change, not renewables.
EXACTLY! Thank you for finally agreeing to this obvious point: that the correlation of high electricity prices to renewables has nothing whatsoever to do with the energy crisis of 2021-2023. Not sure why you tried this in the first place, it was so obviously wrong.
2. Wind turbine blade recycling
> Hence the bad faith arguments and misinformation. Suddenly there’s all this care about lack of recyclability
Er, it was you who brought up the issue of blade recycling, in order to incorrectly smear some site as an unreliable source. This smear failed, because they were correct and you were not.
In this thread, the subject was the correlation of high electricity prices with renewables build out.
Glad we can put another one of your straw men to bed.
3. Economic insanity of 100% renewable targets
Actually, Germany for example does have a de-facto 100% renewables target for electricity. And yes, the same effects occur when you mix intermittent renewables, and we are already seeing those effects.
Germany has the highest electricity prices in the EU.
4. China
Here you present another common straw man, which is that renewables and nuclear are somehow mutually exclusive. This idiocy is only really prevalent in Germany, pretty much all other industrialized nations are doing both.
Even France is adding wind and solar, because it allows their nuclear plants to run more efficiently.
5. Overcapacity
This is simply a fact. In fact, coal consumption increased while renewable share went down. So check your facts. And no, your wishful thinking does not change those facts. Oh, and "demand side flexibility" is simply newspeak for "sorry, we have no electricity for you".
6. Wind blows and sun sines for free
Uranium atoms also don't send invoices for splitting. In both cases it is the machinery that is expensive. And intermittent renewables are so inefficient that you need a lot more of that expensive machinery. Add required overcapacity, required short-term storage, required long-term storage, required transmission lines and the costs become astronomical.
Already are, incidentally. Germany spent somewhere between €400-600 billion on its failed "Energiewnde", and it has 10x worse CO₂ emissions than France, which spent €228 billion to nuclearize its electricity sector.
But it only gets worse, because so far was the easy part.
Anyway, I think we're done here. Bye.
You were the one who tied it to renewables: “And the energy crisis 2021-2023 affected the entire world, yet for some reason the countries with intermittent renewables were worst affected?”
So I really don’t know what point you’re making.
> in order to incorrectly smear some site as an unreliable source. This smear failed, because they were correct and you were not.
A statement of fact (that the site peddles in misinformation and anti-renewable taking points) is neither a smear now a straw man.
> Actually, Germany for example does have a de-facto 100% renewables target for electricity
If you go an read the paper you linked to, you’ll see that they are talking about 100% renewable from a single source, e.g. only solar, or only wind. This is not what Germany is doing; they may be targeting 100% renewables, but they aim to reach that by combining multiple sources.
> Here you present another common straw man, which is that renewables and nuclear are somehow mutually exclusive.
When you have $ to spend on new energy sources, every dollar spent on one source is a dollar not spent on another. And any dollar spent on nuclear would be better spent on renewables.
> In fact, coal consumption increased while renewable share went down. So check your facts.
Feel free to check them, all you have to do is click on the links I have already sent. But here you can clearly see that your statement is categorically false [0-1].
> Germany spent somewhere between €400-600 billion on its failed "Energiewnde", and it has 10x worse CO₂ emissions than France, which spent €228 billion
I don’t see any sources for this. For starters, is that French price adjusted for inflation given that their fleet was built decades ago?
As for the CO2 levels, see [0] that shows their emissions high even before their renewables push. And after it is has been decreasing consistently since then.
[0]: https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/germany/ [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?coun...
Nope, that was reacting to your previous comment:
To say nothing of the fact that prices in many countries are often set by the marginal generator, which in the case of say Germany on that graph is oil, gas, or coal. Most of which is imported from other countries as fluctuates wildly with fuel costs (e.g. price shocks after Russian’s invasion of Ukraine).
And again:
A statement of fact (that the site peddles in misinformation and anti-renewable taking points)
Nope. The only "evidence" for your claim that it "peddles" was something where the site was correct and you were the one who peddled the misinformation.
> In fact, coal consumption increased while renewable share went down. So check your facts. Feel free to check them,
I did. You obviously didn't.
German energy consumption jumps “surprisingly” due to weak renewables output in early 2025
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-energy-consumpti...
Energy usage in Europe's biggest economy increased to 187.3 million metric tons of coal equivalent, an industry standard measure, from 183.1 million in the first six months of 2024, AGEB's January-June report showed.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germanys-energy-use-...
Germany's energy transition hits reverse so far in 2025
Clean energy sources generated the smallest amount of Germany's electricity in over a decade so far in 2025, dealing a blow to the energy transition momentum of Europe's largest economy.
To compensate for the drop in clean electricity supplies, German power firms were forced to lift fossil fuel power output by 10% from a year ago, and the share of fossil fuels in the German generation mix has climbed to its highest since 2018.
Anyway: you keep changing the subject, being dishonest about doing so etc.
Bye.
It is evident to others that you are arguing in bad faith and constantly moving the goal posts.
A discussion of total energy consumption rather than electricity is a completely different topic, and very far from your original claim about the negative impacts of renewables on electricity prices and electrical grids.
"Clean energy sources generated the smallest amount of Germany's electricity"
China also builds these Westinghouse AP-1000s. Their FOAK builds took 9+ years. They are now down to 5 years. Time = money.
Also conditions have changed. With the rise of intermittent renewables, the value of reliable power, which was mostly a given in the past, has risen, particularly for data centers.
And of course we are now somewhat more serious about CO₂ emissions, even if Trump is trying to walk that back.
pstuart•5mo ago
As I got older and understood the technology better, I came around to be conceptually pro nuclear. In fact, if we hadn't had those disasters and had successfully extended our nuclear power fleet we likely wouldn't be this far into climate change.
The pitch is still compelling, but the elephant in the room is cost: renewables (including storage) are cheaper and getting cheaper still.
The antidote to this might be SMRs (Small Modular Reactors) that cut costs by mass producing reactors on an assembly line rather than thesse bespoke behemoths, but even then they apparently can't compete.
We need all the non-carbon energy we can get, and if nuclear can get us there affordably we should embrace that. The economics should be a driving force rather than pure ideology.
psunavy03•5mo ago
If you aren't serious about nuclear power, you aren't serious about climate change. We should have nuclearized our grid decades ago. The US Navy has run reactors for over 50 years without incident. It can be done.
SoftTalker•5mo ago
Immobilize it in glass, stick it underground in a remote area.
fsh•5mo ago
amanaplanacanal•5mo ago
If it can be done cheaper with renewables and batteries, we should do that instead .
exoverito•5mo ago
Moreover, there's a distinct possibility of future weaponized weather modification, such as an enemy power releasing aerosols to reduce solar production, or saboteurs starting forest fires.
amanaplanacanal•5mo ago
VLM•5mo ago
exoverito•5mo ago
rayiner•5mo ago
We need to ramp up base load capacity so everyone can charge their EVs at night, or run their heat pumps through a cold winter night.
We’re not shooting at a static electric usage target. In our house, we have been electrifying everything and it’s quite surprising how much our electricity usage has gone up. In much of the country, you have design-point winter days where you need 90k BTU that’s currently being supplied by heating oil. Even with an efficient heat pump, that’s 12-13 kW, for everyone at the same time, all night. That’s an insane amount of energy storage.
Gibbon1•5mo ago
Given Californians drive 340 billion miles a year at 3.5 kwh per mile and 2200 hours of sunlight a year. I get you'd need 45 GW of solar to power them. California has something like 16-20 GW.
Notable at 35mpg cars use 10 billion gallons of gas. At $4 gallon. $40 billion a year.
Solar to power cars would pay for itself economically in a couple of a years.
nostrebored•5mo ago
Even places like Australia, which are naturally blessed in terms of wind and sun prevalence, are not able to divest from large scale coal power plants.
Intermittency is a huge problems for grids, and many of the widely deployable energy resources are inherently intermittent (which projects like Xlinks try to solve with other flaky engineering solutions)
kieranmaine•5mo ago
This is not true.
In Australia Coal generation peaked at 179135 GWh in 2008 and was down to 126475 GWh in 2024 [1].
The state of Southern Australia generated 71.9% of it's electricity with renewables and only used batteries for 1.1% of generation. It replaced it's coal generation with gas generation, and gas generation is declining.
1. https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/au/?range=all&...
2. https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=all...
nostrebored•5mo ago
The problem is when enough of your substrate is ephemeral, you open yourself up to a ton of new failure modes. Only "our replication and database failed at the same time" is a lot less bad then "total grid failure".