This planet-scale map of the global electricity network is incredible.

The UK is actually world leading in wind electricity generation (especially offshore). So it's not all bad.

Is your building listed or something? In most cases it doesn't require planning permission even in a conservation area, and some councils are actively installing them on council houses.

It's a big town. You might want to specify which of the 33 boroughs this stupid policy exists in. There's no problem with solar where I live.

The rest of the world is, in fact, doing it as well.

Nuclear still have to deal with nuclear waste.

> gigantic waste of space

Good thing China isn’t running out of space

Take too long time and cost. I honestly perplexed by the fethism towards Nuclear Power Plants. Have you seen the delay and bloating cost of Olkiluoto, Flamanville and Vogtle?

Nuclear Power Plants are only good too spread the cost of maintaining strategic nuclear jobs and industry and some hope that nuclear space propulsion could be available later.

There's two big parts of the earth that are uninhabitable because of nuclear.

Anyway, they are going with nuclear too.

I don't think the characterisation of this as waste of space is correct. There's a growing body of research suggesting that solar panels are compatible with grazing animals and farming, and the wind farms don't really stop usage of the space unless you are planning to go ballooning.

https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Power-Play-The-Economics-...:

“According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the LCOE for advanced nuclear power was estimated at $110/MWh in 2023 and forecasted to remain the same up to 2050, while solar PV estimated to be $55/MWh in 2023 and expected to decline to $25/MWh in 2050. Onshore wind was $40/MWh in 2023 and expected to decline to $35/MWh in 2050 making renewables significantly cheaper in many cases. Similar trends were observed in the report for EU, China and India.”

I think the only thing that may be able to beat this is nuclear fusion, and that’s hypothetical at the moment.

And even that may be undesirable. If fusion requires huge plants, it may put power (literally and figuratively) into only a few hands.

Recycling of solar panels and glass-fiber wings is an issue, though.

They've got a huge amount of space, solar has a low cost and provides an additional consumer to build out yet more capacity for supplying the world.

> Wouldn't it be better to just go with nuclear

If this is legit : https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil... then they have 59 reactors right now with 37 currently in production. Wikipedia lists 62 reactors being built in the world in total, and 28 of them being in China. The amount of power those additional plants will generate will take them from third in the world to second this year (wikipedia) and in total would pass the US when built.

They're not slouching on nuclear, they're ramping up energy production at an incredible pace on a lot of fronts.

This construction of wind and solar has nothing to do with renewable, and everything to do with China's desire to get as much electricity generation as possible, which involves increasing nuclear, coal, hydro, and everything else.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China

> Wouldn't it be better to just go with nuclear?

Only if you want the spicy radioisotopes. For some people that's a benefit, for others that's a problem.

Who controls the spice, controls the ~~universe~~ nuclear deterrent.

If all you care about is price, the combination of PV and batteries is already cheaper, and builds out faster.

> Isn't this a gigantic waste of space and overhead to maintain it?

No. Have you seen how big the planet is? There's enough land for about 10,000 times current global power use.

If your nation has a really small land area, e.g. Singapore, then you do actually get to care about the land use; China is not small, they don't need to care.

> And how "renewable" are the materials used to produce these?

Worst case scenario? Even if they catch fire, that turns them into metal oxides which are easier to turn back into new PV than the original rocks the same materials came out of in the first place.

Unlike coal, where the correct usage is to set them on fire and the resulting gas is really hard to capture, and nuclear, where the correct usage is to emit a lot of neutrons that make other things radioactive.

Why can't you do both? Why does it always have to be either or?

> Wouldn't it be better to just go with nuclear?

But for economics. Renewables are simply the cheapest option for generation.

For reduced land use, and hence reduced impacts (overall) on the environment and agriculture, nuclear wins hands down. But decades-long lead times, radioactive waste disposal, encumbering safety regulations, water supply etc. etc. etc. are problems you don't have with renewables.

PRC Solar is cheaper (LCOE) than nuclear, more distributed, faster to build. Western PRC with good solar is mostly empty/depopulated (2/3 of PRC with 80% of solar/wind potential has like 5% of population, it's empty). Easy to install, lots of transferrable skills from general construction (vs nuclear workforce). Real estate crack down = lots of lower skilled blue collar installing solar as jobs program. Serendipitous synergy. PRC installed renewable capacity exceeds energy required to manufacture same equipment on GW basis, functionally makes production of entire sector carbon neutral/sink, as in will displace more fossil than used in production and sink after. Obviously manufacture works off grid mix, including coal, but broad point is every panel going to save more emissions vs embodied carbon payback through life cycle. There's also plans for recycling / recover materials for circular economy.

> how "renewable" are the materials used to produce these

Very renewable. Solar panels are mostly glass, silicon and a little bit of metal. And they last ~30 years. Wind turbine blades are made out of fiberglass or similar materials. They may need replacing every ~30 years as well.

Other infrastructure would not need any significant maintenance for even longer.

These kind of power plants, apart from being renewable, have very low running costs. And that is the point.

Of course their production is very variable and therefore they cannot be used as the only power source. So e.g. nuclear power plants are still needed to back them up.

I think it is very rational to build as much power plants that are cheap to run. And back it up with nuclear or other power plants that are expensive to run but which can cover for time when the production of renewables is low.