298
In 2025, solar and wind produced more electricity than fossil fuels in the European Union
(ourworldindata.org)
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2026
298 points (99.3% liked)
Europe
10562 readers
985 users here now
News and information from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
- Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.
(This list may get expanded as necessary.)
Posts that link to the following sources will be removed
- on any topic: Al Mayadeen, brusselssignal:eu, citjourno:com, europesays:com, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Fox, GB News, geo-trends:eu, news-pravda:com, OAN, RT, sociable:co, any AI slop sites (when in doubt please look for a credible imprint/about page), change:org (for privacy reasons), archive:is,ph,today (their JS DDoS websites)
- on Middle-East topics: Al Jazeera
- on Hungary: Euronews
Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com
(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)
Ban lengths, etc.
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the primary mod account @EuroMod@feddit.org
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
They are pretty pointless unless we find some way of sucking down excess power when it is available. Fischer-Tropsch synfuel production, for example, can convert CO2 or biomass into carbon-neutral fuel for the transportation industry. Desalination, hydrogen production, and a wide variety of other power-hungry industries can be brought online for three-season operation. This keeps solar and wind generators profitable in the summer, which justifies expanding solar and wind projects. The three-season nature of these industries withdraws their demand in winter, allowing solar and wind generation to meet a larger percentage of total demand.
The problem with "just use the excess power for something" is that it doesn't happen all the time. It's not three seasons, it's more like <1000 hours a year. That's why battery storage is such a hard requirement to make a solar grid work.
Nobody is going to build an industry that only runs 10% of the time. And unless there's a use for that excess power, solar panels are underperforming hard, since all of them have their production times at the same moment.
The only way to bridge that gap is with batteries, since they have double the efficiency of using the power. First youre useful by shaving off the peak, and then you're useful again by supplying off-peak power. Desalination only offers half the power efficiency.
The real structural solution would be to completely overhaul the electricity market, or to get rid of the effects of capitalism in power production, but I don't see that happening.
You are making that claim based on our current generation mix and capacity. Our renewable capacity is not currently capable of fully meeting our needs in the middle of winter. We need more renewable capacity - much, much more.
You need to consider a scenario where we actually do have enough solar and wind to meet our needs during winter.
A solar panel, operating on a summer day with 16 hours of high-angle sunlight produces about three times as much power as it does on a winter day with 8 hours of low-angle sunlight. (I'm sure you know this; I only mention it to make sure we're on the same page.)
We are barely producing excess renewable power in the summer, which means we are producing about 1/3 the renewable power we need in the middle of winter. So instead of our current excess during about 1000 hours a year, I need you to consider a scenario where we have about three times the amount of solar and wind power that we currently have. That's what it will take to fully meet our needs, year round. That's the amount of excess power we need to be able to absorb in the other three seasons so we have enough renewable generation capacity available in winter.
No, actually, that is not the "only" way. You are talking about "supply shaping" measures: moving energy from time-of-production to time-of-demand. And yes, we certainly do need some supply shaping measures to meet overnight demand. We do need to match the daily variation between supply curve and demand curve to make renewables work. But, the only way supply shaping can feasibly work with seasonal variation is with the inclusion of non-renewable generators. We simply cannot store enough renewable power from summer for use in winter, nor can we transport anything close to that amount of power across the equator. Batteries (and other grid scale storage methods) are not the answer to the seasonal variation problem. Supply shaping is not the answer.
There is, in fact, another shaping method available, and it is actually far more efficient: "Demand shaping". With demand shaping, you don't bother trying to store any more power than you absolutely need to. Instead, you just use it, directly, at the time it is produced. You do something useful with that power when you have it, and you shut down that consumption when you don't have the available power to drive it.
One major benefit of such an industry is that if it is not currently profitable to operate on our excess production, the solution is to increase that excess production: Install more panels and turbines. Sell your power to the grid when it is more profitable to do so. When it isn't, keep your power, and use it to produce fuels, or anything else you can sell.
That's exactly what I am talking about. I'm talking about what we need to do to make it happen.
Demand shaping: We go to aluminum smelters and steel mills and we tell them if they want to operate year round, their power costs are going to triple. They need to cut their power requirements for the shortest 60 days of the year to keep their current rates. They schedule an annual maintenance period to coincide with this winter shutdown.
We stop telling them they can only work overnight (when nuclear needs them) and they need to transition to daytime operation (when solar needs them)
We very much agree.
Correct, because the problem is that periodic demand doesn't start to be a good idea until very far beyond the point where adding solar panels stops being remotely profitable.
There is a giant hole in the middle where we don't really have a good option yet, and yeah, it will take something shutting down factories for a few months, but I really don't see that as remotely realistic until shit gets dire.
Honestly, it's absurd that we have an answer, but were not doing it because saving the climate would involve seven people not buying their twelfth golden toilet.
That hole is not nearly as big as it seems. Conventional baseload generators (Nuclear and coal) have a similar problem matching the daily demand curve. They can't ramp up and down very quickly to match the curve. Their production has to be matched to the trough, the lowest daily demand, and can't be raised much above that. Baseload generation is the most efficient conventional generation, so they want to push as much load to it as possible.
Grid operators have compensated for this limitation by incentivizing off-peak consumption. They are already using demand-shaping methods to fill the overnight "trough". By raising the trough, the baseload rises, and baseload generation produces a much larger percentage of total power production.
One major problem with these incentives is that they drive consumption overnight, where it can't possibly be met by anything except storage and baseload generation. These "perverse" incentives need to be rolled back a little faster. The cause of our summer overages is not excess solar capacity. Those overages are because of excess overnight demand, requiring excessive baseload generation. Allowing the trough to lower, we reduce 24/7 baseload production, which makes room for additional solar and wind.