Major milestone for EU energy revolution as solar power overtakes coal for the first time
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- The EU's electricity transition has moved faster than anyone could have hoped for, but further progress cannot be taken for granted, experts say.
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![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Solar power, in Belgium, imagine what it would be like in Greece.
Lel, same!
It provides greece between 50-70% of energy in mid day, it'll keep going up.
The difference is not as great as you might think. Colder temperatures and longer summer days compensate quite a lot for being farther north.
A breath of fresh air inbetween all those negative news.
Good! In a lot of countries, renewables slready account for way more than 50%.
Funny to think that in the South American country where I live we already beat 50% decades ago; most people alive here today don't even think about fossil fuels as a way of producing electricity. Though, of course, we are blessed with ample hydropower potential, which we can now leverage to use as peaker plants for solar and wind in our attempts to move from 90% renewables to 100% renewables (hydropower dams are a more dispatchable power source than even gas generators).
@FabioCapela exactly, the same happens here.
We were very close to 80% in the last months
@@FabioCapelaUruguay, Paraguay and Costa Rica to name a few
Now imagine if Spain , Greece ,Italy ,the countries with more sun days year around will invest more in solar power
If the panels are subsidised by the Chinese government then they're also subsidising European solar power.
This is generally a positive because Europe doesn't really have a solar industry and their panels are cheap (easier to scale). Actually, China was responsible for collapsing the solar industry in Europe...but it wasn't very big to begin with so no problem. However with EVs it's much different, the European industry is massive and its collapse will cripple Europe economically in its already weak state. Tariffs here were necessary, even if European Auto makers are also lazy and greedy on top of it, doesn't make them any less important for European wellbeing. Some Chinese companies are migrating EV factories to Europe to evade these tariffs, which is a good thing.
@@maximusasauluk7359 If I was the EU I would mandate strict limits on executive and board compensation and dividend payments for as long as the tariffs are in effect, otherwise the tariffs are just financing payments for the rich while the industry grows used to being sheltered.
@@maximusasauluk7359😂😂 Euroepean car maker are lazy but they are important.
@@maximusasauluk7359it does matter that much now. Still 100,000 jobs were lost around 2010 and another 50,000 in wind energy due to thight Regulation and tariffs on chinese solar panels
👍👍👍👍
Nice!
wait, my country hungary leading in solar power expansion?
huh...ok then 😀
No idea where they got this info from, it's not true
Not leading 🙄. Just has the highest share of solar. Big difference.
@@scifijensfly Big difference? Why do you think so?
@@beatreuteler SHARE of electricity just means that from the total generated, solar has the highest piece in Hungry, compared to other countries. The Hungarians in the comments being oblivious/confused is just a general feature of Hungarians, nothing to do with statistics being true or not. Orban keeps winning for a reason, right? In terms of LEADING solar expansion (different thing), Germany leads, it installed the most amount of solar panels in 2024 but because it uses massive amounts of energy (16x that of Hungary) the SHARE of the total is lower.
This information is not really surprising, Hungry has been cut off from Russian gas and is finding its renewable transition to be much faster as a result.
Hungary is the EU country less likely to object to Chinese imports. There's a reason BYD and CATL have both chosen Hungary as the nexus for their upcoming EU manufacture push.
This helps a lot with solar, given that in every performance/quality bracket Chinese solar panels are the cheapest by a fair margin.
Then why are prices still the same?I get that they need maintenance but power became more expensive
They tried this in Croatia and the winter "Bura" wind came along all blew the solar farm panels all away.
well, they need to use their brain when intalling them, and adapt the installation infraestructure to the weather conditions of each place...
Solar panel installation has more potential!!!
It can be used over roads and sidewalks, over parking lots,
If raised overground, unlike in this picture, cattle can also eat and roam underneath.
Why ???
Sheep and goats make the most sense here.
Raised installation is expensive and requires puring fundations with concret and rebar.
Parking lot solar might make sense but it is still expensiive and most parking lots just not large enough.
Who knew that Victor Orban's Hungary would be the solar capital of Europe? I didn't! That's fantastic even if I don't agree with that leader's views in most ways... Overall the EU energy mix is pretty healthy with no single source dominating things and coal thankfully on the way out! Where I live we went from 80% coal powered to 0% in about 10 years by using natural gas as a bridge fuel while SMR's are being designed and ordered...
Highly depressing - thought we were well past this point.
17% produced from wind and
Even more getting installed.
Germany will install offshore Wind 5 years ahead of shedule. 12000 MW of installed power will Launch over the next 5 years meeting offshore goals 5 years earlier then planned.
😮 i had no idea that Hungary had more solar power generation than Spain!
I think it doesn't. It just has higher % supply measured on 100% as the total generation inside the country.
@beatreuteler thanks for the response. A quick search showed Hungary has about 19% of its energy from solar and Spain around 12%.
Spain has a much bigger population and economy than Hungary and as you correctly said, has a larger total energy production from solar.
♻MORE needs to done to speed the full transition to Renewable with more storage (flywheels, sand, gravity, Flux batteries ,etc), building micro grids, local individual and communities power generation, and full large capacity interconnected electrical grids between countries.
But battery grid storage is coming. In a hurry. Reason: there is profit to be made.
@@jaapfolmer7791 Yep. It's already cheaper to build a battery bank for electricity arbitrage, buying solar energy when it's cheap and selling when demand rises, than to build a gas-powered (or even coal-powered) power plant that would fulfill the same purpose.
And we are approaching the point where battery-backed solar is cheaper than the marginal cost of gas or coal - at which point it would be cheaper to sell a fossil fuel power plant for scrap, take a loan to cover the difference, and build a battery-backed solar plant in its place, than it would be to just keep operating the fossil fuel power plant.
Pumped hydro does not make any returns anymore. It is barely getting build anymore expect for in Swiss.
Unhappy with Chinese solar panels? Make'em better and cheaper at home. Can you?
I wish you'd stop abusing the older, greater brand. It says "EU" all over your graphs, for example at 0:55. The EU is not "Europe".
Maybe it doesn't include non-EU states
@Hasif_Nidzam that's what I think. The graph legend says "EU" but speaker says "Europe". They're not the same thing. UK (Europe, not EU) closed its last coal power station last year. 'more solar than coal' stats excluding UK are even more impressive.
@@trs4u They probably made a small mistake, you’re right
Meanwhile in Italy we have the highest electricity price of EU. The government stopped all big PV plants installations, but hey we have two new LNG regasifiers to make Donald happy. According to Italian PM, nuclear fusion will solve all our energy problems!
Nuclear fusion is at least 100 years away
@@pauld3327 I know, but try to explain to that to our PM... Unless it's all smoke and mirrors to keep on burning oil & gas
you absolutely most definitely do not have 25 years to zero out. that’s absurd
You are correct. It's impossible to do the transition this fast. But nevermind, at least we try.
@ i applaud the effort. it just doesn’t add up
Actually, that's around the max "worst-case" timeline at current trends so I don't know how you did that math...
@@beatreutelerI wouldn't be so sure. Batteries will play a major role in the next few years due to energy intermittency but their prices are already exceptionally low (how solar and wind crashed in prices). The EU expanded 4% from 2023 to 2024, if we assume conservatively 3.5%, that means around 15-20 years (depending on assumptions) before net-zero. And I personally believe it will only become more urgent and accelerate.
@ Batteries are a very helpful tool but they don't generate any power. The path to net zero is a very tough one and I am excited on how we are doing these days. But we are just getting started. Keep in mind that within the coming few years, a lot of people are still buying new ICE cars and and home owners are partially still installing new Gas and Oil fired heating systems. These systems have a useful life of 25 to 35 years and therfore the use of fossils beyond 2050 is already locked in.
in Poland a big problem is that there is a very big amount of people working in mines, they don't want to lose jobs and also people are scared that if we were to stop using coal to get electricity we would become more dependent on other countries to get electricity, main problem for individual people to get PV panels is a price, we have subsidies to replace coal and wood burning stoves to for ex. heat pipes but many manufacturers and sellers use it to ramp up their prices and even with subsidies it's quite expensive, people are being lied to by sellers that they won't be paying any money for electricity if they instal heat pomp and PV panels but their houses are not thermo modernised so their bills are big, even with PV, they are mad that they invested so much and got a worse deal then if they stayed with their coal stoves
Sorry and sad to read things like this. So people urgently need to emancipate themselves over the sellers and look at the offers using more critical eyes. Also they need to look at their current heat consumption and the options to lower them first etc.
This transition is possible also in Poland since labor is less costly there than here and labor cost is a high % rate of the entire installation cost.
One possibility that we partially also have here due to the high prices are cooperatives to be founded to build up the solar roofs with own hands helping each other etc. So the sellers get some competition and can no longer just rise prices indefinitely.
Wish Poland all the best success for this heavy lifting.
I understand it will take longer there due to the history in coal mining, however with years to come it will become clear that the solar and wind industry also will create a lot of jobs.
@@beatreuteler thank you so much for your kind words, the main problem is that those sellers usually target people who will not be able to verify their claims, oler ones and poorer ones who will get a higher subsidy, there is a case filled against those sellers by those who operate those subsidies so I hope they will get punished,
Finance retraining for miners!
You can theoretically redirect all these jobs completely to the renewable industry though, and it will even feed profits into Europe that would buy Polish made solar and wind tech. There's no alternative here...coal has no future.
@@maximusasauluk7359 that's true,
Solar is good, Nuclear is better. Limitless Potential
Nope. Nuclear is literally a finite energy source and more expensive.
The majority of our energy must come from renewables.
@@alxk3995How do you want Belgium to generate enough electricity in December/January to heat the homes ?
Nuclear is very expensive.
With Wind you get 8 as much power for the same price and having it decentralised and risk reduced.
sad to say, but the grid will not handle excessive solar energy if it doesn't come with battery storage. Here in Cyprus we are already threaten with power cuts.
Sorry to say but storage doesn't need to be battery storage.
@@TheAllMightyGodofCod it has to if the grid was to maintain flow during dark hours. Grid cannot go from 20% to 100% in a moment. rump up electricity production is a complicated process.
@@contemporiser Do you know how batteries work on industrial scale?
That's no big deal. Battery prices dropped almost 70% in the last 3 years alone. They are getting cheaper and cheaper every year and the return on investment on batteries are less than 5 years in Germany. Which is a fantastic ROI.
@huckleberryfinn6578 and a lot of cars are coming with V2G and there are other types of storage.
There are challenges but I think they will be overcome relatively easily.
We do have the tech.
How is energy company profits doing? Great aren't they?
All subsidised generation. This is why electricity is so expensive in Europe.
Is quite cheaper here in Spain. And the oeices if electricity are rised by the more exoensive sources, like gas. Fortunately Big Oil is dead: China peaked gasoline consumption las years nad Will peak diesel in 2025, so demand Will only go lower. Soon Big Oil Will be bankrupt, the same as nuclear.
@ Good then no need to keep subsidising renewables.
@@andrewharris3900 Not needed, unlike oil assets. Did you knew that every fracking endevour in US loses money unless the barrel is sold at least at 70 $? So now that the demand form China is going the dodo way and the producers around the world will struggle to find any new customer figure in how much pain those fracking companies will be with no ways to recover from their investings... Drill baby drilll.... LMAO.
Andrew, it is far less expensive to install brand new solar and batteries than to even run existing gas, coal and nuclear plants! Remove all subsidies, and make the costs of every type of energy generation reflect pollution, global warming, and other cradle to grave costs!
We got a better deal in the iberian peninsula because of higher rate of renewable energy, can be fully replace oil doubt can allow us to be more energy independent i bet
such nonsense.....
manfacturing in the EU is TOO EXPENSIVE
If it's mostly automated (aka very few people in the loop) and the energy comes from Solar panels (aka almost free)... why does it matter where it's made (EU or China) for the final cost? It's all Chinese lies that cheap panels can't be made elsewhere. Germany is already producing some with very expensive labour and energy and they are not much more expensive than the Chinese ones.
There are some places where labor is not too expensive even in the EU.
On top of that, it can be made less important by applying a lot of automation so the labor intensity is lowered.
@@cerverg ever wonder where the silica comes from, or where the copper and silver come from ?
@ Those things can't come from anywhere else? There's plenty of copper and silver in Europe. Silica will be hard but not impossible. China does not have monopoly (in theory) on every single thing. This mindset "CAN NO BE DONE WITHOUT CHINA" must stop NOW and I'm not talking about the EU only.
@@cerverg and that is why china has been so heavily investing in africa the last 20 yearsm while the EU and US were sleeping and bickering amongst themselves
Manufacture solar pannels in EU? Lol. No way
yes way please
Yes we should, if that is one sector that definitely deserves support. Buying cheap solar panels from China now is fine, but eventually it would be best if we can recycle all the panels we already have into better panels in Europe.
It is possible but it takes a very high level of automation such that labor does not stay the most important cost factor.
Most important is installation and development jobs. Does mater much if they are produced in china.
@ It matters from a self-sufficiency point of view.
It's not the percentage of wild AC the public power grid is having to support from wind turbine and solar voltaic generated electricity that is substantially important, but its fuel savings, which is little to non. In the US the advertised fuel savings for supporting the wild AC from wind turbine and solar voltaic generated electricity by the electric utility grid is 1% each. That number is likely rounded up significantly.
The wild AC from wind turbine and solar voltaic electrical generation should not be supported by the public power grid. The practical use for wind turbine and solar voltaic generated electricity is for maintaining electrical energy storage such as charging storage batteries or working with something similar such as hydropower. The electrical storage can supply the power grid or run pumped hydro for stockpiling water for hydropower at about 50% efficiency.
Instant 100% backup of wild AC typically requires natural gas turbine generators running at high availability consuming a minimum 70% of the fuel of full output, but making little electricity, where in a few seconds they can be at 100% output to instantly backup the wind farm 100%. Making up the dips in wild AC will cause more than 70% of full output fuel consumption.
It would use 66-2/3% of the natural gas of 100% back up of natural gas turbine generators to run a natural gas combined cycle plant at high efficiency output where it can make full use of a steam cycle adding 50% higher efficiency making all the electricity than to 100% instantly back up a wind generator farm for the same electrical output to behave as a scheduled power station.
The cheapest incremental electricity is from hydropower and nuclear power. Second to those in the US would be a new ultra supercritical clean coal plant burning high BTU bituminous coal at a predicted crossover fueling cost with natural gas priced at $0.80 per million BTUs in 2022.
US natural gas was priced at an offseason wholesale price in early summer 2024 of $2.50 per million BTUs, three times the fueling cost of the coal plant. This is the cheapest natural gas that could be expected without economic collapse. Winter peak natural gas wholesale prices can be several times higher. The US has some of the lowest cost natural gas in the world.
UK wholesale natural gas was priced in US equivalence Oct. 2024 at $10.50 per million BTUs.
It is not accurate to state residential electricity cost is greatly the cost of maintaining the power grid as sometimes said. In the US on average only 38% of the generated electricity reaches the residential electric power meter. 62% of the generated electricity on average is lost to grid resistance.
A little less than $0.03 per kWh is average for US midwestern wholesale electricity scheduled 24 hours in advance. That costs $0.03/.38 = $0.078 at the residential meter. Our Cumberland, Indiana residential electricity in 2020 was priced at $0.10 per kWh. The cost verses sale price difference has to maintain the power grid and make some profit. Internally generated electricity should be significantly cheaper..