(Pictured above: POET Bioprocessing – Obion, photo courtesy of POET).
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Growth Energy, the nation’s largest biofuel trade association, welcomed three new producer plant members this week: POET Bioprocessing – Obion, Hereford Ethanol Partners LP, and PureField Ingredients LLC. Growth Energy’s total plant membership now sits at 98, and the organization continues to represent more than half of all U.S. bioethanol production capacity.
“Growth Energy’s membership is defined by its commitment to innovation, and to our shared belief that American biofuels are a solution to some of our nation’s most-pressing challenges. Our three newest plant producer members—POET – Obion, Hereford Ethanol, and PureField—perfectly embody these values,” said Growth Energy CEO Emily Skor. “Each of them produces millions of gallons of ethanol every year—ethanol that saves consumers money, generates income for American farmers, and delivers more high-value coproducts like animal feed and biogenic CO2. We are thrilled to welcome them to Growth Energy and look forward to connecting them with our unmatched network of biofuel producers, supporters, and solutions providers.”
POET, the world’s largest producer of biofuels, has added its newest facility—POET Bioprocessing – Obion (pictured above)—to the Growth Energy membership roster. The company acquired the Tennessee-based Obion facility in 2025, increasing POET’s total production capacity by 120 million gallons and improving its access to southeastern markets. The plant provides high-performance fuel as well as premium, high-quality livestock feed solutions for regional, national, and international markets.
“POET has been with Growth Energy from the beginning,” said Joshua Shields, POET Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs. “No other organization can match this team’s political savvy, innovative spirit, and deep commitment to American farmers and biofuel producers. Together, we will continue to usher in a new era of growth for U.S. agriculture and homegrown energy.”
Hereford Ethanol Partners LP is a family-owned facility based in Hereford, Texas. It has a current annual capacity of 100 million gallons—a number that will grow with new improvements underway in 2026. It also supplies wet distillers grain to Friona Industries—Hereford’s sister company and the second-largest cattle feeder in North America.
“We’re excited to work alongside our new partners at Growth Energy to advocate for farmers and producers across the nation,” said Don Gales, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Friona Industries. “The team at Growth Energy has a proven track record of unlocking new opportunities for America’s biofuel sector, and Hereford Ethanol Partners is proud to be a part of those conversations.”
Finally, PureField Ingredients LLC operates a 52 million-gallon integrated food and biofuels facility in Russell, Kansas, converting locally grown wheat into high-value food ingredients while utilizing residual starch to produce ethanol. The company recently began operating its carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) system—one of the first Class VI wells permitted in the United States. The CCS capability makes PureField one of the lowest carbon fuel producers in the world, and reinforces long-term demand for approximately 20 million bushels of Kansas wheat and sorghum.
“PureField sits at the intersection of food and fuel—maximizing the value of every bushel while strengthening domestic food and energy production,” said Aaron Buettner, CEO of PureField. “The addition of carbon capture provides a foundation for future growth of both food ingredient and biofuel production. We are excited to partner with Growth Energy to ensure policies continue to support U.S. producers and farmers and enable the next phase of growth in advanced biofuels.”
Scientists have identified two specific types of brain cells that behave differently in people with depression, offering a clearer picture of what is happening inside the brain. By analyzing donated brain tissue with advanced genetic tools, the researchers found changes in neurons linked to mood and stress, as well as in immune-related microglia cells. These differences point to disruptions in key brain systems and reinforce that depression is rooted in biology, not just emotions.
A new minimally invasive procedure may help people keep weight off after stopping popular drugs like Ozempic and semaglutide—something most patients struggle with. In a clinical trial, those who underwent a technique called duodenal mucosal resurfacing regained far less weight compared to others after discontinuing the medication. The procedure works by renewing the lining of the upper small intestine, potentially “resetting” metabolism and preserving the benefits of weight loss.
Scientists at UC Irvine have found a way to potentially reverse age-related vision loss by targeting the ELOVL2 “aging gene” and restoring vital fatty acids in the retina. Their experiments in mice show that supplementing with specific polyunsaturated fatty acids—not just DHA—can restore visual function and even reverse cellular aging signs.
A breakthrough in brain-inspired computing could make today’s energy-hungry AI systems far more efficient. Researchers have engineered a new nanoelectronic device using a modified form of hafnium oxide that mimics how neurons process and store information at the same time. Unlike conventional chips that waste energy moving data back and forth, this device operates with ultra-low power—potentially slashing energy use by up to 70%.
Scientists have mapped how Earth’s deepest mantle is being deformed—and the results point to long-lost tectonic plates buried thousands of kilometers underground. Using a massive global dataset of seismic waves, they found that most deformation happens in regions where these ancient slabs are thought to reside. The findings confirm long-standing theories but, for the first time, show the pattern on a global scale. It’s a major step toward understanding how the planet’s interior slowly churns over time.
A newly discovered virus hiding inside a common gut bacterium could help explain one of medicine’s long-standing mysteries: why a microbe found in both healthy people and cancer patients is linked to colorectal cancer. The research suggests that the interaction between bacteria and the viruses they carry may be key to understanding disease risk. It may even lead to future screening tests that detect cancer risk earlier.
A bizarre crocodile relative from the age of dinosaurs is rewriting what scientists thought they knew about ancient reptiles. This poodle-sized creature, called Sonselasuchus cedrus, appears to have started life walking on all fours before shifting to a two-legged stance as it matured—an unusual transformation rarely seen in the fossil record.
A remarkably preserved, mummified reptile from 289 million years ago is rewriting what we know about how animals first breathed on land. This tiny creature, Captorhinus aguti, reveals the earliest known version of the rib-powered breathing system used by modern reptiles, birds, and mammals — a crucial innovation that helped vertebrates thrive outside water.
A new virus-fighting plastic film could transform everyday surfaces into invisible defenders against disease. Instead of relying on chemicals, this flexible material is covered in microscopic pillars that physically stretch viruses until they burst, rendering them harmless. In lab tests, it destroyed or disabled about 94% of virus particles within an hour, showing impressive effectiveness.
A routine blood marker tied to inflammation may reveal Alzheimer’s risk years in advance. Scientists found that higher neutrophil levels—part of the body’s first immune response—were linked to a greater chance of developing dementia. The discovery suggests this common lab value could help flag at-risk individuals before symptoms appear. It also raises the possibility that immune cells themselves may be fueling the disease.
Ancient DNA from a tomb near Paris reveals a shocking prehistoric reset: one population vanished and was replaced by newcomers from the south. The two groups show no genetic connection, signaling a major upheaval around 3000 BC. Disease, including early plague, likely played a role, but wasn’t the only cause. The change also reshaped society, ending tightly knit family burials and coinciding with the disappearance of Europe’s megalith builders.
The think tank Ember just released its yearly Global Electricity Review. In this episode, I chat with co-authors Nicolas Fulghum & Kostantsa Rangelova about the biggest stories in the global power sector in 2025. We geek out over the record-breaking scale of solar deployment, the game-changing role of batteries in shifting midday power to the evening, and the tantalizing possibility that India will not follow China’s coal-heavy development path and that global fossil fuel generation has finally plateaued.
Hello. Hi. Greetings, everyone. This is Volts for April 22, 2026: “The big stories from the last year in electricity.” I’m your host, David Roberts.
Every year, the think tank Ember puts out its Global Electricity Review — a comprehensive look at electricity generation around the world, delving into which countries are getting power from which sources, and how those numbers are shifting over time. Last year I talked with them about the 2025 edition, which was fun and enlightening, so when the 2026 review landed, I thought I’d come back for an update.
This year’s report has some striking findings. Notably, global fossil generation fell in 2025 — a rare event, and the first time it’s happened outside of a recession or an unusually mild weather year. Solar and batteries just keep on booming.
Nicolas Fulghum & Kostantsa Rangelova
Countries like Australia and Chile are showing what truly green grids can look like, in practice rather than theory. And there’s an interesting argument in the report about India — that it’s unlikely to repeat China’s coal-heavy development path, for structural reasons.
To dig into all of this, I have two Ember veterans with me today — Nicolas Fulghum and Kostantsa Rangelova, both returning guests, though this is their first time appearing together. I can’t wait to geek out.
With no further ado, Kostantsa Rangelova, Nicolas Fulghum, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Kostantsa Rangelova
Hello and thank you for having us.
Nicolas Fulghum
Thanks so much for having us.
David Roberts
I just want to jump in. Nick, I’ll start with you about some things that haven’t changed. You could just write this report every year and just say, “Hey, look, renewable energy is growing really fast again.” Let’s start, Nick, with that, which is I guess the same as last year. Technically, there are a couple of milestones this year. Wind and solar combined met 99% of demand growth around the world. I want to start with that first thing, because that’s crazy. People need to wrap their head around that. All demand growth is being met by renewables. Solar was 75% of that demand growth and overtook wind in total generation for the first time ever this year.
The other notable thing is that solar, despite several boom years in a row, has hit the highest rate of growth in eight years, despite, of course, having a much larger base it’s working off of. Just tell us about renewables and the ongoing renewables story.
Nicolas Fulghum
As you say, some things never change. It’s difficult when you’re writing these reports to not end up with a headline that says “record solar growth.” Indeed, there is a section in the report that does have that name still.
David Roberts
It keeps breaking records. What can we do?
Nicolas Fulghum
It does keep breaking records. You can’t not say it if it happens. As you pointed out, we had this record-breaking solar growth in quite a few respects, both in terms of the absolute growth — 636 terawatt hours of solar generation was added in 2025. Just to put that into perspective, we’re talking about twice as much as the annual electricity demand in the UK. It’s a huge amount of generation that’s being added there. In relation to the demand growth, it’s 75% of the increase now. That’s way more than any other source grew.
The second largest growth came from wind at 205 terawatt hours, about a third of the increase in solar. Then you go down to nuclear power and to gas, which grew about 36 terawatt hours. That’s then 18 to 20 times smaller than the increase in solar.
David Roberts
Which — I’m very curious — which nuclear and gas, who’s winning there? What are the relative levels there?
Nicolas Fulghum
It’s all within the margin of error. We have an increase in gas generation of 36 terawatt hours and a nuclear increase of 35 terawatt hours.
David Roberts
Oh, roughly the same.
Nicolas Fulghum
Roughly the same.
David Roberts
It’s hard not to say that over and over again because it really takes time, even if you hear that over and over again, to truly absorb the fact that renewables in terms of new power generation have won. They’ve won the game. That’s 99%. 99% is renewables and that is not because the entire world is gripped by concern for the children of Bangladesh. It’s incontestable now that this is the cheapest. Also should mention this, Nick, before we get off this topic — renewables overtook coal, which I was surprised by, because I thought coal had had a resurgence in 2025. Talk about that a little. Is it just — it did have a resurgence and solar’s was just bigger?
Nicolas Fulghum
No, we saw a small decline in coal generation in absolute generation for the first time in a while. A drop of 63 terawatt hours. If you combine that with the minor increase in gas and then another minor fall in other fossil generation, which is mostly oil, we end up with a small decline in fossil generation overall — a 0.2% drop. That’s the result of the trends that we’ve already mentioned of renewables and nuclear power together. Low-carbon sources are growing faster than electricity demand.
David Roberts
All the hype about coal, all the hype about how the war and everything is going to send people running back to coal — all that did not show up in the numbers then.
Nicolas Fulghum
Not yet in 2025. We expect that even if there might be a short-term switching of fuel sources, it wouldn’t be an increase in fossil generation overall. If there is a reaction to the recent conflict in the Middle East, it would be largely a switching from one fuel source — from gas, for example, if it’s too expensive, to coal. But make no mistake there as well, that would be short-lived. Coal prices have also risen. Countries that are importing coal don’t have an amazing option in coal just on the side. It is very much you’re choosing between two poor options.
I think it’s best summarized in the words that Xi Jinping uttered the other day where China was congratulating itself on having taken a renewables-heavy development path in recent years and the benefits of energy security that has brought. To hear that explicitly said from China, I think says everything about whether the future for energy security sits in renewables or it sits in coal.
David Roberts
It was a good idea for all the reasons he says in the first place. Then we go and reinforce what a good idea — just so there’s no remaining doubt. Let’s clear it up that that was the smart thing to do. The last question about renewables is how long could this go on? Where are we on the S curve? Do you think we’re still just heading up on the S curve? Are we close to maturity? Should we expect again in 2026, 27? How long can this surreal boom in renewables go on?
Nicolas Fulghum
As you noted, there is always the expectation that once the technology matures, at least you might stay with high absolute growth numbers. But usually your growth rates come down.
With solar, what we’ve seen is that 2025 had the highest percentage rate — 30%, the highest rate in eight years — which isn’t a common feature among technologies that reach maturity. Even though solar is very much a mature technology in the market, obviously now.
David Roberts
It’s wild. I want more explanations. It seems there’s an element of magic involved. It is a mature technology. It is getting better, but not at the rate it was. It just seems more than the sum of its parts, I guess is what I’m groping toward.
Nicolas Fulghum
We’re still seeing cost declines even in the solar sector in terms of installations, but also just the total installation costs. Not just the panels, but the total cost. Project cost is still coming down. Financing — this is not part of this report, but our colleagues just put out analysis showing that the upfront cost for solar power is now comparable with fossil fuels. That’s not including fuel costs, which are obviously significantly higher. That changes the game, especially for emerging economies where upfront costs are really important. Capital intensity with high interest rates can really make or break a project. Solar now is both competitive upfront and then in the operational cost is the clear winner because it doesn’t have any fuel costs associated with it.
David Roberts
The upfront costs were the last resistance, the last argument against. Again, solar breaking records. Renewables breaking records. Solar and wind together handling all new global electricity demand. Wild. The other side of this happy story is batteries.
Let’s talk about batteries a little bit. Last year, if I was going to characterize the report, the tone was “here they come, they’re on the way.” This year is “here they are.” The report takes a closer look at two case studies — Australia and Chile — with regard to batteries. Tell us what is going on in those countries and why is it striking?
Kostantsa Rangelova
Absolutely. Chile and Australia are two examples where the amount of batteries being built in the country is significantly larger compared to its solar growth. They can shift a lot of that additional solar with batteries to the evening. The reason why this is important is that when you see a headline number saying, “New battery capacity added in 2025 was 45% greater than 2024, it reached 250 gigawatt hours,” it’s very difficult to put in your head — is 250 gigawatt hours a lot? Is this a big number? Should we be happy about it?
The way to think about it is what do batteries solve? This is strongly linked to what Nick was just saying about solar, because solar being the dominant driver of growth in clean power means that with solar alone, there is an inherent limit where you build solar, but that solar generates electricity only during the day. Then there is the question, what do you do when the sun sets? The favorite question of many renewable skeptics saying, “Oh, what do we do when the sun sets?”
Batteries help you bring that electricity into the night. The way we try to explain the size of batteries and that 250 gigawatt hours of battery capacity that was added in 2025 is that when you look at solar growth — as Nick said, solar increased by 636 terawatt hours. This is the electricity generated in 2025 versus 2024 across the year. If you divide that by 365, this is how much more solar was generated on the average day of 2025 compared to last year. That number is 1.7 terawatt hours.
With this battery capacity, you could take 14% of that and shift it to the night. 14% is not that big, but it is big when you compare it. For example, it was 5% in 2022. Batteries are really catching up to solar’s explosive growth. Solar is growing super fast, but batteries are managing to catch up to that and now are at a size that can capture a meaningful percent of that additional solar and shift it to the night.
David Roberts
Just to clarify, you’re saying that globally, batteries are growing faster than solar, catching up?
Kostantsa Rangelova
Yeah, they’re managing to catch up. The reason why we use Chile and Australia as two examples is that this percentage — this 14% on the global level — in Chile it’s 76%, and in Australia, it’s 53%.
David Roberts
Wait, 76% of the solar energy generated in Chile can be moved to nighttime by batteries?
Kostantsa Rangelova
The additional solar. Solar generation grew by 2 terawatt hours in 2025 compared to 2024. This is how much of the solar growth in that year can be captured by the new batteries. It’s not the outright capacity of battery, which is still small, but it’s starting to catch up. When you compare the additions on the battery side and the additions on the solar side — what can the new batteries do with the new solar? More and more of the new solar can be captured with battery and shifted to the night.
Chile and Australia are both above 50%. 50% is a pretty important number, because when you are able to shift 50% of your new solar from the peak during the day to another time of the day, probably the evening, when you have peak demand — if you can shift 50%, this means that your midday peak would not grow. Your solar is not growing at its highest in the middle of the day, it’s growing in the shoulder hours — early morning, afternoon — and then 50% of that growth is happening in the evening or whenever you like it to be, whenever it’s most needed.
Chile and Australia are both at a place where they can shift more than 50% — which means that more and more of that midday solar is moving to the evening where it’s most needed.
David Roberts
It looks like you get pretty striking effects from that, even at relatively low percentages. In other words, just being able to move a little bit of the solar to night gets you quite a bit. Chile has cut curtailment of solar by 80% just with that additional increment of batteries.
Kostantsa Rangelova
Exactly. It was not estimated by us. It was the Renewables and Storage Association of Chile that estimated that the batteries added in Chile managed to avoid 2 terawatt hours of potential curtailment. 2 terawatt hours is equivalent to the growth of solar in Chile in 2025. It’s more than 2% of Chile’s total electricity demand growth. That’s a huge amount of electricity that would have been curtailed but wasn’t, thanks to batteries.
David Roberts
The last time I talked to you, Kostantsa, was about an Ember report that was about solar and batteries and how far they have come and how much they can cover now at a reasonable price. That was mostly in theory. We were just talking about prices and doing the model. The one thing I remember about that is that Las Vegas can get to 90% solar and storage, I think.
Kostantsa Rangelova
More than 90%.
David Roberts
Economically, today. But that was theory. This is reality. Australia and Chile are places where it’s happening in reality. One of the questions I had is — is it going to be possible for any country to get to 100% with solar and batteries? The conventional wisdom is that batteries are too expensive, you can only get four hours, you’re going to have your Dunkelflaute in your gray winter, you need giant thermal storage, or you need firm power in the winter, etc. Is all of that true? Is anybody going to be able to get to 100% on solar and batteries?
Kostantsa Rangelova
I’m happy you’re asking this question because this is something where a lot of the conversation has focused. Let’s take a step back and say globally, in terms of what the solar share in 2025 was — globally it was less than 9%, 8.7%. The top countries in terms of the highest solar shares — at the top of the ranking was Hungary this year with 27%. Chile was second with 25%. These are the leading countries.
What batteries will change for solar now means that it will unlock shares that go beyond these. Let’s say 25, 27% was considered the limit without a lot of additional flexibility resources, and especially shifting solar to the night was a very big problem for accommodating more and more solar growth because there is just so much electricity demand that you can cluster in the middle of the day and so much of the additional sharing across different grids that you can do, especially if you’re thinking about many interconnected markets that all have solar and the sun sets all at the same time for all of these markets and rises at the same time.
What batteries do is that they get from this 20-something percent, which is quite big, to something like 50, 60, 70% — starting to look quite realistic. This means that solar can keep growing at the record-breaking pace that we’ve been seeing for quite a while longer without us really worrying about this. The reason why this is such a big game changer is that even when on the global level we are at 9% in 2025, some months it was 11%. The record high this year for a monthly average was 11%. But on that month, this solar was not delivered equally and solar met a quarter of electricity in the middle of the day. When the solar share is around 10, 11% across the day, it reaches a quarter in the middle of the day.
David Roberts
Interesting. And that’s current?
Kostantsa Rangelova
Yeah, that’s 2025. We estimated that across the world on average in May, when the highest solar share on the monthly level was, solar was meeting a quarter of daily midday electricity across the world. Imagine some countries — like Hungary — was at 90%. For Hungary, the highest month in terms of the highest solar share on a monthly level was June. In that month on average, solar was meeting over 90% of electricity in the middle of the day.
Then you have large systems like Germany, for example, where it was, if I’m not mistaken, more than 60%, more than two thirds. You have Spain and you have the Netherlands, which are also similar level, definitely over 50%. It gets difficult to get beyond that because these countries — Hungary was at 27%, the top country leading the world in terms of solar share in electricity, 27% across the year. But in June, 90% in the middle of the day. I hope people are seeing this limit that batteries can now help us break, because this midday share can stop growing even when 50% of the new solar is being absorbed by batteries. You can stop growing that midday share and increasingly put more and more of that solar in the evening when you need it more.
David Roberts
These first two things that we’ve hit just in our conversation are, to me, the big macro story in the world of energy right now, which is solar for a while now has been the cheapest bulk electricity that you can produce, and that’s just getting more and more so — the lead is growing, not shrinking. The only thing holding back solar has been, “It only shines during the day. You have to be able to shift it.” All of the hope for natural gas with CCS and nuclear and BECCS, space solar, all these ideas are all circling around nighttime. How do you get the power in the nighttime? Along come batteries.
Kostantsa Rangelova
We solved that.
David Roberts
We’re like, “Okay, done.”
Kostantsa Rangelova
Absolutely, we solved that. The remaining challenge is what you mentioned earlier — the Dunkelflaute and the longer periods of lower solar output. The idea is that you’re not supposed to be aiming for powering the whole world 100% on just solar and batteries. You can have a balanced mix — throw in some wind in there. If you look at India, it’s sunny in March, but then when the monsoon comes in July, you have higher wind. There’s a lot of complementarity.
You need to have a balanced approach. Some countries have lots of hydro or even you can use a little bit of gas as backup. If it’s 3% of the electricity across the year, you’re already 90 plus percent clean.
David Roberts
That would be a good problem to have.
Something I heard on another pod the other day, I can’t remember where, apologies to whoever it was. The point was that 90% of the world’s population is within 45 degrees of the equator. The whole Dunkelflaute thing that we all obsess about and talk about all the time is a marginal problem. 90% of the world’s population can do just fine, don’t have Dunkelflaute. It’s out there, it’s a problem, but can we just go ahead and do the 90 that we know how to do?
Let’s just do that.
Kostantsa Rangelova
Most of the electricity demand growth will be happening in these countries that don’t have that problem.
David Roberts
We’re going to come back to that. The final battery fact I’ll drop, then we need to go to the next thing, is that battery pack prices fell 45% in 2025.
Kostantsa Rangelova
To $70 per kilowatt-hour.
David Roberts
Every time I talk to you, we have one of these numbers. Every time it just causes my mouth to drop. It’s not a normal experience for consumer products to drop almost 50% in price a year again and again. In 2025, battery pack prices fell 45%. Whatever your estimate of what batteries could accomplish was a year ago, multiply it by 45% more and then probably again next year. Just to throw that out there. Let’s move on to the plateau issue.
One of the things that gets discussed most around these reports — people are modeling these things all the time. Reports coming out for past 20 years — is “When’s it going to peak? When’s it going to peak?” We’re slowing it down a little bit. Solar and wind are taking more and more of the incremental growth. “When’s it going to peak? Is it peaking now? Oops, we were wrong. It flipped back up again the next year,” etc.
All of which is to say it went down last year. We’ll only know the answer to this question with a little more distance and time. In your estimation, from what you can see today, why did that happen? Is that just structural or was there something about this year that was idiosyncratic?
Nicolas Fulghum
The best peaks are definitely observed when they have already happened. People have been burned too many times on calling various peaks, including in 2020 when we had a drop across all kinds of fossil fuels, not just in the power sector. There were a few pieces saying “that was the peak” and then it wasn’t.
David Roberts
There’s this whole idea that maybe post-Covid we won’t just go back to the way it was. Then we just did.
Nicolas Fulghum
We did. But crucially we didn’t in the power sector. We’ve mentioned this at the beginning — what’s the difference between this year where we’re meeting all the demand growth with clean power to previous years where that’s happened. 2025 was the fifth year in this century where we didn’t have an increase in fossil generation.
In the past when this has happened — think 2020 and we had the recession in the late 2000s. In 2009 we had a decline in fossil generation. Those years, they stick out. The reason that we had a decline in fossil generation in those years is because demand growth was either really low or demand fell.
What makes 2025 so different is that we had really healthy demand growth. Demand went up 2.8%. The 10-year average is 2.7%. Very normal demand growth. That is the big difference.
David Roberts
Global GDP growth was 3.2%, which is normal, not a recession.
Nicolas Fulghum
Very much in line with the 10-year average as well. This is what we’re looking at when we’re saying there’s a structural difference here. When you look at the charts of the increases in solar and other clean power sources, it’s a nice curved line. It just increases and increases. What’s much more volatile is the increase in demand from year to year. That’s what’s going to make calling the specific peak quite difficult, because last year, for example, we had an incredibly hot year and crucially, it was much hotter than in 2023.
We had this acceleration in heat waves and that creates a lot more cooling demand. 2025 was also really hot, but it wasn’t an acceleration. It doesn’t have a net effect on demand necessarily. We are moving back into an El Niño year. In 2026, potentially we might see new temperature records. These fluctuations can affect demand quite a lot from year to year. We’re talking about a whole percentage point, for example, that can happen.
David Roberts
It’s possible that next year fossil generation could go back up. It’s entirely possible.
Nicolas Fulghum
Entirely possible. What’s much more important is when we’re looking at the structural trends. If we look at just over the last few years, how much has clean generation grown every single year? Then we look at the same for electricity demand and we extrapolate those trends out, we see that clean power is now meeting the increases in demand, which leads to a flattening out of fossil generation. No growth. This is what is the potential plateau. There are no certainties in forecasts. I think everyone knows that. The most likely scenario at the minute is that we’ll have a few years with probably some smaller increases, some smaller falls in fossil generation.
Overwhelmingly, as we get towards 2030, 2035, the growth in clean power is going to be much larger than the growth in demand. That’s when we will see fossil generation come down. There are various models out there — some people know from the International Energy Agency, from Bloomberg, there are various scenarios — but generally they land at fossil generation 10% below 2025 levels in 10 years or 20% below 2025 levels. That’s the realm that we’re in now.
Some people might say we need much stronger declines. 10% in 10 years, that’s absolutely nothing. It’s a very fair point. If you come at this from more of a climate perspective, that’s not the reductions that we would expect. But it’s important to say that the power sector is also playing a dual role here. It’s not just about decarbonization in the power sector. Part of what that demand growth is doing — and we’re thinking about demand growth that’s within these projections — demand is not growing at 2.7% like it has done in the last 10 years. It’s growing at 3.5% per year, more than it did this year.
David Roberts
The acceleration in electricity demand driven by data centers, electrifying cars, heating, cooling, etc. — that’s global and enduring, you think?
Nicolas Fulghum
There are very clear signs. We’ve put some of the analysis in the report — electric vehicles make up still single-digit percentages of the demand increase every year, but it’s a substantial amount. There is a flip side, a positive flip side to it. Every terawatt hour of additional electricity demand is offsetting oil demand in the transport sector. This is what I mean with the dual role of the power sector — it’s not just about decarbonizing electricity generation. We’re also moving many processes in the rest of the economy into the power sector, which is a very positive effect.
If we didn’t have electric vehicles, if we didn’t have any data centers, if we didn’t have electric arc furnaces or heat pumps, then fossil generation in the power sector would fall quicker. But the trade-off is worth it because the emissions reductions outside the power sector that we can achieve are higher than purely just cutting emissions as fast as we can.
David Roberts
That’s the whole premise of the podcast you’re on. That is the core premise here. I want to ask another question about the plateau. The way you’re describing this, it’s often called a bumpy plateau. The idea that we’re in a little period here where we’re going to be wiggling back and forth before the enduring declines start. This is something people have been predicting for a while. The way you describe it is it’s like if I’m driving on the interstate going 70, and I’m passing a car going 65, we might waver a little bit as I’m passing, but I’m steadily passing and I’m going to get past.
That’s how you’re describing what solar is doing now to fossil generation. We’re wiggling now, but it’s going to be a few years and then we’re going to be past. There is a theory out there that there’s something sticky about the plateau, that we’re going to be stuck on the plateau. I’ve seen lots of models that say this. I don’t really know why we would be. There’s also this theory out there — Vaclav Smil, I think, is associated with this idea — that we don’t have energy transitions, we only have energy additions.
We’re still burning wood, etc. We’re still using coal. We just add these new sources and these new kinds of energy on top of existing ones. That theory would tell us that we’re not going to get enduring declines. It seems to me, at the very least, if you get a decline, you’re refuting that theory. I’m curious what you think about how long this plateau is and if there is anything to that energy addition point?
Nicolas Fulghum
It’s an interesting theory. The point that’s often made within that is that we’re still using as much biomass as we were 200 years ago and, in theory, that was an energy technology that was surpassed. What I would say is I think it doesn’t hold up with the reality of the energy system because biomass wasn’t surpassed as an energy carrier in a lot of applications because we still have areas that use biomass for cooking because that’s the available fuel there. The reason there has been this consistent energy addition in all of these areas was because other fuel sources were still easier to procure or easier to use in those contexts.
I do think that qualitatively we do have a difference in the transition that we’re seeing here because the substitution is not from cooking with biomass to heating our homes with coal, and then moving on to electricity produced by coal and gas and so on. We’re directly switching from one form of electricity generation to another form of electricity generation. That new form — solar, wind, batteries — is economically more viable and is already displacing it. On a global level, we have this slightly smoother trend.
David Roberts
The fuel source is always accessible to everyone everywhere.
Nicolas Fulghum
Exactly. That’s why we expect emerging economies to at some point travel faster than economies that might still have a huge stock of fossil fuel infrastructure. The parallel to this addition model only holds up so far when you look at the global level and historical trends. In individual countries, we already see that there isn’t addition happening. We see substitution in a number of countries. We see substitution in Brazil this year. We saw some substitution in China. China is so big that you can take it as almost a global number where it will probably plateau, but in the European Union, there’s plenty of substitution happening already.
If the theory is only applicable at the global level, I don’t think it’s necessarily a good theory to predict what’s happening at the country level. What I would describe it as is essentially we are running out of countries that are going to significantly grow their fossil generation.
David Roberts
The final thing on the plateau is just the US in 2025 lurched the other way. Coal generation was up 13%. I don’t think net fossil generation was up in the US. I think we just did gas to coal because gas got more expensive for a bunch of reasons. Is that just a blip? Is there anything to say about that other than that it’s probably just an anomaly?
Nicolas Fulghum
We had a very small increase in fossil generation in the US still, even with that switch back from gas to coal. Even in the US where you had strong demand growth in 2025, really cold winter temperatures at the beginning of the year, which pushed up demand as well. Even in the US, which politically is, if anything, moving away from support for renewables, they still met three-quarters. Solar and wind still met three-quarters of the demand increase.
David Roberts
If you look at the US numbers over time, does Trump policy show up yet in the numbers?
Nicolas Fulghum
I would say not quite yet. What it will likely show up in is that the additions in solar and wind that we could have been seeing in 2027 and beyond will probably be lower, so that we get the unfortunate counterfactual where that disappearance of support and the active, in some cases, canceling of offshore wind projects that are in process is not going to encourage faster deployment. If anything, it says something to the durability and the economic viability of solar and wind that they’re still seeing such huge growth in the US. The most liberalized markets in Texas are choosing solar and wind actively.
David Roberts
The other big topic this year is India, which I think is really interesting. People in our world talk a lot about China for obvious reasons. China is the number one in choose your metric. But India is important. Got a lot of people, quite big, growing quite fast.
The macro worry has always been that emerging economies are going to follow China’s path — that is, develop with coal and then once they’ve achieved some measure of prosperity, slowly transition from coal to renewables. If you run the numbers on that model, if that happens, we’re all screwed. But it looks like maybe it won’t, India being the case in point. Maybe one of you can tell me, what are the signs? Why would we believe that India isn’t going to follow China’s? What are the counter indicators?
Nicolas Fulghum
I’m happy to start with the structural perspective. Then Kostantsa might be able to add something interesting about batteries here as well. A lot of people are familiar with China’s growth story — huge increase in electricity demand, huge economic growth, and as a result there was a huge increase in coal generation as well. A lot of that growth was fueled by coal generation. This isn’t just a China story, this is also the global story. Over the last hundred years when we wanted more electricity, most of that electricity came from fossil fuels.
David Roberts
I shouldn’t blame China. It’s also the US model and the rest of the developed world model.
Nicolas Fulghum
Exactly. Every time there was a huge increase in demand, you had an increase in fossil generation. The reason that happened is because those were the available sources of electricity. You then had nuclear power and hydropower also play a big role, but not a huge amount. For example, if we look at just 20 years back to 2005 to 2009, five-year period, in that time fossil fuels make up 75% of the growth. It was just the environment that China had its big growth spurt in.
Now when we look at India, what we’ve done is we’ve compared the development level — if you just take it as a GDP per capita — and India’s GDP per capita crossed $10,000 in 2025. That’s the same level that China had 15 years ago. Since those 15 years ago, a huge explosion in coal generation in China occurred. We do expect India’s electricity demand to continue growing. The question then was, are we just going to see the same again? The big difference is now wind and solar and batteries are price competitive. They’re already the cheapest forms of new electricity in India. On top of that, India’s economy is significantly more efficient for how much electricity you need for your unit of GDP. That means India’s growth is simply not going to create the same increase in electricity demand that we’ve seen in China.
David Roberts
Is there a simple explanation for that? Why is that?
Nicolas Fulghum
The economy is more service sector focused, it has a growing industrial base, but it’s just not as energy intensive. That means you can grow your GDP per capita without having an enormous increase in demand, even though the demand growth rates themselves are still quite high. We already see the increase in coal generation slow down in India in 2025. We had a fall. That had a few reasons. On the one hand, it was a huge increase in renewables, more than twice as large as the previous record increase. New record for solar, new record for wind as well. 100 terawatt hours of additional renewables generation almost in 2025.
David Roberts
Lots of growth in coal too, though?
Nicolas Fulghum
Not in 2025. In 2025, coal generation fell in India by about 2.9%.
David Roberts
Is that structural?
Nicolas Fulghum
Half of it is the structural part — this renewables record increase which comes from capacity deployment. The other half is that 2025 was an incredibly mild year compared to the previous year, particularly during the monsoon period. That means slow demand growth. As a result, that huge increase in renewables was enough to surpass the increase in demand. We see a fall in fossil generation. That indication still tells us something, and it is that India’s coal generation growth is slowing down already.
David Roberts
The other number to throw in here is coal has grown 46% in India over the last decade. This halt in growth this year is quite notable. It is a very big deal.
Nicolas Fulghum
Very much a reversal of the previous trends.
Kostantsa Rangelova
I have to jump in at this stage because I think this is where we need to really talk about the role of batteries in solar, because India has seen a very big increase in auctions happening for solar and battery projects and for battery standalone projects. The reason is, if you look at 2025, India on the average day, around a quarter of its electricity was coming from solar in the middle of the day. This means that this big increase of solar in the middle of the day kept coal power from increasing during those hours. But outside of daylight hours, coal power kept increasing at pace with demand, which means that it was still around three-quarters of total demand in 2025 in those dark hours.
With batteries, you can now start squeezing solar more and more into those dark hours and meeting a lot of that additional demand with renewable electricity and not just coal, and being able to stop that coal growth not just in the middle of the day when solar is growing, but also in the dark hours, really changes the game and unlocks a different level of growth for renewables as well.
David Roberts
Is India enjoying the cheap solar and batteries that China is producing? They’re not putting tariffs on those things, are they? Is part of the reason that solar and batteries are growing so much in this part of the country that people are just enjoying China’s overproduction?
Kostantsa Rangelova
What we have seen is that the battery prices that developers in India could have access to are probably around $120, $125 per kilowatt hour, which is extremely cheap. That’s for the whole project to get developed. Certainly they do have access to those cheap batteries. They produce, for example, parts of it, especially the energy management system, at quite competitive cost to China as well. They have some homegrown aspect of that as well. It’s not the full system being imported and they are growing that manufacturing base as well.
Nicolas Fulghum
On the solar side, India has actively brought solar manufacturing in country. A lot of the manufacturing for panels is now done directly in India. Projects that use domestically produced cells do have certain incentives to go along with that. It’s really a full energy economy effort to bring that in house. If we just look at what it’s done, we expect that the coal generation per capita — they’re very similarly sized countries on a population basis, China and India — but per capita that coal generation is already stalling out at about a quarter or a third of the level where China has gotten to.
We simply don’t expect India to turn into the next China because that deployment for renewables is already high and already what’s in the pipeline now — projects under construction, not just announced or some future dream — are enough to satisfy two additional years of India’s demand growth. There are certainly more projects that will be added in the near future.
David Roberts
I read a prominent D.C. pundit say today that India should transition from coal to US liquid natural gas because that would be lower carbon intensity. That seems totally crazy to me. Is that in fact totally crazy? If you’re going to build a new power generation plant in India today, is solar and battery already cheaper than natural gas?
Kostantsa Rangelova
Yes, certainly this is not going to be in the Global Electricity Review, but we recently worked on a piece looking exactly at that. It was a thought experiment calculation saying, “What percentage of its electricity demand could India meet with only solar and batteries?” Theoretically. What we saw is that you could get to around 90% and the LCOE of the solar battery configuration that you needed was around $56 per megawatt hour, which is quite cheap. I don’t think LNG could easily compete with that.
Nicolas Fulghum
If anything, the last few weeks have shown that the general advice should be: if you can actively avoid tying yourself to a global energy market, then you should definitely take that risk.
Kostantsa Rangelova
For sure.
David Roberts
That was my first thought when I read that. I was “Really? You’re trying to sell this to India right now?” It seems we’re having a lurid demonstration of what happens when you’re dependent on other countries for fossil fuels. India is then a positive story. What could go wrong? India seems at this point aligned. The economics are working out really well. Policy-wise, not perfect, but they are subsidizing solar and everything seems like it’s moving in the right direction in India. Is there something that could go wrong?
Nicolas Fulghum
I would say not necessarily in India, but if we say globally, China is not just turning, but it is in absolute terms the global leader in clean energy build-out. That used to be the biggest contributor to fossil generation growth globally. Since 2018, outside of China, fossil generation globally has been flat and now it’s flat in China as well. I think those are the two things that people need to remember. That’s why the global trend has now flattened out, because the biggest driver has turned and we have seen the trend switch in India as well.
We’ll still probably see a few years up until 2030 where we’ll see fossil generation increases, but they will be smaller. The question is, if those big countries, the big contributors to the global fossil generation growth, are turning, who is left? Where is fossil generation growth going to come from?
David Roberts
One of the interesting things going on globally — everybody talks about China, everybody talks about America, a lot of talk about India. One of the more interesting stories going on in renewables is a lot of these little countries that you just wouldn’t guess. If you were to stop someone on the street and ask them to guess what country is booming in solar, a lot of these countries are not top of mind.
I did a pod on Pakistan. Everybody’s talking about the Pakistan story. They went from 0 to 20% of their net generation being solar in two years or something. Brazil is surging. Hungary — why? Chile. Before we talk about the countries that haven’t yet lurched in this direction, is there a common thread to those? It just seems like a very random grab bag of countries. Is there some logic there that I’m missing? Why are some emerging economies going gangbusters for solar and some aren’t yet?
Nicolas Fulghum
The most straightforward answer is economics. Solar power is cheap enough or at least significantly cheaper than the cheapest fossil fuel alternative. Especially for countries that either want to meet load growth or have trouble meeting their current electricity demand, it becomes a very obvious option to turn to. Pakistan is certainly the biggest economy example.
David Roberts
But that’s true everywhere. The boom is not everywhere. Why boom in some places and not others? Do we know?
Nicolas Fulghum
Urgency matters as well. In Pakistan, the rates from the grid were so high, coupled with supply issues, that people took it into their own hands. The solar boom that we see in Pakistan is very much one of distributed solar rather than utility-scale installations. There is some utility-scale solar as well, but a large majority of that solar that has come online in the last five years has been from rooftop solar installations that people put down themselves, increasingly aided by battery installations as well. That availability, or this commodity-driven approach to solar where people go out and purchase their own solar panels, does have scaling power. You can’t build your own little gas power plant, so naturally that is not an option. Historically that would have been maybe a diesel generator.
Nigeria is another example. The fuel costs for those in many countries are simply too high. Nigeria tended to be a country with a huge amount of off-grid generation from diesel generators — smaller generator units. The fuel subsidies that people always forget — there are still a huge amount of fossil fuel subsidies out there — were reduced, and oil prices were too high once they weren’t subsidized. People naturally then turned to supply their own electricity with solar panels because they are cheap, easy to install, and readily available.
We’ve seen the same thing in South Africa a few years ago when there was load shedding because coal power units weren’t available. People immediately turned towards faster solar installations. More recent examples — these are countries that people are more familiar with when we’re talking about solar. The drive to install distributed solar in Germany has just picked up again. The interest in rooftop installations has spiked significantly as a result of the second fossil fuel crisis in four years.
David Roberts
I don’t know how many times Germany needs to learn this lesson.
Nicolas Fulghum
Yeah, exactly. The UK is the same. A lot of countries walk through this path at a different pace. Every single time there is a supply crunch, there is a price crunch among fossil fuels. The obvious option, because it is readily available and it is not a solution that you have to implement over 10 years with a huge project — solar is just so readily available.
David Roberts
Is there a story about Hungary — what’s going on in Hungary? This is not a country that politically we tend to take as a model in other respects. Why are they having such a boom?
Kostantsa Rangelova
In the case of Hungary, there was certainly a government subsidy support element to it as well that aided this extreme boom. What also helped was the fact that it is a very interconnected system within Europe, which means that sharing that electricity across the European grid made it easier to reach a very high share without necessarily having, for example, a battery to accommodate that.
David Roberts
They’re not an island, they’re well interconnected.
Kostantsa Rangelova
Exactly. They could share very high midday shares with other countries. It was relatively easy to achieve for a very well-interconnected country in terms of the electricity grid.
David Roberts
The flip side of this, and a really interesting point or argument the report makes, is that the remaining countries that still have really high percentages of fossil generation, that are still stuck on fossils, are almost all in extremely sunny places. What are the implications of that?
Nicolas Fulghum
We’ve looked at countries that have had increases in fossil generation over the last four years, between 2022 and 2025. When you look at their irradiation — how much solar insolation or how much sunlight they get per year — they’re almost exclusively significantly above the world average. There are lots of countries where fossil generation is already declining and they’re more spread out. You have Germany, even though they have a lot of solar. There’s a lot of mixed countries going on there. If you’re looking at countries that have had fossil growth below 3% per year — that includes countries like China, for example — they tend to be already a little bit sunnier.
The ones that have been growing the fastest in fossil generation — more than 3% per year in the last four years — include Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, India, Egypt. Those are countries that are significantly — especially countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt — higher in terms of their sunshine that they receive every year. Just to pick out Egypt to explain what’s going on here: we have a country like the Netherlands, which isn’t very sunny. Egypt gets about twice as much irradiation per year as the Netherlands. Egypt has 4% as much solar generation per capita as the Netherlands do.
David Roberts
Almost none. Then it sounds like.
Nicolas Fulghum
Almost none. What we are looking at here is potential. Another way to get the scale across is that Australia’s solar generation per capita is higher than Egypt’s electricity demand per capita. If the question is, can solar generation scale to the level of a significantly sized economy? The answer is yes.
The even better answer is that all of those countries still growing their fossil generation because they’re using that to meet their growing demand are in sunny regions. We’re not having to find solutions to the demand growth in the Netherlands. Funnily enough, the Netherlands are now meeting a reasonable amount of their demand with solar. It’s one of the highest solar per capita countries in the world behind Australia. Australia is number one. Then you have the Netherlands in the second spot. Even the countries with low irradiation are turning towards solar. It’s even more of an obvious solution for those that do have all of that sun.
David Roberts
A question about that particular group of countries first. They’re going against the tide here — against the economic tide. Is it just politics? Is there a common thread in those countries or is it, again, bespoke from country to country why they’re still expanding fossil fuels rather than already opting for this cheaper option?
Nicolas Fulghum
It’s definitely slightly different country by country, but we do see, in aggregate, a bigger drive towards solar, especially in the more recent years. One of the ways that we’re tracking this is we’re looking at the exports of solar panels from China. China is responsible for more than 80% of solar panels produced in the world. Looking at the exports tells us a lot about where the next big pickup in solar is. That’s how we spot Pakistan and those stories.
The panel exports went up 48% to Africa from 2024 to 2025. It’s now 19 gigawatts in 2025, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but you have to remember that electricity demand in Africa is also still relatively low. Egypt, for example, imported twice as many panels as they did in 2024. That’s now 2.3 gigawatts.
Some of the countries that have the most fossil generation growth for the last few years — Saudi Arabia, for example — are now countries that are heavily investing in renewables. We have over 10 gigawatts of capacity now in solar, we have huge tenders — another 15 gigawatts of renewables capacity that were tendered in 2025 alone. We are going to see a really rapid turnaround. Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar.
David Roberts
Even those countries have gotten the message and are pivoting now. Are there countries left that aren’t pivoting, that aren’t ramping up their solar, that are still doubling down on fossil fuels? Is there any country that is just saying, “Screw all this, we’re sticking with fossil fuels,” that hasn’t started changing course?
Nicolas Fulghum
Before I get to the one really big one that hasn’t, I’m going to say one more positive thing before we get to the big one that just isn’t turning. If we take all the countries where we have growing electricity demand, but all the countries that are meeting less than 50% of that demand with clean power over the last four years — those are the ones where you would say most of that growth is still coming from fossil fuels — that’s only a quarter of growing demand in the world. All the other countries — China, US, Brazil, Pakistan — they’re meeting more than 50% of their demand growth, a lot more. In the case of China, it’s 75%. In the case of the US it’s over 80%. Pakistan is meeting more than its demand growth with clean power sources. Brazil is doing the same. Those remaining countries, only a small part.
David Roberts
In absolute terms, the holdouts are not a huge deal.
Nicolas Fulghum
Exactly.
Kostantsa Rangelova
If anything, this is going to accelerate because with the current gas and oil price crisis, this will only get even more prominent. We saw Indonesia announcing a goal to add 100 gigawatts of new solar capacity within three years, which is huge. Indonesia is one of those very sunny countries with, until recently, growing fossil growth. We can probably expect an acceleration with the current situation.
David Roberts
Nick, to break the suspense, who’s the final scofflaw standing?
Nicolas Fulghum
Indonesia is the one that is just now turning, but Russia is the big holdout.
David Roberts
I should have known. It should have been my first.
Nicolas Fulghum
The one positive thing about — I don’t want to say the positive thing about Russia, but essentially demand growth is relatively muted. The economy is not expanding at a rapid rate for various reasons. In terms of countries that have a huge amount of fossil generation, certainly one of the big holdouts, we have not seen the power system budge any which way over the last two decades. A huge amount of coal and gas generation is still on the grid. They also have nuclear and hydro generation, but it is essentially a huge stock of fossil generation that does not seem to be going away.
Solar and wind still at around 1% of generation, which, if you compare it to other countries that have a similar level of GDP per capita, is one of the lowest values globally. It is being significantly outperformed by Saudi Arabia, which historically people would not necessarily call a renewable state. We are really talking about one of the largest power systems in the world that does not have any signs of turning anytime soon. Luckily, as we said, most of the countries with growing demand are meeting all of that growth with clean power. On a global level, we are definitely running out of countries that could drive fossil generation up.
David Roberts
Still, most of the big oil and gas producers refuse to implement policies to cap or reduce production. But even those countries are pivoting their own consumption to clean energy — Saudi Arabia, Norway, all these examples. I think Russia might literally be the only country that’s saying, “Screw it, we’re going fossil fuel on both sides.” Probably not going to work out great.
As a final question to you both, what are you looking for next year? What do you think next year’s report is going to contain? Probably solar is going to break another record. I’m going to take that prediction off the table. It’s too easy. What are you watching? What trends are you watching? What do you think will be of interest next year? In the next two or three years?
Kostantsa Rangelova
Absolutely. I will definitely be watching the battery space as always. I really think that we are probably going to have a very big pickup in batteries in countries that have had this bump in solar, and batteries will follow — thinking Pakistan or similar countries that have gone that path. Even countries that are very early in their solar journey might also be adding lots and lots of batteries and show that this can meet demand across the day and anytime. I’m definitely looking at this unstoppable force message next.
David Roberts
Tell me if you agree with this. It seems that even relative to solar, there is still technologically a lot of runway left to improve batteries’ performance and price. They are still going to get way, way better and cheaper than they are today.
Kostantsa Rangelova
I wouldn’t bet on a similarly huge — this 45% price drop we saw in 2025 — I would be surprised, but I would be happily surprised if it happens. Considering that we have this lithium price point pressure currently, we might see a slowdown. We might still see a price drop on the battery side because this is not just driven by lower material costs, but also by improving manufacturing efficiency and improving project-level efficiencies and things like that. Probably a milder decrease because we are already at the level where batteries are really quite competitive. I would probably be betting on scaling on the deployment side and a mildly good number on the price side.
David Roberts
Interesting. How about you, Nick?
Nicolas Fulghum
We’re getting to a point where the level of renewables deployed in some countries is now fundamentally changing how those power systems operate. There are some really exciting dynamics that are happening here — obviously the battery story. We’re always watching some of the leading systems like Australia, like California, where we’re now seeing some of the shoulder hours or evening peak demand batteries reaching 40% or more of the demand being met during those hours. I think we’re seeing a completely different way that the power system can operate.
On the very positive effects that that can have during this crisis that we’re seeing now — gas prices are high again, coal prices are high again. The countries that have had the largest build-out of solar and wind power over the last four years are the ones that are suffering the least now in Europe. A big comparison that we’re pointing towards at the minute is between Spain, which has a lot of solar and wind and has installed a lot of solar and wind, and Italy, which hasn’t to quite the same extent and is still relatively reliant on gas. If you look at what wholesale prices for electricity have done over the last four weeks between the two countries — in Italy, they’re at times more than five times higher than in Spain.
That really is almost a non-linear relationship. It’s not like you add 10% more solar and you get 10% lower prices. If countries don’t move towards a system where their energy and electricity is domestically produced — like solar and wind can provide — then you are going to be increasingly reliant again and again on these crisis-ridden fossil fuel markets where if coal goes up, if gas goes up, if oil goes up, your wholesale electricity price is directly on the hook for that. This is a dynamic that has driven countries like Indonesia to say, from a relatively low base. There’s not a lot of solar deployment currently in Indonesia. They’re saying, “We’re going to install 100 gigawatts in three years.”
David Roberts
That’s wild.
Nicolas Fulghum
Note on the 100 gigawatts in three years — that’s a promise that you couldn’t make about any other electricity source even if you wanted to. You couldn’t say, “We’re going to install 100 gigawatts of gas-fired power plants in the next three years.” Or nuclear.
David Roberts
You can say whatever you want about nuclear. Let me tell you, after 20 years of this, you can say a lot of things about nuclear, but you cannot build 100 gigawatts of it in three years.
Nicolas Fulghum
This is what I mean when we were talking about Nigeria, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, South Africa — the availability does make a big difference. We have a lot of technologies converging at the same time. Batteries are solving the flexibility problem. The increased manufacturing of solar panels in India, in China means that the supply of solar panels is relatively secure. Even the US has domestic supply of solar panels still.
Kostantsa Rangelova
And batteries.
Nicolas Fulghum
And batteries, yeah. The convergence of all of these technologies at the same time means that we now see a breakout of solar and a breakout of solar and batteries in a country every other month. That’s a really exciting development to watch, and I’m excited to see what that means in aggregate for next year. It’s definitely going to be another busy year of tracking these trends.
David Roberts
It’s unfortunate that these global convulsions and wars and everything are going on, but they really do seem as if they might as well have been scripted as a warning about fossil fuel addiction. You couldn’t script it any more clearly. The lesson seems quite obvious.
Thank you both. This is always so interesting. I’m struck again and again. All this stuff is moving so much faster than most people understand. It’s wild. Thank you all again for coming and keeping us current.
Nicolas Fulghum
You’re very welcome. Thanks for having us on.
Kostantsa Rangelova
Thank you for having us.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to Volts. It takes a village to make this podcast work. Shout out, especially, to my super producer, Kyle McDonald, who makes me and my guests sound smart every week. And it is all supported entirely by listeners like you. So, if you value conversations like this, please consider joining our community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. Or, leaving a nice review, or telling a friend about Volts. Or all three. Thanks so much, and I’ll see you next time
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