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I really hate this kind of article. Because they do twist numbers to serve a narrative (on renewable energy) instead of showing the complete picture fairly. >
by adev_ 1y ago
I really hate this kind of article. Because they do twist numbers to serve a narrative (on renewable energy) instead of showing the complete picture fairly.
> June 2025 was a milestone month: Solar became the EU’s single largest electricity source for the first time ever.
Yes June was a record for Solar power production due to an amazing weather....
But it was a pure disaster for Solar power profitability with an all time low.
The peak was too large for the grid to consume and the price went negative (or null) for the entire month during the solar hours.
That should bring serious questions on the ROI of any future investment in solar capacity and about Europe electricity storage capacity.
The article ignores that entirely.
https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/les-donnees-de-marche# https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/les-donnees-de-marche#
> Some countries are already nearly 100% renewable. Denmark led with an impressive 94.7% share of renewables in net electricity generated
This is also miss-leading. Production does not mean Consumption.
Denmark is very far from 94% consumption based on renewable. It rely heavily on import from German grid (Coal and Gaz powered) almost every night and this is a disaster in term of CO2 emission.
That leads to emissions over ~140CO2g/kwh in average, meaning way over what other Scandinavians countries are able to do (e.g Sweden < 15gCO2/kwh)
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DK-DK1/3mo/daily https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DK-DK1/3mo/daily
> In total, 15 EU countries saw their share of renewable generation rise year-over-year.
Yes but that does not mean CO2 emissions are falling (which should be the only thing that matter).
Belgium is closing perfectly working nuclear powerplants recently that are providing around 30% of the country consumption.
Meaning the country CO2 emission are expected to increase significantly this year due to that and this is just plain stupid.
Spain might follow a similar track and this is disastrous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Belgium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Belgium
In short, please stop this kind of article.
- Renewable are good but what Europe need is massive investment in energy storage through battery and/or pump hydro. And this is nowhere here. Blind praise in solar capacity is counterproductive.
- If we do not carefully control our current capacity of non-controllable renewable in Europe, we might doom the ROI of an entire industry for the decades to come. And this is the taxpayer will have to sponge all this mess financially speaking.
- What matters is CO2 emission and CO2 reduction, not renewable capacity. This kind of article favors wrong political decisions by putting first and foremost renewable capacity as the only metric that matters. The Belgian nuclear situation is one of these terrible decisions.
- z3ratul163071 1y agogold comment
- adev_ 1y agoNot everybody seems to think so when I see the number of downvotes on this post. Sadly, any criticism on renewables, even constructive, is often straight downvoted without any comments nor justifications on Hackernews.
- fuoqi 1y agoYeah, and you can even consider yourself lucky if it's just downvotes, sometimes your messages just get flagged, like when I called renewables being a major reason for the Iberian blackout with citations from the official report.
- inerte 1y agoTBH your first phrase is how every bad comment starts so I can understand reflex downvotes, BUT, your actual content after that is fantastic, and it took me a while to mentally go to "oh wait they make sense here"
- missinglugnut 1y agoVoting on every site is an emotional response, and bad news + convincing arguments against currently held beliefs produces a strong negative one. I appreciate that you gave more insight into electricity markets today.
- kieranmaine 1y agoTo provide some numbers on the storage side of things. On European battery storage [1]: * 2024 - 21.9 GWh installed. * 2025 - 29.7 GWh predicted to be installed. * 2029 - Between 66.6 GWh and 183 GWh to be installed for 2029. Total capacity estimated to be 400 GWh. The UK also recently received applications for 52.6 GW of storage Long Duration Energy Storage cap and floor scheme [2]. LDES in this context is classed as 8hrs or greater. Seasonal storage is not included. I don't know if this sufficiently plugs the gaps, but it does show a large increase in installed battery storage, which appears to be accelerating. Edit: Include total capacity in 2029 figure. 1. https://www.solarpowereurope.org/press-releases/new-report-european-battery-storage-grows-15-in-2024-eu-energy-storage-action-plan-needed https://www.solarpowereurope.org/press-releases/new-report-e... 2. https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2025-09/LDES%20Eligibility%20Assessment%20Outcome.pdf https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2025-09/LDES%20...