Fuck trump but I gotta thank him for speeding up the whole EV development industry.
Nope: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy
Perhaps you should just stop looking at just electricity.
Yeah a lot more work needs to be done for all energy.
The trends are the same, I think, but a few decades behind.
renewable sources produced 33.8 percent of the world’s electricity last year, compared to 33 percent for coal.
I mean, I’m all in for renewable energy and this does seem like an alright milestone, but that’s comparing one source (Coal) to at least two sources (Solar and Wind*).
If we’re going to do that then I’d be more comfy when renewables cross the mark and beat out ALL fossil fuels generation and/or when one of Wind or Solar beats Coal.
Also a little bothered that they don’t enumerate the remaining ~33% of power generation. It seems fair to assume its mostly other fossil fuels with a small but not quite negligible chunk for Nuclear?
* = I assumed they would lump Hydro + Geothermal into “renewable”, but they only explicitly mention wind and solar
Wind is just solar with extra steps.
Written like someone who lives in a sunny place… 😉
Technically so are fossil fuels.
…lots and lots of extra steps.
That’s all just nuclear fission with more steps.
Are there perhaps only two primary power sources: fission (in stars for now) and fusion (on Earth)?
Other way around. Stars produce energy through nuclear fusion, nuclear reactors produce energy through fission.
Right, sorry, slip of the ginger.
And if we want to be really precise about where energy comes from, it’s worth noting that all elements heavier than hydrogen (i.e. all if them) are the result of stellar fusion. Up to iron in the main phase, and anything heavier in supernovae, neutron star mergers, and possibly other extremely violent events. So fission is extracting the stored energy of dead stars.
Ultimately, it’s probably all just residual energy from the Big Bang.
The energy stored in fissile elements mostly doesn’t come from fusion, it comes from gravitational potential energy released when stellar cores collapse. Most supernovae mostly aren’t fusion; almost all that energy comes from mass falling down into a neutron star or black hole.
Fissile elements are still produced through fusion, but this process takes energy from the supernova and stores it, just like fossil fuel is stored sunlight.
Potential energy and tidal are gravitational.
Tidal is really feeding off the momentum of the planet, but yeah, that’s not nuclear.
Potential energy… that’s more a storage medium.
Perhaps we need to add the original energy of the big bang to nuclear. That threw things apart so they could have potential energy, and it gave a lot of matter a lot of momentum which gets topped up occasionally by a nuclear exploding star.
All energy is solar with extra steps really
All energy is nuclear with extra steps.
I was about to point out nuclear, but I suppose in a way that’s just going straight to the source.
They also don’t show the actual numbers, so we don’t know if coal production had any reduction, or if renewables just grew faster. The rest of the article makes it seem like the latter
Coal use in primary energy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy
Actual numbers are in this report
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-review-2026/
Thank you. It says there was a small reduction globally of 38 TWh (-0.2%) in 2025
Yeah, with the anticipated electrical demand of the near future, I don’t see coal generation decreasing substantially soon.
Does make me wish we’d come harder on nuclear over the last 4-5 decades. I know nuclear isn’t perfect, but its a good deal better than fossil fuels.
5 years later… Bro, you can’t ignore the huge 10% gap represented by oil…
In a more just reality this would be being celebrated right now in a massive wrestling showdown show called COAL SMACKDOWN that brought together activists, scientists and of course pro wrestlers.
