Nathaniel Bullard writes:

Energy giant BP Plc has been publishing its annual review of global energy statistics for seven decades. (I’ve been reading it — and digesting its data — for about a fifth of that time.)

The latest edition published in July is, understandably, quite focused on the largest year-on-year decline in primary energy consumption since 1945. But there’s another finding worth noting: 2020 was the first year in which renewable power generation (excluding hydro) surpassed nuclear power generation.

Charted out, the comparison is striking. In 1965, the year BP’s data begins, nuclear generated 24 terawatt-hours of power, while wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass generated 15 terawatt-hours. That was as close as the two categories would be again until 2019.

The gap between the two widened for four full decades, but with nuclear generation basically flat since the turn of the century and renewables continuing to grow, the latter caught the former in 2020.

Compare the shape of the renewables curve to nuclear’s. The perfectly smooth renewables curve is an aggregate of hundreds of geothermal plants, thousands of biomass turbines, a-third-of-a-million wind turbines, and more than a billion photovoltaic modules, installed across numerous global markets. It shows not a single annual decline in more than 50 years. [Continue reading…]