nuclear-news

Solar Power Set to Surpass Nuclear Generation This Summer

By Tsvetana Paraskova – May 21, 2025, https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Solar-Power-Set-to-Surpass-Nuclear-Generation-This-Summer.html

This summer, solar power generation globally could exceed electricity from nuclear power plants for the first time ever, as solar capacity soars and sunlight and daylight hours are long in the northern hemisphere. 

Global solar power generation jumped by 34% in the first quarter of 2025 from the same period in 2024, according to data from Ember cited by Reuters columnist Gavin Maguire.  

If the pace of growth is sustained though June, July, and August, solar output is set to top 260 terawatt hours (TWh) in the summer months. This would beat the average 223 TWh of global nuclear power generation from 2024, Maguire notes. 

Last year, record growth in renewables led by solar helped push clean power above 40% of global electricity in 2024, Ember said in its Global Electricity Review 2025 last month. However, heatwave-related demand spikes led to a small increase in fossil generation, too, the clean energy think tank said.

“Solar generation has maintained its high growth rate, doubling in the last three years, and adding more electricity than any other source over that period,” Ember’s analysts wrote in the report.  

More than half, or 53%, of the increase in solar generation in 2024 was in China, with China’s clean generation growth meeting 81% of its demand increase in 2024, according to Ember. 

China and Europe are driving solar power’s global surge, but in Europe, the solar boom has led to negative power prices more frequently. 

At the end of April, for example, a sunny weekend in northwest Europe plunged power prices in the region to hundreds of euros below zero as solar generation soared. 

Negative power prices, while beneficial for some consumers in some countries, generally discourage investments in new capacity as renewable power generators don’t profit from below-zero prices. 

The more frequent occurrences of negative prices amid soaring solar output aren’t conducive to increased investment in generation only, and highlight the need of energy storage solutions to store the excess power and discharge it at evenings when it’s most needed.

May 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | renewable | Leave a comment

Solar and wind make up 98 pct of new US generation capacity in Trump’s first three months

Stillwater plant combines 33 MW of the original baseload geothermal, 26 MW of solar PV and 2 MW of solar thermal power generation
Enel Green Power North America

Joshua S Hill, May 13, https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-and-wind-make-up-98-pct-of-new-us-generation-capacity-in-trumps-first-three-months/

Renewables

A new analysis of government data has revealed that solar and wind accounted for nearly 98 per cent of new electricity generating capacity in the United States through the first quarter of 2025, despite efforts by the new president to unravel clean energy efforts.

The Sun Day Campaign, a non-profit research and educational organisation founded by Ken Bossong, has been fighting the good fight since 1992, and has been an invaluable tool for journalists covering clean energy in the United States.

A review conducted by the Sun Day Campaign of data recently published by the US government’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) demonstrates the momentum driving the clean energy industry, even in the face of extreme political adversity.

According to the government’s own data, solar and wind accounted for nearly 98 per cent of new US electrical generating capacity added in the first quarter of 2025, and solar and wind were the only sources of new capacity in March – a month that was the nineteenth in a row that saw solar stand out as the largest source of new capacity.

A total of 447MW of solar was installed in March along with the 223.9MW Shamrock Wind & Storage Project in Crockett County, Texas.

Over the first three months of 2025, a total of 7,076MW of solar and wind was installed, accounting for 97.8 per cent of new capacity.

The remainder was made up with 147MW of new natural gas capacity and 11MW from oil.

On its own, solar accounted for two-thirds of all new generating capacity placed into service in March, and 72.3 per cent of new capacity through the first quarter of the year. That makes solar the largest source of new generating capacity per month since September 2023.

This also brings the total installed capacity of solar and wind up to 22.5 per cent of the country’s total available installed utility-scale generating capacity, accounting for 10.7 per cent and 11.8 per cent respectively.

On top of that, approximately 30 per cent of US solar capacity is considered small-scale, or rooftop solar, and is not in fact reflected in FERC’s data. If small-scale solar is added to utility-scale solar and wind, that brings the total share to a quarter of America’s total.

Adding other renewable energy sources – including hydropower (7.7%), biomass (1.1%) and geothermal (0.3%) – renewables accounts for 31.5 per cent of total US utility-scale generating capacity.

FERC itself also expects a “high probability” that new solar capacity additions between April 2025 and March 2028 will total 89,461MW – by far and away the largest source of new capacity. For comparison, over that period, FERC expects 129,609MW of new capacity to be installed, meaning that there is a “high probability” that solar will account for 69 per cent. The next highest source of “high probability” generating capacity is wind energy, with 22,279MW, followed by 16,947MW worth of natural gas.

Conversely, FERC expects there to be no new nuclear capacity installed in its three-year forecast, while coal and oil are projected to contract by 24,372-MW and 2,108-MW respectively. And while new natural gas capacity is expected, that 16,947MW is offset by 15,209MW worth of retirements, resulting in an expansion of only 1,738MW.

“Thus, adjusting for the different capacity factors of gas (59.7%), wind (34.3%), and utility-scale solar (23.4%), electricity generated by the projected new solar capacity to be added in the coming three years should be at least 20 times greater than that produced by the new natural gas capacity while the electrical output by new wind capacity would be over seven times more than gas,” said Sun Day.

Finally, the Sun Day Campaign is currently predicting that all utility-scale renewables will account for 37.5 per cent of total available installed utility-scale generating capacity by April 1, 2028, “rapidly approaching” that of natural gas (40.2 per cent).

“If those trendlines continue, utility-scale renewable energy capacity should surpass that of natural gas in 2029 or sooner,” says Sun Day.  

“Notwithstanding the Trump Administration’s anti-renewable energy efforts during its first 100+ days, the strong growth of solar and wind continues,” said Ken Bossong, Sun Day Campaign’s executive director.

“And FERC’s latest data and forecasts suggest this will not change in the near-term.”

Joshua S Hill

Joshua S. Hill is a Melbourne-based journalist who has been writing about climate change, clean technology, and electric vehicles for over 15 years. He has been reporting on electric vehicles and clean technologies for Renew Economy and The Driven since 2012. His preferred mode of transport is his feet.

May 16, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | renewable | Leave a comment

Rooftop solar can be torn out of capital’s hands

Decentralised solar has the potential to support co-operative, municipal
and other forms of community ownership and control. Solar power is
expanding across the global south, growing faster in China, India and
Brazil than in older, richer solar developers like the US, Japan and
Germany.

Big, corporate-owned solar farms now account for most of the
world’s solar capacity, but decentralised rooftop solar comes a close
second. Rooftop panels are often owned by households, especially in rich
countries, but overall are more likely to be owned by businesses – energy
companies that lease the rooftops, or industrial firms that generate
electricity for their own use.

Nevertheless, I will argue here, because of
its scale and simplicity, decentralised solar has the potential to support
co-operative, municipal and other forms of community ownership and control.
It can play a role in struggles to supercede the domination of capital with
a socially just society, and to forestall disastrous climate change.

 Ecologist 7th May 2025, https://theecologist.org/2025/may/07/rooftop-solar-can-be-torn-out-capitals-hands

May 8, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | renewable | Leave a comment

27-year-old chemist discovers a process for recycling rare earths.

Gordon Edwards, 17 Mar 25 – The article copied below, translated by Google Translate, adds an optimistic note to the rise of renewables as the most affordable choice for rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Toxic materials are often used in the construction and operation of industrial infrastructure of many kinds. This includes renewable energy equipment such as wind, solar, geothermal and other renewables.

The so-called “rare earths” (also named “lanthanides”) are a group of 17 metals in the 
periodic table that have unusual properties that are ideal for use in electronic and electricity generating devices. Mining these metals is very dangerous for the workers and the environment. The metals themselves have a high chemical toxicity. But they are needed for renewable energy systems as well as many other electronic applications.

Note, however, that wind and solar do not create toxic waste. They simply make use of these naturally-occurring toxic materials that can, in principe, be recycled and used again and again. Recycling and reusing such toxic materials ought to be an essential built-in requirement of renewable energy systems.

Nuclear power, on the other hand, literally creates hundreds of highly toxic new elements that cannot be recycled or re-used for civilian purposes simply because they are too radioactive – meaning their atoms are unstable and will spontaneously disintegrate, giving off biologically damaging atomic radiation. A radioactive variety (“isotope”) of any given element is always much more toxic than the non-radioactive variety of the same element.

Even the finest stainless steal and zirconium-alloy structures used in the core of a nuclear reactor will have to be kept out of the environemnt of living things for thousands of years as radioactive waste. These originally non-radioactive metals have become intensely radioactuve. 

Such is not the case with materials used in wind and solar. No new toxic materials are created, and those toxics that are used can be recycled and reused many times.

Ironically, one of the reasons why rare earths are so dangerous to mine is because of the inevitable presence of radioactive elements – uranium, thorium and their decay products – leading to excessive exposure to radon gas and radioactive dust that can be very harmful over the long term. It turns out that rare earths have a strong geochemical affinity with uranium and thorium, the two principle primordial radionuclides on Earth.

P.S. 
One of the reasons why Donald Trump wants to acquire Greenland is because there is a mountain of rare earth ores near the Inuit community of Narsaq. Thanks to Nancy Covington and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Canada (IPPNWC) (then called Physicians for Global Survival) I was sent to Narsaq in 2016 to explain the radioactive dangers of mining that mountain, called Kvanefjeld in Danish or Kuannersuit in Greenlandic (the native Inuit language).

ETH Chemist Discovers Process for Recycling Rare Earths 

The mining of rare earths is environmentally harmful and controlled by China. Chemist Marie Perrin (27) has developed a method that could solve both problems.

“Why is the sky blue? How do clouds form?” Marie Perrin asked herself as a child. “Even then, I was very curious,” she recalls. Her curiosity not only ensured that the daughter of two scientists understood the world around her better with each passing year. It could also soon be a reason why this world is changing. The now 27-year-old and her team at ETH Zurich have developed a method for recycling rare earths.

Important Resource for the Energy Transition
Rare earths are 17 metals that are used in all modern devices: in batteries, smartphones and computers, in wind turbines and electric cars. “They’re all around us,” says Perrin, “but only one percent of all rare earths are recycled.” Recycling is important because the energy transition is requiring ever more rare earths. Their extraction is not only expensive but also highly harmful to the environment and often releases radioactivity.

There’s also a geopolitical problem looming over them: Around 70 percent of rare earths are mined in China. What this could mean for the rest of the world became clear in 2010, when a conflict arose between China and Japan. China informally stopped exports of rare earths to Japan. Prices rose by over 1,000 percent, and supply shortages arose around the world. “If you compare it to oil, the largest exporting countries have a market share of 30 to 40 percent,” explains Marie Perrin.

Lightbulbs made from ETH waste 
“We were lucky to have discovered this method,” recalls Perrin. Originally, her research had nothing to do with the recycling of rare earths. But she discovered that the molecules she was studying had the potential to do just that. The chemist devoted herself to her research: “I fished old energy-saving light bulbs out of the ETH recycling bins and experimented with them in the lab,” says Perrin. Until she succeeded in separating the rare earth europium from the light bulb.

Perrin compares the process to baking pizza: Imagine mixing a pinch of salt into pizza dough. How can you recover the salt that has now dispersed throughout the dough? You need something that can distinguish and separate the elements in the dough from those in the salt. 

In Marie Perrin’s case, this ingredient is called tetrathiometalate. “Using the known methods, this process had to be repeated several times,” explains Perrin. “This requires an enormous amount of resources.” With Perrin’s process, the rare earth europium can be separated from the other elements in a light bulb in a high degree of purity in a single step.

Initiative Required 
Perrin’s research team published their results in the journal Nature Communications, filed a patent, and was faced with the question: What next? “Either you sell the license to larger chemical companies or you develop the technology further in-house,” explains Perrin. “It was clear to me that I wanted to do it myself.” The risk of the process gathering dust in a drawer at a large company was too great for her – as was her curiosity to find out where the technology could lead her. 

Together with an old school friend and her doctoral supervisor, Marie Perrin founded the startup REEcover. The goal: to make the process scalable with light bulbs in a first step. In a second step, it will be expanded to include other of the 16 remaining rare earths. “I’m a researcher and had no entrepreneurial experience,” says the Frenchwoman. But her curiosity drives her forward here too: “There’s something new every day, which is fun.

“A Promising Future“
Our timing is good,” Perrin is aware. The European Union passed a law on critical raw materials in 2024. One of the goals of the law is to reduce dependence on rare earths from China. This is another reason why REEcover is considered one of the most promising startups at ETH.

March 18, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | renewable | Leave a comment