this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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I'd love to know how much that percentage fluctuates with seasons, but on a global scale. Does summer in Australia compensate for winter in America, and vice versa, so that the sum is still 40% throughout the year?
Definitely not. There's much less land mass in the southern hemisphere, so there's also less utilisation of natural energy. Speaking as an Australian we're also not super great at embracing the whole renewables thing so that definitely comes into it too lol.
Erm... Australia has the more rooftop solar (32% of households) than any other country in the world and one state (south Australia) already has enough wind turbines to cover 100% of their overnight power consumption when the weather is favourable - with more being deployed (not to mention their grid is connected tot he rest of the nation, which is also investing in wind and hydro, so if it's windy somewhere else that's good enough).
We're also moving pretty fast into hydrogen... in part because we have more power than we can use, so selling it (in the form of green hydrogen) makes sense.
We also have a dying but massive fossil fuel industry, and they spread a lot of FUD... but the reality is those power companies aren't price competitive with renewable and never will be. They have no future and they're just trying to delay the inevitable as long as possible.
We've made some strides on the renewables front yes but it's never been enough. We're still increasing our carbon output year on year, due mostly to the political willpower for renewables simply not existing. Two years ago we had a prime minister who didn't acknowledge climate change. The fact that we've got any renewables at all is simply because of the economics of it. We get so much sun it's impossible for us to not lead the world on solar, and yet our government still drags their feet on renewables (yes, even Labor are barely any better on environmental issues).