mpweiherSeven countries now generate 100% of their electricity from renewable energy
https://www.the-independent.com/tech/renewable-energy-solar-nepal-bhutan-iceland-b2533699.html
Specifically Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Not to downplay the positive steps that are being taken towards using renewable energy worldwide, but one must point out that all those countries except one are almost exclusively using hydroelectric power, whose availability at such scale is a geographical lottery. As for Iceland, which also relies mostly on hydroelectric power but not in such great a proportion, it makes up for it thanks to easy and abundantly available geothermal power (which, though environmentally friendly, is arguably not technically renewable).
The Earth's heat content is about 1×10^19 TJ. This heat naturally flows to the surface by conduction at a rate of 44.2 TW and is replenished by radioactive decay at a rate of 30 TW. These power rates are more than double humanity's current energy consumption from primary sources, but most of this power is too diffuse (approximately 0.1 W/m^2 on average) to be recoverable.
In comparison, averaged over the year and the day, the Earth's atmosphere receives 340 W/m^2 from the Sun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance#On_Earth's_su...
This leads naturally to "artificial geothermal", where solar energy is used to heat rocks or soil, and the heat is later extracted. It doesn't have to be anywhere near as deep as ordinary geothermal, which had to accumulate that heat over many thousands of years. Just ~10 meters is about enough.
Geothermal is powered by fission Uranium and other heavy atoms deep in the Earth.
Solar is powered by fusion of Hydrogen in the Sun.
I'd use the same classification for both.
About 20% of this is residual heat from planetary accretion; the remainder is attributed to past and current radioactive decay of naturally occurring isotopes.
Most of the radiogenic heating in the Earth results from the decay of the daughter nuclei in the decay chains of uranium-238 and thorium-232, and potassium-40.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiogenic_heating
Potassium is more or less distributed in the body (especially in soft tissues) following intake of foods. A 70-kg man contains about 126 g of potassium (0.18%), most of that is located in muscles. The daily consumption of potassium is approximately 2.5 grams. Hence the concentration of potassium-40 is nearly stable in all persons at a level of about 55 Bq/kg (3850 Bq in total), which corresponds to the annual effective dose of 0.2 mSv.
https://www.nuclear-power.com/nuclear-engineering/radiation-...
No, not quite. Geothermal is powered by the accumulated heat stored in rocks from fission Uranium and other heavy atoms deep in the Earth (and other phenomena).
Geothermal hotspots do not reheat by fission or otherwise at the same speed that we extract their energy (if they did we'd be in trouble if we weren't extracting it!).
As I mentioned in another comment, build a Dyson sphere of solar panels around the Sun and it will last just as long. Build an all-Earth geothermal plant and the heat will be depleted.
Only as a technicality. If you find a geothermal hotspot and start to extract energy from it, the hotspot will eventually cool down faster than if you hadn't (which of course depends on the size of the hotspot and how much heat you're pulling out).
However, given that there's no downsides to cooling down a hotspot other than, well, no longer being able to extract energy from it, geothermal is a bit of an honorary "renewable".
Actual renewables ultimately all come down to recent[0] solar energy, which will never deplete their source however much they are used. All the energy in wind, hydroelectric and biofuels has recently originated in the Sun.
[0] I say "recently" because fossil fuels are all also derived from the Sun, but their rate of regeneration is a bit too slow compared to the speed at which we use them.
If it goes down, what happens to all the buildings using geo/earth heat with these probe heads to collect the energy?
Does this effect occur in lets say 10-20 years or is this longterm like 50y+?
At a certain point there won’t be enough heat recovered from the geothermal side of the loop to generate steam on the process side of the loop and power generation will cease. I’m not smart enough to calculate how long that will take, however. I think you could still use the geothermal energy at a lower temperature for district heating and cooling, but a mechanical engineer would be more qualified to answer that.
A lot of hydroelectric depends on snow pack and glacier runoff that is being adversely affected by global warming. Solar and wind are the only robust hedges against a warm up that might ultimately severely curtail river flow.
We have a lot of uranium and nuclear is fairly renewable at least in the span of a few centuries. The waste issue is a problem.
Contrary to a popular belief, most high temperature Geothermal plants have a predicted death date.
This is due to the physics reality of the ground itself: Power of a Geothermal well will decay over time to a point where the well become unusable and need to be closed.
It is due to the fact underground water is rich in minerals and raw elements. This soup will slowly but surely cement the well itself and its associated underground.
There are techniques (similar to 'fraking') to extend the lifetime of a well but only to some extent.
If the topic interests you (and you can bear artificially translated English), a French content creator did a pretty good video on the topic:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q4xZArgOIWc
Additionally, Geothermal plants can emit CO2 (even a lot of CO2) in some geological configuration.
All of that makes Geothermal (for electricity) a bit controversial as "Renewable".
I precise that there is absolutely nothing wrong about low temperature Geothermal energy for residential heating and we should do more.
⚡ La géothermie va-t-elle nous sauver ? - Monsieur Bidouille
Well yes, hydro and geothermal are the easiest (and earliest perfected) renewable sources to provide consistent base load. It would be odd if the first countries to achieve fully renewable power weren’t making use of those technologies.
Other countries will have to be more reliant on interconnects, diverse renewable mixes and batteries. Luckily this is now almost always cheaper and more secure than fossil fuels and the trend lines point towards that continuing to be more and more true over time.
Well, when geothermal stops being renewable there will be no humans around to need energy generation.
You are still technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.
But if we follow that rationale, in a long enough timeline, solar and wind is also not renewable.
Also, many of these countries are tropical or subtropical, with optimal conditions for solar energy year round. Nepal and Bhutan are relatively far from equator, but have many days of unobstructed sunshine.
The vast majority of humans live in regions with plentiful sun for solar.
>at such as scale
Not to downplay the positive steps that are being taken but we are conveniently skipping over the denominator here at least in the case of Ethiopia and DRC who both have a grid that is only serving their full population at a fraction of the level needed to make this story one about geographical lotteries and abundance instead of one about poverty preventing them from access to the traditional carbon power generating routes to server the rest of the population.
I live in one of those countries, and while renewable electricity helped to cushion the concern for house electricity, most of the logistics (that being the supply chain for basic commodities) are transported by oil (specifically diesel). Which further increases inflation for import dependent countries. Meaning even for those states (except those that don't import oil to move cars in the country) it will regardless cause an economic crisis.
One state is considered to be fully 'renewable' if the means of transport (excluding Airplanes since I can't find a suitable alternative ) for land is done via electric cars
> Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo produced more than 99.7 per cent of the electricity they consumed using geothermal, hydro, solar or wind power.
Let's head to electricitymaps.com !
Albania (https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/AL/live/fifteen_min...)
- On 2026-04-12 16:45 GMT+2, 22,67% of electricity consumed by Albania is imported from Greece, which generates 22% of its electricity from gas. Interestingly, Albania exports about as much to Montenegro as it imports from Greece.
Bhutan:
- 100% hydro, makes perfect sense
Nepal:
- 98% hydro, a bit of solar for good measure
Iceland:
- 70% hydro, 30% geo
Paraguay:
- 99,9% hydro
Ethiopia:
- 96,4% hydro
DRC
- 99.6% hydro
So, the lessons for all other countries in the world is pretty clear: grow yourselves some mountains, dig yourselves a big river, and dam, baby, dam !!
(I'm kidding, but I'm sure someone has a pie-in-the-sky geoengineering startup about to disrupt topography using either AI, blockchain, or both.)
And have either a small population or a very low per-person energy budget.
But: 7 isn't the number that matters, what matters is that next year it will be 8 or 9. That would be worth documenting.
There are a few countries just below as well like Norway with about 98% renewables in 2024 [1].
The gas power plant is mostly up north powering the gas compressors that fill LNG ships headed for Europe and the coal I think is for Svalbard but that mine/plant closed in 2025 [2].
[1] https://www.nve.no/energi/energisystem/energibruk/stroemdekl...
[2] https://www.nrk.no/tromsogfinnmark/norges-siste-kullgruve-pa...
With modern tech, these 100% renewable electricity countries have effectively overshot. Many other countries would be better off getting to 85% and then shifting to focusing more on EV and heat pump uptake to get the best bang per buck.
Quite a few developed countries have privatized their electrical grids. The effects - predictable - were rent seeking behavior without the necessary investments to remain future proof. This is now catching up with us in a big way, the electrification is going to lag behind considerably on account of this.
I wrote about that in 2016, https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-problem-with-evs/ , and even though the situation has improved it has not improved as much as it should have.
This is quite frustrating because it is blindingly obvious to me that we will need to do better but given the profit angle it remains to be seen if these private entities will now do what's right for all of us. So far the signs are not good. Instead of embracing small scale generation utilities are fighting netmetering laws where ever they can (usually under the guise of not everybody being able to have solar, which is true, but which is not the real reason behind their objections). They're dragging their heels on expansion and modernization of grid infrastructure and the government(s) seem to be powerless to force the now out-of-control entities to live up to their responsibilities.
Couple that with the AI power hungry data centers and the stage is set for a lot of misery. Personally I think privatizing the electrical grid was a massive mistake. The market effects have not really happened, all that happened is that the money that should have gone into new infra has been spent on yachts and other shiny rock goodies.
I think we're going to see a lot of grid defection, and not just from little consumers. Corporations won't wait for grid connections and will roll their own microgrids.
There will be serious pushback to that by lobbyists. This is already happening in the form of mandatory participation in 'the market' while at the same time (you can't make this up) having to sell to that market at some kind of arbitrary price that you don't get a say in as producer.
I'm a small step away from going off-grid again, the biggest stumbling block is that - predictably - you can't do any practical small power windmill installations. I've considered a windlass in the basement but my kids wouldn't hear of it ;)
fun fact for Paraguay: the Itaipu Dam is one of the largest in the world located between Brazil and Paraguay, where each country gets 50% of the production. But 50% of that production for Paraguay, a country of 7 millions inhabitants, means that it cannot consume that much, so it's essentially reselling that energy to Brazil, a country with 30x more inhabitants. Paraguay only uses about 1/3 of its share (and thus resells 2/3 to Brazil).
And it means that it has been oil free since the 70's.
Brazil, a continental country, has more than 80% of its energy from renewables
Oil free for electricity generation. The media in my country (Finland) also likes to brag about 90+% fossil-free electricity generation. But electricity is under half (30%?40%?) and the rest of that energy isn't fossil-free.
Finland has electricified 40% of primary energy which is pretty much world leading (Sweden and Norway are 50%). European average is 19%.
Largest chunk left is transport which can mostly be electrified now. Industrial and home heat too. There are hard to electrify sections in both but overall it's fairly obvious what to do next.
And the easy parts eliminate 3 or 4 units of primary energy for every one they replace, so even 40% primary energy is way over 50% toward the finish line of electrifying all the useful stuff.
I think it's also an interesting question as to whether countries that use a lot of electricity have lower per kWh prices because they spread the fixed costs further.
> But electricity is under half (30%?40%?) and the rest of that energy isn't fossil-free.
The trick of course is that if you electrify heating and transportation they'll need much less energy. Your average car with an ICE has an efficiency of 20-40%, electric cars have 60-80%. Heating your house with gas has an efficiency of around 100%, heat pumps have 300%-500%.
I guess somewhat of a fun fact: Albania has rented(!) two floating(!) oil-powered power plants near the city of Vlöre that are there in case of emergency. The last time they were really needed was in 2022 (if I remember correctly), but these days they're not turned on any more than they need to be to make sure they're operating properly. That very expensive backup system is basically the only non-renewable source in the whole country, and most of the time it's just sitting there doing nothing.
Being powered almost entirely by hydro means that the system is highly susceptible to droughts, so then they either have to spin up those oil plants from time to time or import electricity from abroad. I think it's also worth pointing out that nothing really changed because of climate change, the decision to rely on hydro was made in the 90s. The country used to have its own oil power plant that it heavily relied on before that decision, which slowly produced less and less until it was shut down for good in 2007. Some images of it from 2019: https://www.oneman-onemap.com/en/2019/06/26/the-abandoned-po...
And this is an expected problem with renewables that can be engineered around. It's unlikely the whole world has a drought at once during a calm night, so developing ways to transmit power long distances will be important.
Having a continent-wide draught (or cold winter or other weather effect) is rather common though. Just a few years back Europe had a massive issue where draught caused both drop of hydro production and cooling for French nukes, causing energy prices to spike.
No. Cooling french nukes was never a problem. In that period France was net exporting 14GW. Cooling in general isn't a problem - some modulation is done just to save fish.
Maybe you are confusing with 2022 when half of french fleet was shut down to check for potential pipe cracks/corrosion esp in one of their reactor designs due to poor geometry. But that's unrelated to droughts
That said, cooling does have an effect on ecosystems. Not the worst energy plant impact on that regard, but still not like it's all environmental friendly.
And of course, there is the what to do with the waste dilemma. And at least with current French park, there is a dependence on the rarer kind of uranium.
Or just use nuclear as base load, and battery storage as much as you can.
You don't need battery storage if you've got hydro.
You need solar. Make hydro the backup, fill reservoirs as your reserve and sell extra energy when they're nearly full.
I can see this makes sense especially for medium term storage. A lot full of batteries is great for the next ten seconds, next ten minutes, even to some extent the next ten hours, but it surely doesn't make much sense to store ten days of electricity that way compared to just keeping the water behind a dam. We know that many of the world's large dams are capturing snow melt or other seasonal flows, running them only when solar or wind can't provide the power you need lets you make more effective use of the same resource.
Except for very short term peaks (less than 15 minutes-ish) it doesn't make any sense at all to use hydro to charge batteries. You've got a dam, you might as well let water through later than incur the losses of a round trip to batteries and back to the grid.
Except that in many cases there's people living downstream doing agriculture using that water for irrigation. There's just this tiny dispute about that in the nile delta between Egypt and Ethiopia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Da...
The economics of new nuclear plants don't make sense. They take too long to build and cost too much. By the time a new plant is ready, alternate sources (likely solar + battery and long-distance HVDC) will have eaten its lunch.
How much of this is unnecessary regulatory burden, though? There probably is some margin of improvement over what the anti-nuclear lobbyists have imposed.
Is it unnecessary burden? We've had major nuclear accidents despite regulations and that was before 9/11 and dron wars.
The definition of “major accident” used in nuclear is orders of magnitude more strict than in any other industries though, which distort the picture.
The worst nuclear accident involving a nuclear plant (Chernobyl, which occurred Ina country without regulation for all intent and purpose) killed less people than the food processing industry cause every year (and I'm not counting long term health effect of junk food, just contamination incidents in the processing units leading to deadly intoxications of consumers).
In countries with regulations there's been 2 “major accidents”: TMI killed no one, Fukushima killed 1 guy and injured 24, in the plant itself. In any industries that would be considered workplace safety violation, not “major accident”… And it occurred in the middle of a tsunami which killed 19000!
I'm actually happy this regulation exist because that's why there ate so little accidents, but claiming that it's still hazardous despite the regulations is preposterous.
What's the fatality rate per GWh of civilian nuclear power in the US vs. other forms of power generation?
> They take too long to build and cost too much.
The global average to build one is ~7 years. People have been saying they take too long to build as an excuse for not building them for what, two decades or more? It seems to be taking longer to not build them than to build them.
> By the time a new plant is ready, alternate sources (likely solar + battery and long-distance HVDC) will have eaten its lunch.
Neither of those have the same purpose. Solar + battery lets you generate power with solar at noon and then use it after sunset. It doesn't let you generate power with solar in July and then use it in January. More than a third of US energy consumption is for heating which is a terrible match for solar because the demand is nearly the exact inverse of solar's generation profile both in terms of time of day and seasonally.
HVDC is pretty overrated in general. It does nothing for the seasonal problem and it's expensive for something that only provides a significant benefit a small minority of the time, i.e. the two days out of the year when the local grid has a shortage but a far away one has a surplus. It's also hard to secure because it inherently spans long distances so you can't have anything like a containment building around it and you end up with an infrastructure where multiple GW of grid capacity is susceptible to accidental or purposeful disruption by any idiot with a shovel or a mylar balloon.
Nuclear seems to be the worst option:
You can't quickly change the amount of power it generates. Which is what you need if you want to use it together with dirt cheap solar.
It's very expensive. In fact, noone knows how expensive it will end up being after a couple thousand of years.
It's dangerous. For millenia. Vulnerable to terrorism. Enabler of nuclear weapons.
It takes a long time to build and bring online.
It doesn't scale down.
Finally, Kasachstan is the major producer of Uranium. Yay?
> It's dangerous. For millenia.
See https://www.jlab.org/news/releases/jefferson-lab-tapped-lead...
> Partitioning and recycling of uranium, plutonium, and minor actinide content of used nuclear fuel can dramatically reduce this number to around 300 years.
Jefferson Lab Tapped to Lead Technology Development for Exploring Nuclear Waste Treatment Options
Particle accelerator technologies, such as this niobium-tin particle accelerator cavity, are inspiring efforts to reduce the radioactivity of nuclear waste while also using it to generate electricity.