In Europe, Wind and Solar Overtake Fossil Fuels

Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians.

Canada here. 7.6kw on our roof for $0 out of pocket thanks to $5k grant and $8k interest free loan.

It makes 7.72Mwh per year, worth $1000. Tight valley, tons of snow. We put that on the loan for 8 years, then get $1000 per year free money for 20 years or so. Biggest no brainer of all time.

Dad in Victoria Australia just got 10.6kw fully installed and operational for $4000 AUD. ($2,700 USD)

Australia has so much electricity during the day they’re talking about making I free for everyone in the middle of the day.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-03/energy-retailers-offe...

Every time, over the years, that there has been some kind of headline saying renewables have overtaken fossil fuels, when you look at it a bit more closely there is always a big 'but'. For example, it was compared to coal (not taking into account electricity from gas), or it was for one day, or it was a percentage of new installations, or it excludes winter, includes nuclear etc.

This time, however, it looks like it's actually true and that's just for wind and solar. This is incredible, and done through slowly compounding gains that didn't cause massive economic hardships along the way.

The most underreported part of this story is the battery piece at the end. Batteries are beginning to displace natural gas in evening peak hours - that's the exact window where solar critics have long argued renewables fall short. If this trend accelerates (and battery prices are dropping faster than most models predicted), the "intermittency problem" starts looking more like a solvable engineering challenge than a fundamental barrier.

The next milestone to watch: when battery-backed solar becomes cheaper than gas peakers for evening demand across most of Europe. We might be closer than people think.

The article uses the words "more power" and "overtaking fossil fuels", but the graph is actually about electricity generation. They are not the same thing, at least, in my head, because not all energy consumed in Europe comes in the form of electricity. If I heat my home with natural gas and drive an ICE car, this is me using fossil fuels in a way that has nothing to do with electricity and it won't be reflected in that graph. This is an important stepping stone, but it is not "solar and wind overtaking fossil fuels in Europe"

It used to be the big worry among climate activists that you'd never get every country organize and move in one direction. Like you'd need some global body to clean everything up.

That's very fragile.

Luckily, we're moving to a world where a disjoint, self-interested response can be an advantage. Countries decide, for their own selfish reasons, to adopt green energy. For energy independence, affordability, clean air, etc.

So when one country politically rotates out for dumb reasons, other countries pick up the slack and make a bit of progress.

I'm curious as to how this will shift once the shift towards more electrification continues. This is only about electricity generation, not total power consumption.

Nowadays, for very energy intenive things like heating or driving a car, fossil fuels still are more prevalent than electric alternatives. Once demand shifts in favor of the electrified alternatives, electricity demand is continuing to raise (although not as steep as the drop in demand for the fossil fuels will be). Particularly in heating, where peak demand is in times with very little solar generation, it seems like this will be challenging.

While the prices of energy storage have come down significantly and are projected to continue to drop, there is still a noteable lack of cost effective long term storage solutions.

Curious if this will eventually change China's calculus with regards to Russia. If Europe is a big customer for Chinese exports, and Russia is antagonizing, it seems like China would have an incentive to put pressure on Russia.

It already seems like Russia is positioned to be completely subservient to China in the future.

If you’re interested in this topic I highly recommend Tony Seba’s analyses.

He argues that because solar and wind are now the cheapest forms of new energy generation, they are on an unstoppable exponential "S-curve" that will make coal, gas, and nuclear power obsolete by 2030.

Look up his videos on YT, for example this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj96nxtHdTU

Imagine the powerhouse America would be (pun intended) if we subsidized nuclear energy to become the defacto producer of nuclear power plants world wide. Sometimes it is easier said than done but this really is as easy as said.

Solar with a modern LFP battery system is a no-brainer solution for 21st century energy infrastructure. The safety record beats pretty much everything else, and as long as the sun is out, it just works.

Encouraging. However, it isn't clear from the article at first glance (or the deeper analysis being referenced) how electricity consumption by power source is changing.

In other words, as an example, a 10% increase in solar power generation does not necessarily mean that there was a 10% increase in electricity consumption where that electricity was generated via solar.

i.e. It is entirely possible for a growing solar fleet to generate more power during the middle of the day than previously, and simultaneously for not all of that increased power to be used / usable.

> In 2025, both Ireland and Finland joined the ranks of European countries that have shuttered their last remaining coal plants.

Interesting, they mentioned Finland. I wonder how Norway and Finland fair using solar since they have rigorous winters with polar nights.

WW3 called and said solar is harder to disrupt through bombing than massive power plants. Seems like a great deal even if it was more expensive.

At the same time subsidies are being phased out. I was about to get 8kW panels + batteries installed when my country decided to pull them, and I'm not going to spend 10k out of pocket.

There’s a certain poetic aspect to this.

Fossils are dead, slow.

Wind moves fast. Photons move even faster.

The UK has some of the highest energy costs in the world due to the stupid Net Zero taxes. Our economy and manufacturing is suffering.

And in U.S., Trump stopped the coastal wind farms here in the east... for "national security" reasons.

But Trump explained to us yesterday, how wind and solar is for losers. Surely, we should be looking in to how we can transition back to fossils.

Now we just need to figure out scalable storage. Ideally something like the sand batteries that you can scale with construction equipment rather than just adding more rows of tiny lithium batteries

Now, let's aim at total energy consumption, not just electricity generation.

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Well, OK--but at what cost?

Electricity/heating and gasoline in the EU is many times more expensive than in the U.S., and as a result EVERYTHING is more expensive.

Mix that with lower buying power and taxes and we spend 2-3 times for stuff.

I would think that most people would happily choose lower prices over clean energy and paper straws.

Our companies are also less and less competitive because of these initiatives, and companies from China take over in part thanks to the complete lack if environmental and labor laws over there.

Seems to me like this is happening more and more, and it's so widespread and obvious that it almost makes you think that politicians are being bought by Chinese companies/government.