Chart: 85% of new electricity built in 2023 came from renewables

2 comments

1. To be more precise, it’s 85% of new capacity, which is different from how much these power sources will practically produce, which is represented by the capacity factor. Capacity factors are widely different from technology to technology, but gas or coal is between 50-85%, while solar is about 25%, so it’s a little bit less favorable.

2. Adding capacities like this is the XXIst century “mixing apple and organges”.
   If a sailing boat can go 11 knots (20km/h) in the best conditions and a car can go 200km/h, if we build 10 boats and one car, we’ve added 400km/h of travel capacity, half of which is renewable?

   [here’s](https://electrek.co/2023/11/17/worlds-largest-single-site-solar-farm/) “the world’s largest solar farm” at 2GW and a capacity factor in the UAE of around [25%](https://www.unescwa.org/sites/default/files/event/materials/presentation_hosni_ghedira_escwa_july_2017.pdf) (which is understandably relatively high compared to other places) can be expected to produce 2 x 24 x 365 x 0.25 = 4380 GW**h**.

   Here is a single 1.3GW capacity, producing [9,914GWh](https://www.world-nuclear.org/reactor/default.aspx/BARAKAH-2) in 2022.