Chart: Nearly all new US power plants built in 2024 will be clean…
www.canarymedia.com
Renewables, batteries and nuclear will add up to 96% of all new power capacity constructed this year, per federal data.

    • silence7OPM
      7·
      4 months ago

      In particular: wind and solar weren’t ready for this kind of deployment 50 years ago.

      • Sonori@beehaw.org
        5·
        4 months ago

        To be fair, there were nations like France which had largely carbon neutral grids 50 years ago, even if this sort of solar and wind only really started their modern style large scale deployments 20 to 25 years ago.

        Also, while Carter may not have had them, decently effective solar cells did exist 50 years ago, which is why they were powering nearly all spacecraft and such, they just weren’t cheap.

      • DarkNightoftheSoul@mander.xyzEnglish
        2·
        4 months ago

        I had Jimmy Carter’s whitehouse rooftop solar in mind when I said 50 years. Maybe not ready for full deployment at that time, but the lost opportunity for investment and early deployment is tragic in my opinion.

        I had a wrong opinion.

        • silence7OPM
          6·
          4 months ago

          Those were solar hot water heating panels, not photovoltaics. Quite effective for what they did, but not something that could be used as a source of electricity.

        • spacesatan@lemm.ee
          2·
          4 months ago

          Those weren’t even PV panels it was just a solar water heater. *woops, had this comment open long enough while I double checked that that somebody beat me to it

    • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      51·
      4 months ago

      We could have easily had nuclear. But a stupid twist in history tanked it.

      The China Syndrome, a popular movie about a total core meltdown, came out 12 days before the 3-Mile Island reactor let a poof of radioactive steam loose. People, being ignorant panicky animals, predictably freaked out. And that was the end of new power plants.

      In Oklahoma we were starting a reactor and a bunch of hippies had a hella protest. The government ended up shutting it down.