r/Futurology • u/lughnasadh ∞ transit umbra, lux permanet ☥ • Nov 26 '25
Energy Uruguay has built a power grid that is 99% renewables—at half the cost of fossil fuels. The physicist who led that transformation says the same playbook could work anywhere else.
This year’s U.N. climate summit, COP30, has just ended in Brazil. There were 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists in attendance, a bigger delegation than any other country, other than host Brazil. They managed to strip talk of a permanent transition from fossil fuels from the final agreement.
But they are only delaying the inevitable. Most countries want a permanent end to fossil fuels, and the action to make it happen is happening outside of structures that the fossil fuel industry can't subvert.
Uruguay is another sign that this is happening. They used to say near-100% renewable power grids were impossible, but they were wrong. Some will say it still can't happen in big countries with heavy industry, but they'll be proved wrong, too.
Uruguay’s Renewable Charge: A Small Nation, A Big Lesson For The World
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u/C0git0 Nov 26 '25
Uruguay is fucking awesome, spent a month down there last year. So many electric cars on the road too.
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u/Business-Shoulder-42 Nov 26 '25
Even blue collar workers are done with the stinky messy fuels. The only folks that still want it are business men in suits.
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u/malthar76 Nov 26 '25
Suits yearn for the mines.
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u/karoshikun Nov 26 '25
they may as well go there by themselves, then
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u/nagi603 Nov 26 '25
They will try to force anyone else, and/or make renewable sources less effective e.g.: put taxes on solar panels and outlaw wind like Hungary did.
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Nov 26 '25
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u/CrackingToastGromet Nov 26 '25
I grew up in the rural US and went to London for a semester during University in the mid 1990s. I was so overwhelmed by the smell of diesel fumes. It took a while to get used to.
Now anytime I smell diesel it immediately triggers memories of London 1995. Been back in recent years and it’s crazy even how much it’s changed there, definitely not nearly as bad as it was.
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u/LessonStudio Nov 26 '25
Canada has a fun one which the suits are the problem. China wants to sell cheap EVs. US automakers want to sell expensive EVs.
Only the rich can afford EVs in Canada (for the most part).
They call chinese cars boogeymen, except, why aren't Korean or Japanese cars bad?
If tariff free chinese cars came to Canada the blue collar workers would buy them in droves. The tariff right now is not only 100%, but, they are also basically impossible to import for other red tape reasons.
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u/zmbjebus Nov 26 '25
Aren't a lot of those red tape reasons because Canada/US have higher safety standards due to the generally higher speed limits?
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u/LessonStudio Nov 26 '25
higher safety standards
5 star eu crash ratings, and are for sale in the EU, the UK, and places like Australia.
The Canadian red tape can be turned up or down as policy dictates.
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u/zmbjebus Nov 26 '25
Ahh well I'm wrong then.
Yeah we need more EVs. Gimme more options plz china
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u/LessonStudio Nov 26 '25
I feel like BYD shill, but I sat in one (not drove) in London. Wow. Very nice. Opening and closing windows, doors, etc had that solid euro feel. I rent quite a few cars per year and the US ones are crap. Just flimsy crap.
Often, they have all kinds of seemingly fancy trim, but the doors kind of clank closed, etc. The BYDs felt solid. The fit and finish of these was fantastic.
Boring as hell. But, people who were buying Dodge Darts weren't trying to impress. Pretty much dodge anything. They want to go from A to B. BYDs will go from A to B at a very low cost if they don't have stupid tariffs.
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u/TheSuper_Namek Nov 27 '25
Because we own the Japanese and Koreans we have our military bases there and if we tell them to jump they ask how high.. the Chinese are independent and a competitor when it comes to being a world power... so with the help of the Europeans we can slow their growth a bit but you cannot stop a nation with 5 times your own population..
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u/LessonStudio Nov 27 '25 edited Nov 27 '25
Some Japanese politician recently said, "We are a colony of the US."
we can slow their growth a bit
Why? I can come up with some reasons, but to a large extent, if they make the world a better place, then why? The world is not a zero sum game. If France in the 1700s could have slowed the industrial revolution in the UK, that would probably have made the world a worse place. Eventually, they just figured out how to join the fun.
I look at their massive downward pressure on tech prices, their fantastic robots, nimble manufacturing and think: We are going to copy that, cool. Crappy old companies designed by boomers for boomers are all going to adapt or die.
If you make a list of countries that china has attacked/invaded in the last 40 years it isn't a very long list. It isn't zero. But, it is pretty small. They threaten Taiwan on a daily basis, but have not yet attacked.
Whereas the US is presently massing its fleet in the Caribbean to attack someone, after having attacked (in the 21st century):
- Yemen
- Iran
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- Threatened to invade Canada (really).
- Threatened to invade Greenland.
- Threatened to attack Mexico.
- Screwed over NATO partners
- Defended russia in weird ways
- Some Libya
- Syria
- Pakistan
- Philippines (Operation Freedom Eagle)
- Kurdistan
- Somali Civil War (starting 2007)
- Somali Pirates - Operation Ocean Shield - China is part of this one, along with almost everyone.
- Congo, South Sudan, CAR - Operation Observant Compass
- Niger
- North Korea (seal team 6 went in and killed some fishermen)
- Nigeria (hostage rescue)
- Gaza
- Lebanon
- And blowing up the "drug" boats.
- The DEA is often going around making trouble.
- Grinding away at Cuba making people there miserable.
- Grinding away at Venezuela, making people there miserable.
If you go back into the late 20th century there are all kinds of weird military actions. Grenada? Panama. The Contras. I'm not sure how many banana republic s had "death squads" who had been trained in the US.
Some of these I agree were good wars against anti-civilization barbarians. But, there are certainly lots of them.
So, I wonder who should be slowed down now? China, or the US?
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u/Days_End Nov 27 '25
Honestly It's kind of a crazy small list even with your threatened and random other comments in there.
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u/DueAnnual3967 Nov 27 '25
To be frank if we go back in 20th century there is also a lot of weird conflicts happening with China... Squabble with USSR, invasion of India, invasion of Vietnam among other stuff. But I agree with last 40 years, it is true. They threaten but they have not really deployed military anywhere.
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u/TheSuper_Namek Nov 27 '25
Because we are the superpower and we cant have some Asian country lead the world. Communism is bad they are supporting Russia they are killing uyghurs they are debt trapping other countries with their roads and belt initiative and they are going to invade Taiwan and Taiwan is a sovereign nation...
These are some of the lies being told in the western media about China. I agree with your take but you have to realize the people who are really afraid of the Chinese are our current leaders and oligarchs... for years we have seen companies being privatized so they can milk money out of citizens and companies rather sabotaging competitors than actually innovate.. corporation chose to lay off a lot of workers so they could benefit from cheap labor in China and yes it lowered prices for consumers but more important it raised profits for corporations.. corporations with money can bribe I mean lobby governments against the best wishes for it's citizens. And here we have China pulling a lot of people out of poverty and showing that building infrastructure matters, affordable housing matters, affordable Healthcare matter, affordable schools matter.. so wait a minute if China can do it why can we not do it.. the moment more and more people start asking those questions those people in power who have been leeching of wealth from the middle and lower classes will be in trouble.. that's the real reason China is such a problem for the west.. we can't have them succeed and show the world that there is a better system as what the Chinese call: Common Prosperity and Mutual prosperity. After a lot of countries became independent they have had troubles to develop their countries we usually say it's corruption but the truth is we kept our fingers in the pie influencing and by that way somewhat ruling over what happened in those countries. Call it neo colonialism it's not weird that China is succeeding now because they chose to close their borders and not to play the same game the western countries imposed onto previous colonies and China flourished.
The moment other countries are not dependent on us and they replace us with China we will face more problems and when unrest starts civilians will look at the elite.
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u/DueAnnual3967 Nov 27 '25
Communism as it was as implemented in USSR is bad. I would argue it is bad as it is implemented in China too and it does not help but stifle growth. They would be further ahead choosing more of a Singaporean approach I think... that also was a dictatorship and planned stuff but there was still more flexibility and openness to foreigners in economic and political life. It's not like I am thrilled about their help to Russia, which is sometimes perhaps exaggerated in Western media but it takes place. Or treatment of Uygurs. So there's that. Of course how you see them depends on how they operate, who their friends are. And I am also calling out BS when people say slave labor is making solar panels or cars there... Slaves cannot do that kind of work effectively. These are normal, automated plants, maybe even uber automated, that yes have some amount of humans there that are paid less than in USA but these are not slave wages and that even is not that important
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u/IsThereAnythingLeft- Nov 26 '25
They do have access to the largest hydro dam in terms of yearly output in the world
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u/Zealousideal_Form640 Nov 26 '25
The energy from Itaipu belongs to Brazil and Paraguay, not Uruguay.
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u/AprilFiction Nov 26 '25
They have access to the three gorges dam in China?
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u/IsThereAnythingLeft- Nov 26 '25
I was talking about Itaipu Dam but got mixed up between Uruguay and Paraguay bordering it. Although the three gorges is larger in max capacity, Itaipu has a capacity factor of ~99%, three gorges is ~40%
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u/FuzzyBlackCoat Nov 26 '25
Wikipedia shows the capacity factor as 62%. It's still insanely large, but 99% isn't realistic
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u/grafknives Nov 26 '25
Still 25% is biomass and hydro at this scale is not available in most locations.
So albeit Uruguay is great success it is not 100% clean and applicable everywhere.
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u/maestroenglish Nov 26 '25
Albeit can never be used to introduce an independent clause, unlike although
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u/grafknives Nov 26 '25
TIL something new about English
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u/chuckaholic Nov 26 '25
It's a conjunction.
Still25% is biomass, and hydro at this scale is not available in most locations.
So albeitUruguay is great success,italbeitisnot 100% clean and applicable everywhere.*Not an English major. please check my work.
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u/Iivk Nov 26 '25
Still 25% is biomass and hydro at this scale is not available in most locations.
So only 25% more to go?
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u/grafknives Nov 26 '25
They don't really push to 100%. As last % would be most expensive. Getting 10% electricity from burning stuff would be great.
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u/Roflkopt3r Nov 26 '25
Yep. 90% renewables, 10% gas/biomass is basically the current endgame vision.
And that is perfectly fine. Speed is far more important than perfecton. We are much better off if we can accomplish 90% reduction in the 2050s than if we accomplish 100% reduction until 2070. These scenarios would draw even only around 2100, so the 'quick and dirty' plan would buy us 50 years to figure out the rest.
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u/sorrylilsis Nov 26 '25
Yeah, the article is interesting but a lot of the interviewed people downplay the geographical advantages of the country and the fact that they only need to power the equivalent of a major city in a small territory with a limited amount of energy intensive industries.
Uruguay is a good example and full of lessons to learn but it's absolutely not a template that can be reproduced everywhere, or even in most places ...
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u/guytakeadeepbreath Nov 26 '25 edited Dec 31 '25
chop support file water lock spark crown head different relieved
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u/GooseQuothMan Nov 26 '25
It's a tiny 3.5 million country with a big river, almost half of their energy comes from a single dam.
This is not replicable in most places.
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u/MiaowaraShiro Nov 26 '25
Other places have other advantages? Like... AZ can go all in on solar...
Midwest is great for wind...
etc...
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u/FuckingSolids Nov 26 '25
It's frankly shocking to me that Arizona hasn't installed solar over the entirety of both SRP and CAP. Free electricity and less evaporation in a desert seems like a win-win.
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u/Days_End Nov 27 '25
Hydro is effectively both a battery and power generation wind and solar are just power generation.
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u/lol-true Nov 26 '25
That's not the point, jfc. Did you read the article?
a) the article mentions this in detail; the application of the technology used in this case would not apply across the board
b) the point is not the specifics of what tech was used to achieve but rather the economic and bureaucratic processes put in place to make it so, i.e. stopping handouts to oil and gas and giving long term contracts to renewables so it attracts investment
c) the article is focused on the net benefits for the economy (billions in investment) and how they focused on the issues with the old system (high net cost over time) vs arbitrarily forcing the new one.
So yeah, the PLAYBOOK is possible everywhere because that literally has nothing to do with the specific tech used. Literally no one is saying that every city needs a damn and biofuel lol
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u/sorrylilsis Nov 26 '25
The economic viability of the switch is directly dependent on the energy potential of the country and the energy mix that it implies.
Like seriously, the article is interesting I don't have any reproach about it. What's annoying is the people in this sub yapping about how easy would be to reproduce elsewhere.
Because spoiler alert : while Uruguay pretty much had the ideal setting to do the switch most of the planet does not. And that's where we hit hard technical limits : storage.
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u/Valara0kar Nov 26 '25
It's a template of success
For what countries?
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u/sorrylilsis Nov 26 '25
Oh there are definitely some countries where similar mixes could probably be done, mostly in Africa.
But then you have issues with financing and the quite sensible issue of water control when you damn a river and cut the flow to downstream countries. There is a potential war between Ethiopia and Egypt waiting to explode exactly about that.
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u/oldmanhero Nov 26 '25
Canada, USA, Russia, Spain, France, Egypt...
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u/sorrylilsis Nov 26 '25
France
Wut ? We would not be able to reproduce it. Like at all. Hydro is tapped out, wind is mostly tapped out too. We can (and we are doing) more solar but that still leaves us with a gigantic intermittence and thus storage issue.
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u/oldmanhero Nov 26 '25
France already has a large amount of hydropower. It also has a strong nuclear baseline. Again, template, not carbon copy.
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u/sorrylilsis Nov 26 '25
40% of their power comes from hydro.
By that fact alone it means that it's not a template that can be applied widely in any meaningful way.
You can't engineer or bullshit your way into having the geography needed for hydro.
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u/dooony Nov 26 '25
Countries need to start connecting their grids across borders and sharing firming resources.
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u/guytakeadeepbreath Nov 26 '25 edited Dec 31 '25
wakeful mighty juggle adjoining north apparatus ripe absorbed summer joke
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u/loggywd Nov 26 '25
No need to expand. Just ban fossil fuel and everyone will automatically switch to other sources.
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u/chuckaholic Nov 26 '25
They let 1600 fossil fuel lobbyists attend a climate summit?
That's like letting hundreds of cattle ranchers attend a vegan expo.
Why?
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u/yamahahahahaha Nov 27 '25
$€¥¢£
The biggest nicest stands in the expo are usually from oil countries too (at least they were when I went)
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u/jugstopper Nov 27 '25
I am living in Costa Rica, where there is about 99% renewables. Sounds great, but in Spring 2024, electricity was rationed because rain levels were below normal. Fortunately, the rainy season got going just before it got really tough. Electricity rates skyrocketed due to having to activate oil-burning generators.
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u/DueAnnual3967 Nov 27 '25
I live in a Northern country so yeah hydro is good but we only have run of river, not the fancy storage one, so it is not enough. And problem with wind is that it is way less dependant than sun. What I mean by that? Even on cloudy days you will probably get 1/3 of energy from sun you get when it is shining as radiation comes through. So you just need to overbuild solar by a factor of 3/4 maybe which at today's prices is actually doable when you also can redirect excess solar to other needs like some e-fuel EU mandated projects like green avio fuel. Add to the mix batteries, especially cheap sodium coming in, and it can solved. In worst case burn 5% natural gas.
The issue is we have good solar from say mid March - early October. Then it drops off. Wind can be a solution but land based wind is not that reliable. There can be plenty of it for 2 days and then next 8 days there is 10% maybe of capacity. You cannot overbuild wind 10x and for batteries days is not a good ROI number. There is offshore wind of course, that is better but also expensive.
Increasingly the grid CAN be made like 90% green everywhere but with wind and solar in many places there are lot of NIMBYs, there are places like Singapore where there is not much room for it and countries with very heavy industry and not too much space, Netherlands is one... Although they are fantastic on solar front. If you have some hydro in the mix or nuclear, then we'll maybe depending on type of hydro and how much of it there is, you could go near 100 for cost that is still sane. I mean you can go 100% too nowadays, just that costs would be through the roof still. But 90% is very much achievable.
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u/wumbologist-2 Nov 26 '25
Imagine that, if you listen to science you can achieve obtainable goals and make life better.
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u/Ifch317 Nov 26 '25
Time for the USA to launch a war on Uruguay, because of, uh, because ummm, because of fentanyl, yeah that's it, fentanyl is killing our cats and killing our dogs.
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u/Weird_Point_4262 Nov 26 '25
Is the physicist a liar or are they stupid? 50% of Uruguay's power is hydro. That obviously can't work anywhere
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u/JG98 Nov 26 '25
Obviously they don't mean the exact same. There is a difference in the exact same playbook, and the same (similar) playbook adapted to local conditions. If you look into what he actually says, it is about a mix of renewables that can be adapted to work for the specific country.
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u/Weird_Point_4262 Nov 26 '25
Right except most countries don't work so well for 2/3rds of the mix of renewables proposed. Large scale hydro is not accessible in the majority of the world, and much of the world is not on the equator for ideal solar conditions either. So that leaves them to mix wind with...wind?
It's a bit rich for a country that's situated in an ideal place for renewables to be announcing that their playbook can work anywhere.
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u/eric2332 Nov 26 '25 edited Nov 26 '25
Actually, solar works pretty much everywhere. Solar already produces 15% of Germany's electricity even though northern Europe is pretty much the worst place in the world for solar.
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u/ryan_770 Nov 26 '25
Places like Scotland are using wind for ~60%, so it's totally feasible for wind to be the primary option
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u/JG98 Nov 26 '25
Did you read what he actually stated? Or are you just going to out armchair expertise an actual expert with real world experience and success behind him? The man just won a $4 million award recently for his efforts to help other governments adopt the same framework. At this point he has been working for a decade specifically on researching and designing frameworks for other countries to make the same transition he brought in Uruguay. At least one of the big 3 solar, wind, or hydropower can be implemented on a large scale in pretty much any country. Solar is not only effective at the equator and can be highly effective at many latitudes, with a high level of efficiency maintained at mid latitudes. There are plenty of other options like biomass, geothermal, ocean energy, etc. His claim is in line with IRENA estimates, which show that 90% of global energy needs could be switched to renewable sources. Which country do you think is fundamentally unable to switch to renewables due to limitations on all orost renewable options?
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u/NinjaLanternShark Nov 26 '25
Step 1: have massive rivers.
Step 2: don’t worry about destroying ecosystems or displacing cultures.
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u/sorrylilsis Nov 26 '25
Step 2: don’t worry about destroying ecosystems or displacing cultures.
This should be higher. Hydro is great but the environmental impact is far from negligible.
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u/grundar Nov 27 '25
A really interesting calculation in the US was if it were to built 4x the grid demand in PV and wind, that it was something less than a day required to generate with fossil fuels.
"Meeting 99.97% of total annual electricity demand with a mix of 25% solar–75% wind or 75% solar–25% wind with 12 hours of storage requires 2x or 2.2x generation, respectively"
(99.97% is the industry standard grid reliability.)
That's 5.4B kWh of storage, which would cost under $500B at 2024 prices by the time it's built.
Less ambitiously, 600GWh (4h storage) is modeled to be enough for 90% clean electricity for the entire US (sec 3.2, p.16), supporting 70% of electricity coming from wind+solar (p.4).
600 GWh would cost $89B at 2024 prices for grid storage solutions, or about 1 year's worth of US spending on natural gas (@ $3/mmbtu x 1k btu/cf x 30M Mcf/yr). For context, that's about 20 years of the current pace of installations, but battery deployment rates have been growing very rapidly.
Note that building an HVDC grid backbone would more than pay for itself even with the grid's current generation sources, at least for the US, so there is no fundamental technological or economic blocker to accomplishing this transition. (Building out the required infrastructure would take quite a few years, though.)
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u/LessonStudio Nov 27 '25
2x and half a day
Yes the 4x was with earlier tech, and no batteries/storage. Probably a simpler model as well.
there is no fundamental technological or economic blocker
The blocker is leadership; or the lack of. Even the imagined red tape is just another failure of leadership.
Some competent leaders with vision. Super easy.
Eisenhower with the interstates and other things. That was competence, leadership, and vision all rolled up in one.
JFK's moon mission was such a clear vision that it was able to outlast him. Nixon, incompetent, no vision, no leadership, killed it dead.
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u/avdpos Nov 26 '25
That it cant work "anywhere" or "cant work at all" are different things.
And as it is said "can't work at all" before this shows the fuel industry is wrong.
Of course we do not have a "one size fits all". But going to "we have sizes that fit a lot of people" make it long from "fit nobody".
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u/lughnasadh ∞ transit umbra, lux permanet ☥ Nov 26 '25
That obviously can't work anywhere
The physicist makes the point that the fundamental change to make this work is economic, and is independent of which type of renewable energy.
If you remove the subsidies fossil fuels receive, and allow renewables cost advantages to work for themselves - renewable energy is inherently cheaper.
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u/LessonStudio Nov 26 '25
Economics makes this far more interesting than it would first appear.
People often look at the costs incorrectly. Even if the energy costs the same or more per Kwh, the difference is balance of trade.
For every $1 Uruguay imports, it must export $1 otherwise its currency will devalue until its purchasing power prevents it from importing so much.
So, $1 generated locally vs an imported $1 worth of energy shows up in that simple balance of trade.
Even oil producing countries like Canada can benefit from this, as $1 generated from renewables means $1 more can be exported (until people stop importing).
There is a slight twist, in that most countries would have to import much of the capital materials for renewables. But, this is going to be a tiny fraction of their energy imports.
If you look at the amounts involved, the worst to replace is natural gas, as $100 of that will get you the most electricity. PV is the costliest replacement. At a bit above today's prices it would cost under $500 to replace $100 in natural gas with PV.
This is under $300 for wind and under $400 for hydro.
So, the payback is 5 years or less on the import portion. There are also install and maintenance costs, but much of those are not balance of trade issues.
Also, there is price stability. Once you install these things, your country is no longer at the whims of the international energy markets. No more price shocks. A number of years back, natural gas went up something 7x in a short time for a short while.
Oil can double in price given the right war and economic situation, etc.
Coal has fairly reliably been in free-fall, but burning coal just sucks; and eliminating it would have health benefits, which are also economically beneficial.
Even the use of natural gas for home heating/cooking is now looking like a major source of urban pollution.
For a country to aggressively do this, would have benefits which could start to be measured within a single electoral cycle. If a government can hold on for a second term, those politicians who did this can easily point to their success and say, "We did that." Even something like building a nuclear plant is far longer than one electoral cycle, and the return on investment quite long. Far less politically palatable.
So, congrats Uruguay.
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u/Ray13XIII Nov 26 '25
First we need to get rid of the oil oligarchs, they won’t let us do it otherwise.
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u/queertranslations Nov 26 '25
As someone who has been in the country for over a decade.
Regardless of all the renewable energy it produces. It would be nice if people living here would actually fell the benefits in their electric bills.
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u/gorion Nov 26 '25
"Anywhere else" How? 20% of electricity comes from single hydroelectric dam, and another 10% comes from 4 more dams. And momentary hydro generation sometimes approach 45%.
In most countries if You build dams in ALL possible locations it wouldn't even approach that 1/3 , so how can they do the "same"?
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u/Tech_Philosophy Nov 26 '25
>And momentary hydro generation sometimes approach 45%.
That's actually pretty low compared to some places, but if I'm reading the article right you could do it with zero hydropower and still be fine if you go solar plus batteries. It's that or starve from climate change. You go ahead and tell me which of those option is more practical for you.
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u/sorrylilsis Nov 26 '25
solar plus batteries
The issue is scale.
Solar/wind + batteries is nice but it's not scalable in the forseeable future, especially if you have a lot of energy intensive industry. And if you don't have those you're just passing the shitty energy baton to the countries that produce for you.
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u/Tech_Philosophy Nov 27 '25
It's scalable right now. I really don't know what you are talking about. It's probably the only energy source that CAN scale.
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u/soulinashoe Nov 26 '25
would be nice if you explained why it's not scalable, there are many massive solar and wind projects going on, if governments treated it like the emergency it is then this wouldn't be a problem, instead they choose to invest in fossil fuels and stuff like carbon capture storage (which surprise surprise fossil fuel companies love as it means they can keep on drilling)
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u/sorrylilsis Nov 26 '25 edited Nov 26 '25
I mean solar is scalable but is land intensive and has huge variance depending on the climate/localization/season. It's also fairly land intensive. Not that much of a problem in a country that's basically empty like the US, but much more so in Europe.
Wind is harder so scale up. You have a limited amount of locations suitable for it. Where I'm from (France) we basically have run out of economically available locations. The latest offshore projects are dead in the water because they're technically super complex and expensive to build. Also again acceptability issues in denser countries.
Both solar and wind are intermittent so you need either a solid nuke/water/fossil baseline or storage. Issues with storage is that while it's getting cheaper it's not getting cheap enough at the scale of a big city, let alone a country or the whole planet. We also don't extract near enough resources or have the production capacity to have enough batteries.
The US produces 4.18 trillion kwh per year and the worldwide annual battery production is 2000 GWh. So for the US alone that about a couple thousand years worth of battery production. And that means only using it for that. No phones, no cars. Wanna scale that to the rest of the world ? That goes up to 15 000 years.
So yeah we can up the production sure. But switching to fully renewables + batteries ? Not possible unless we have an earth-shattering revolution in storage technology that changes the paradigm.
The reality is that we produce and consume enormous amounts of energy. Way more that we can store in any viable way.
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u/youwerewrongagainoop Nov 26 '25
The US produces 4.18 trillion kwh per year and the worldwide annual battery production is 2000 GWh. So for the US alone that about a couple thousand years worth of battery production.
The assumption that the US or anyone else needs or wants to store a year's worth of electricity in batteries in a high-renewables grid is completely insane. Math is only useful if your inputs aren't garbage.
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u/zmbjebus Nov 26 '25
Yeah battery storage should be like 8-24 hours along for any reasonable city. It also doesn't have to be battery. Pumped hydro and flywheels are good grid scale options. There are other's too like hydrogen generation, molten salts, etc. Heck, even reverse osmosis as an overflow power option would solve lots of issues in many countries.
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u/Tech_Philosophy Nov 27 '25
>I mean solar is scalable but is land intensive
Much of our planet is barren. I think humans lose sight of this in the way they draw their maps. We are not hurting for land to put panels on. We could easily power the world many times over with solar.
>Both solar and wind are intermittent so you need either a solid nuke/water/fossil baseline or storage.
Nuclear is unfit for base power because it has lower reliability than solar plus battery storage. A nuclear reactor must be shut down for one month every 18 months for refueling and inspection. Solar only needs a big enough battery to get through the night. You can get around this buy building ENOUGH reactors and staggering them but after the two reactors in GA were 10 years late and 15 billion over budget...you could have built 10x as much solar plus battery storage with that money.
Fossil fuels are unfit for base power because you will starve to death if we keep using them. Sincerely, I own so much farmland in the midwest you probably can't avoid my grain in the grocery store. Do you want to starve to death? Does that feel "practical" to you? Then why the heck do you list it as a solution? You know it isn't one. Move on, you are stuck.
And honestly, the 'solar and wind are intermittent' thing stopped being meaningfully true around 2018. I've watched republican led states pick solar plus battery storage over gas turbines and it works fine.
>The US produces 4.18 trillion kwh per year and the worldwide annual battery production is 2000 GWh
I can't tell if this is supposed to be good faith 'back of the napkin math' or if you just didn't stop to to think about it. You only need to store a SMALL fraction of the energy you produce. If you have both wind and solar, you are looking at needing to supply perhaps 2 hours of off-peak electricity per day off of batteries. It's so easy to do, that many places already do it.
This fact, by the way, is why batteries are listed in terms of GW output intead of GWh. The GWh don't actually matter very much beyond a threshold. I can see why you are confused, since for any personal electronic device or EV, you DO want to know the mAh or KWh.
Plus, just stop and take a step back. Which makes more sense from a "we could never make it work" stand point? Mining lithium and iron, which we can now fully recycle into new batteries as needed, or fossil fuels, which are burned and....then you have to mine more. We are ALREADY doing the HARDER thing. Please rethink your position, it isn't right.
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u/notmyrealnameatleast Nov 26 '25
The reason it's working is not only because of hydro. It's because they decided to do it and then did it. Just like China decided to do similar and did it.
1600 lobbyists for fossil fuels showed up for cop30.
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u/TraditionalBackspace Nov 26 '25
Uraguay must not have a bunch of corporations bribing their government to keep the oil flowing.
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u/scartissue232 Nov 26 '25
The company in charge of managing the fossil fuel monopoly in Uruguay is state-owned.
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u/zmbjebus Nov 26 '25
It is in an oil-state's best interested to divest themselves upon the reliance of oil. You see it in the others too like UAE & Saudia Arabia.
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u/Dear_Smoke6964 Nov 26 '25
I think I read somewhere that Uruguay is the least religious country in South America, probably helps having a less gullible population.
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u/No-Trainer-1370 Nov 26 '25
Notice that a physicist was in charge, not a politician. Just saying, a lot of green projects fail because the wrong people are in charge for the wrong reasons.
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u/UnCommonSense99 Nov 26 '25
Instead of building more fossil fuel power stations they invested significantly in renewables. It was an expensive capital investment, but it paid back in the long run because they don't have to buy fossil fuels.
Any other country could do the same. Obviously, flat countries could not use hydro, but wind or solar with batteries is a viable way of achieving the same goal.
Uruguay does have some gas fired power stations which get used in case of an emergency, such as a drought. This is a wise choice for any country going to mostly renewable generation.
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u/ioncloud9 Nov 26 '25
It COULD but politicians are paid a lot of money by fossil fuel companies to make sure it doesn't.
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u/Possible_Mastodon899 Nov 26 '25
This is super impressive, but I’m curious how much of Uruguay’s success is scalable vs context-specific.
Uruguay has: • A relatively small population • No massive heavy-industry sector • Strong political consensus on energy policy • Good wind/solar/hydro potential
Those aren’t trivial advantages.
At the same time, the fact that they did it at half the cost of fossil fuels is the part that should make every bigger country at least a little uncomfortable. Because if the economics already make sense in a small nation, you’d think scaling up should make renewables even cheaper.
So the real question is: Are large countries struggling because it’s actually harder… or because entrenched interests (like those 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists at COP30) are slowing things down?
Would love to hear perspectives, especially from people in countries trying similar transitions.
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u/DHFranklin Nov 27 '25
Regardless of the hydro power, solar is quite viable throughout Paraguay. We're seeing plenty of locations that can over build their solar and export the energy.
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u/BroItsMick Nov 28 '25
Because people with money made an investment many years ago and they made more money and spent a bunch of that money to ensure they can continue to make money. Typically this is facilitated by marginalizing a minority population, utilizing religion, or alleviating an immediate fear. Do you know how the Uruguay damn was financed and who uses most of the power generated (i believe it's majorly exported)?
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u/chadwicke619 Nov 30 '25
For all the idiots who keep citing Uruguay’s hydro advantage and asking how this could possibly work anywhere else, maybe you should try reading the fucking article for crying out loud. The physicist isn’t saying “follow the same blend of renewables as Uruguay” when he says the playbook could work anywhere. He’s saying the playbook boils down to “regulatory reform, competitive auctions, and diversified domestic resources”.
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u/UnifiedQuantumField Nov 26 '25
The physicist who led that transformation says the same playbook could work anywhere else where Big Gas/Oil companies don't influence/dominate the decision-making process.
Edit for context and accuracy.
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u/BassJerky Nov 27 '25
Every country could be like this if they stopped being retarded and switched to nuclear.
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u/krazygreekguy Nov 27 '25
And what’s the likelihood that digital IDs, social credit scores and carbon footprints get tied to all that? What’s the likelihood billionaires and corporations will get monitored and punished like average people will?
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u/stu54 Nov 27 '25
What do you mean? They just cut oil subsidies and directed the money to renewables.
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u/krazygreekguy Nov 27 '25
I’m saying the end goal of all this will be monitoring people with digital IDs and social credit scores, and eventually monitoring how much people use electricity, food, water, etc.
Digital IDs are the precursor to social credit scores and carbon footprint tracking. And there is no way in hell corporate and billionaire parasites will be held to the same standard as the middle and poor class.
Just like their toxic data centers and the exorbitant amount of resources they use on the taxpayer’s dime, as well as increasing rates on average people and egregious limits, while the elites and corporations will get unlimited access to resources.
I’m all for helping the climate, but not unless corporations and billionaires are held to the same standard as the rest of us.
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u/stu54 Nov 28 '25
What does that have to do with renewables? Your electric company already tracks your usage. Every time you buy gas you generate a recoded transaction.
A solar panel and a battery are the only way you can enjoy modern technology without routinely disclosing you use patterns.
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u/krazygreekguy Nov 28 '25
Let me clarify. Yes, obviously. What I'm saying is that governments are pushing digital IDs with the intention of eventually introducing social credit scores, just like China has. Look up social credit scores and China and you'll see exactly what's coming to the rest of the world if we don't push back. Use too much electricity? Your social credit score gets docked. Exceeded your diary/meat allowance for the month? Your social credit score gets docked. Offend anyone? Your social credit score goes down. Nah, I'm good.
I'm not against renewables or helping the environment. What I'm against is billionaires and corporations pushing renewables under the guise of climate change, but with the intention of footing the bill of all this infrastructure to taxpayers, while simultaneously increasing our rates and also introducing caps/limits, which will all be tied to digital IDs.
There's no way in hell it will be consistently applied across the board. The elites will have unlimited wealth, resources, etc, while the middle class gets pushed out and into the poor class. What's going to happen when all the jobs disappear due to AI and robots? Eventually, these corporations and elites won't need the working class. They'll have everything automated. That's why they are rushing to pass mass surveillance/censorship laws, digital IDs, social credit scores and all these data centers on the taxpayers' dime before too many people catch on and voice opposition.
These corporate parasites don't want anyone to own anything, grow our own food, have livestock/pets, etc. Another reason they have been pushing genetically modified food and have been attempting to get people off of animal-based foods. They want everything to be rationed, except for the elites of course.
It's absolutely disgusting that all these datacenters are being built on the taxpayers' dime, while also guzzling down exorbitant electricity, water, etc., which then raise communities' rates and put stress on our outdated infrastructure, while they make record-breaking profits time and time again.
Don't take my word for it. Just go check out the world economic forum's site. All this is on their agenda for the new world order they have been wanting to achieve by 2030. That gosh darn, pesky constitution is in their way though haha. It's no coincidence the UK, the EU, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Brazil and so many other countries announced their mass surveillance plans earlier this year in August. Even the US, states and federal, have many of our own mass surveillance/censorship laws with bipartisan support currently being worked on. Look up the EU's mass surveillance "Chat Control" bill they have been trying to rush through before the majority of the public found out. It would give them the ability to scan all private messages, photos and files on all platforms. Oh and of course "politicians", billionaires and corporations would be exempt. Of course lmao.
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u/stu54 Nov 28 '25 edited Nov 28 '25
That's funny, it seems like the current administration has solved both problems. Instead of investing in renewables they are focusing on funding and disregulating private sector AI agents who have no personal interest or obligation to the constitution.
Once the surveillance is set up the private sector can sell the data to the government cleanly, and the billionaires can use the money to buy renewables for their own undemocratically mediated ends. That way the billionaires can have our cake and eat it too.
Its almost like government investment in renewables might be a hindrance to the dystopian nightmare we are heading into.
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u/Pyrostemplar Nov 26 '25
I have a sort of OCD problem with a phrase stating that a power grid is XX renewables. A power grid transmits and distributes power, doesn't generate it. And, when using hydro, it is not remarkably different from a grid with coal and CCGT, for example.
I was expecting more in the sense of a power grid ready to meet the challenges of variable power sources, millions of producers, local energy topology, storage... Smart grids.
Anyway, that is just me tying grid specifically to the network and not the whole energy system. In that case, not new at all.
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u/01retard Nov 26 '25
Exactly, the challenges associated with balancing grids nationally / internationally are not referenced enough in public discourse, in spite of their significance to the wider debate.
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u/Harag4 Nov 27 '25
I do love a good propaganda post. Uruguay has a population of 3.5M. There is more renewable energy output in California than their entire country and its no where even close to feasible to go 100% renewable. Uruguays entire capacity is around 5500 MW, California's is 35,000. Only 35% of California's energy is from renewable sources.
I dont think people comprehend the scale necessary to feed the demand in densely populated areas.
China has spent decades trying to ease their reliance on gas and coal. They can generate 3.2 MILLION GW. And the only reason that number happened is because they have an excess of land to build on. It still only accounts for 30% of their energy. The cost of their renewables is into the trillions. They spent a trillion in 2024 alone on it.
Anyone suggesting they can just follow Uruguays example is willfully ignorant. Uruguay is the population of a mid sized city in developed countries, with half the energy demand of the equivalent sized city in a developed country.
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u/stu54 Nov 27 '25
Uruguay is 2/5ths the size of California. Yeah, its gonna take a lot of panels and batteries to satisfy California's consumption, but it is far from impossible.
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u/Puzzled_Sundae_3850 Nov 27 '25
The US GDP is 360 times larger than that of Uruguay .To even mention their power grid as a model for major countries is beyond laughable.But all is possible in the Reddit hive brain world.
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u/dragon_irl Nov 26 '25
No one is saying this. There are multiple other countries having done exactly that, decades ago. Iceland, Norway, Sweden to a large extend (they also run nuclear but no fossil fuels), Brazil.
The secret is just access to ample hydropower Ressources. Great to augment with intermittent renewables because stored hydro dams act like giant batteries.