Wind and solar energy capacity catching with nuclear power

The Worldwatch Institute, an independent research organization based in Washington, D.C. works on energy, resource, and environmental issues, quantifies the steady decline of nuclear energy’s share of global power production, and renewable energy’s increased share. Renewables have been capturing a larger and larger portion of the total global energy infrastructure pie, while the portion nuclear energy has not just been stagnating but actually shrinking somewhat.

More interesting than that observation, though, is the fact that solar and wind energy have been gaining fast on nuclear — and are now, more or less, on the same trajectory that nuclear power was on in the 1970s and 1980s, in its heyday.

In the Worldwatch Institute’s Vital Signs Online analysis, senior researcher Michael Renner wrote:

“Advocates of nuclear energy have long been predicting its renaissance, yet this mode of producing electricity has been stalled for years. Renewable energy, by contrast, continues to expand rapidly, even if it still has a long way to go to catch up with fossil fuel power plants.”

It seems like, some analysts who have been babbling about “nuclear renaissance for the last several years need to wait for at least another couple of years or more likely forever. Without a doubt, solar and wind energy will no doubt continue growing at a fair rate (at the least) in the years to come.

Since the rapid rise from the beginning of mid-1950s, global nuclear power generating capacity peaked at 375.3 GW in 2010. Capacity has since declined to 371.8 GW in 2013, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. According to Worldwatch, the nuclear energy’s share of global power production has declined steadily from a peak of 17.6 percent in 1996 to 10.8 percent in 2013.

Wind and solar power generating capacities are now on the same soaring trajectory that nuclear power was on in the 1970s and 1980s.

While the surge in recent years by renewables has certainly been impressive is of course down to the fact that renewables have been attracting far greater investment — owing to their superiority in almost every regard, from development costs, to safety, to operating costs. You can probably pretty much count on it to continue at an increasingly rapid rate as fossil fuel extraction becomes more and more expensive and as the effects of global warming become more and more obvious.

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