[Scott] Next on "Energy Switch," have solar and wind been a success or failure?

- Solar is now the cheapest form of energy out there, and low-cost storage is trailing right behind.

If we don't center climate and climate justice, then we are really rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Clean energy is far from perfect, but it's a way to get there.

We've gotta make it a justice-first economy, not a justice-third or fourth economy.

- The catastrophist view, I think is just flat wrong.

Climate change is a concern.

It's not our only concern.

The world is using more natural gas and we're seeing in a revival of nuclear around the world.

Those are the sources that are gonna continue to grow.

Yes, solar and wind will grow, but their growth is going to be dwarfed by the growth we see in gas and nuclear.

- That's a lightning start.

[chuckles] Okay.

Coming up, our experts debate the merits and challenges of wind and solar.

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[upbeat music] - I'm Scott Tinker, and I'm an energy scientist.

I work in the field, lead research, speak around the world, write articles, and make films about energy.

This show brings together leading experts on vital topics in energy and climate.

They may have different perspectives, but my goal is to learn, and illuminate, and bring diverging views together towards solutions.

Welcome to the "Energy Switch."

We hear a lot of conflicting information about solar and wind.

They're the cheapest form of electricity, but they make electricity prices more expensive.

They're the fastest growing form of electricity, but still make only a tiny portion of total energy consumption.

Are they the future of our energy system or can they not compete with conventional energy without subsidies?

Boone or boondoggle?

Or perhaps some of both?

Our experts weigh in.

Robert Bryce is the author of six books on energy, a documentary film producer and podcaster and journalist reporting on energy and environment for more than 30 years.

Dan Kammen is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University, formerly the founding director of the Renewable Energy Lab at UC Berkeley, and energy scientist and author.

On this episode of "Energy Switch," Solar and Wind: Success or Failure?

Good to have you here.

Let's just get started.

What part of total energy in the U.S.

comes from electricity today, Dan?

- It's about 40% and rising as we work towards electrify all.

- Okay.

- Yeah, I think that's about right.

Yeah.

But of course, we make the electricity from other forms of fuel and so on, but yeah.

That's about right.

- Right.

Right.

How about solar and wind?

Are they gonna become the leading U.S.

electricity sources?

- No.

[Scott laughs] [Dan] Yes.

[Scott] Yes?

- Hell no.

[laughs] - Double down on that yes.

- When?

By when?

- We will be heading towards a world in 2070 that's 70% powered by fusion, but half of that will be 93 million miles away.

- Okay.

- If we talk about where we are today with electricity in the U.S., solar and wind are about 16% of the U.S.

electricity mix.

Now that's just electricity.

- Right.

- But we have to zoom out and remember that solar and wind, when you combine it in terms of primary energy together, they're right about three percent of total U.S.

energy consumption.

- Solar farms overall value, like gimme a one to 10.

- I'll give it a five.

I have solar panels on the roof of my house.

- Okay.

- I'll give it an eight, but it's distributed solar that's gonna be the future.

Big farms are great, but it's the fact that solar is modular.

It can go on any rooftop anywhere.

That's really gonna get us where we need to go.

Got it.

How about wind overall value?

- Negative one, negative five.

I'm a long-time critic of the wind business.

I don't like them, I'm sure they don't like me back.

I'm okay with that.

- Wind value?

- Wind is a five or six.

It's useful, it's a nice complement today, but in the long term, we have other ways to generate clean energy and we will be moving towards offshore wind.

- Okay, interesting.

- I have to disagree.

Hard disagree.

Putting anything in salt water makes it vastly more expensive, and the same thing is true with offshore wind energy.

Offshore wind energy is a dying animal and it's gonna continue to decline.

- Yeah, I have to disagree again because we're seeing 60, 70 gigawatts of new offshore wind energy in China, Denmark, South Korea.

We're seeing places that are progressive on energy putting it in.

I agree, the marine environment is tough.

We managed to do it with shipping, managed do with oil rigs, we'll manage to make it work on offshore wind and sighting is much, much easier.

- But we just saw in mid-2025, just, I think it was in July, 2025, the German government had an auction for offshore wind.

They got zero bidders.

Why?

Because the government wasn't providing enough subsidies.

- So solar and wind, success or failure?

- Huge success, and it's the future of where we're going.

It's the modularity, it's the diversity of materials.

We can make the materials cleaner and cleaner.

So it is a huge part of our energy future.

- Globally?

- Globally and in the U.S.

- Okay.

Solar and wind future?

- Well, the solar and wind have grown rapidly, but it's all been fueled by subsidies.

And now that the subsidies are being taken away, I think it's clear that growth is gonna slow dramatically.

- Okay.

So, Dan, what's your ideal kind of end use state for our energy systems?

- It's a zero carbon economy where we emit a little bit of fossil energy, we capture that, but we're dominated by fusion, wind, and solar and some geothermal.

- Okay.

Your ideal end state?

- Well, I think it's the same that I've been talking about now for more than 15 years.

End to end, natural gas to nuclear.

The world is using more natural gas and we're seeing a revival of nuclear around the world.

Those are the sources that are gonna continue to grow.

Yes, solar and wind will grow, but their growth is going to be dwarfed by the growth we see in gas and nuclear.

- That's a lightning start.

[chuckles] Okay.

Let's get started.

Robert, you've been tracking something for a while called the Renewables Rejection Database.

- Sure.

- What's that?

And why have you been doing that?

- Well, it's something that came to me.

More than 15 years ago, I got contacted by a horse trainer in King City, Missouri, who'd had wind turbines built very close to his home.

And he told me the story and he was, you know, being driven nuts by the noise.

But it led me to start collecting data on the number of rejections and restrictions of renewable projects across the U.S.

And so since 2015, I've got the numbers.

We now have 879 rejections of big wind or big solar in the U.S.

- Why?

Why are these being rejected?

- Well, local communities are saying, "We don't want these massive projects in our neighborhoods.

We're concerned about our property values," rightly so.

They're concerned about the noise pollution from these wind turbines, rightly so.

They're concerned about their view, they're concerned about tourism, they're concerned about their neighborhoods.

And so I have a lot of empathy for these people because they're facing, in many cases, huge odds because they're fighting big money, big law firms, big NGOs, and big banks, and a lot of 'em are just getting run over.

- Hmm, interesting.

Do you take something else from that data or?

- I do, and I think the numbers are right.

I mean, we have projects that have done badly, but we have to put two things in context here.

One is that there was no effort to push back that was successful against the big oil and gas projects over decades, but we're now seeing it for these large-scale renewable projects.

The other side of the story though is that clean energy projects actually put more money into communities more sustainably than fossil projects.

That's fact after fact.

There's more jobs in clean energy projects and clean energy projects can scale.

So I agree.

Big, big wind farms or big, big petroleum refineries put next to poor communities is not the way to go.

But we know how to do these from your own rooftop.

Communities, trailer parks can all have distributed clean energy, and the more you distribute, the more you don't need the other aspect of the story, which is big transmission projects and big transmission that was built without environmental impact assessments when we wanted to do it for fossil, for coal, and for gas.

Now that we want to do it in a more built up America, it's pushed back against the renewables.

- Again, I disagree and I think we have to be very clear about the numbers here.

I'm tracking the rejections here in the U.S., 879.

I'm also tracking globally.

You've had 28 countries that are now in the global renewable rejection database.

Here's a quick point.

Between January 1st, 2025 and August of 2025, in England, Ireland and Scotland, there have been 49 rejections of wind and solar, 29 of those have been for solar.

- But over 140 acceptances of projects and energy in Ireland is cheaper and greener and more jobs.

Ireland is now one of the best performing economies in the EU.

- If I were the public and I heard, "We're an affordable competitive industry now, but we can't do it without subsidies."

- The same people who do fossil projects do clean energy projects.

Everybody wants subsidies, but the raw cost is dramatically lower.

Solar is now the cheapest form of energy out there and low-cost storage is trailing right behind.

They're both moving down the so-called Moore's law, this-- - So you would argue that although everybody wants them, they're not necessarily needed for the industry to continue to grow.

- Well, look, California has removed subsidy for solar.

Now you can get a subsidy if you install storage and solar, but if you just install solar, you don't get the subsidy.

And we're seeing that in the UK, we're seeing that elsewhere.

- And it's still growing?

- It's still growing.

Is it growing fast enough?

No.

And to Robert's point, are there bad projects?

Absolutely.

If you don't have bad projects, you're not innovating, you're not trying.

I just wish we were trying more honestly.

- Hmm.

So places with high percentages of solar and wind penetration on the grid now, what are the trade offs and pros and cons of those that have penetrated deeply with solar and wind?

- Yeah, so that's a great question.

There are places that have done it strategically and there are places that have done it by happenchance.

So California, initially we were rushing to get solar on.

We weren't thinking about storage.

I had to write the bill that required storage to be part of the equation.

Kenya is a place that is now 95% powered by clean energy, solar and wind and geothermal dominating that story.

In Australia, where solar is the dominant new form of energy by far.

These all show we can do it.

The question is, will we do it?

- Okay.

And what do you think on that?

How do you see it?

- Well, let's look at those locations.

So, what has California done?

They've pushed wind and solar harder than any other state in the U.S., but it's not just California.

Look at Germany, some of the highest electricity prices in Europe.

Look at the UK, where now the electricity prices for industry and residential are among the highest of any country in the OECD.

We have to be very careful about how we talk about this because it is very clear that in the places with high penetrations of solar and wind, electricity prices are higher because they're duplicative of the existing resources on the grid.

- I mean this is, I think he's right on the money in terms of doing it badly.

We are seeing opportunities to do it right, because if you just build the intermittent clean energy and not the storage, no surprise you have other issues.

California has some of the highest electricity prices in the country, but not the highest bills because California's also been a leader for decades on energy efficiency.

- How much of that cost electricity is related to the cost of the electron getting to the home versus taxes and other things?

And both answer that.

And if it's taxes and other things, are those taxes needed to subsidize and pay for the mandates?

Is this, you know, what's the mix here?

Gasoline's very expensive in California too, but there are other states that have a lot of solar and wind where electricity price isn't high.

[Robert] Yeah.

- And so I really wanna understand the components of that cost.

- In California and in other places where we have these high penetrations of alternative energy, what we're seeing in Germany and UK the delivery charges are going up.

So the cost of maintaining the grid as a whole.

So we could say solar is cheap.

Well, it's solar cheap right there at the busbar, but when it gets delivered to the house, it can be very expensive because of all these ancillary costs.

The transmission, building new local distribution lines, transformers-- - Storage.

- And the inflation across the board in that sector is raging right now.

- And there are different ways to do the math even in California, even in looking, we only have three investor-owned utilities.

So you think it's pretty straightforward, but a huge part of the cost in California is that those utilities have, quite frankly, made some bad choices.

So, depending on how you do the math, there is general agreement about half of that is servicing debt, whether debt is on old bad projects or debt is on the liability issues around wildfires because climate change is dramatically driving up the cost to do business utilities, and utilities fear utility defection.

So what they fear and they're building into their cost structure is the fact that as renewables and storage get cheap, their big cash cow customers will go away.

- Interesting.

So what would a path forward look like to maximize solar and wind in the U.S., and if you want, globally?

And a second part of that question, is that possible?

So you know, not what could it look like or should it look like, but you know, what will it look like, do you think?

- So we've already seen a number of states that it is certainly possible to maximize the amount of clean energy, the amount of distributed energy.

New York and in New Mexico and California and Washington and Vermont and even Florida, other places, we are seeing a path where solar, I think becomes the dominant source in the mid-century timeframe.

Energy storage, whether it's in those mobile storage units called cars or whether it's in stationary storage at industry, at commercial things, at your home, that's a big part of the picture.

Wind is a part of that story, but increasingly diversified sources.

And there's things we haven't even talked about yet.

Solar panels can now be transparent.

We have companies that make that looks like your windows.

And space-based solar because of the falling prices of doing launches is now a real thing.

We have utilities now buying into that futures market.

So I would say a world dominated by renewables absolutely can happen and climate-wise and justice-wise needs to happen.

- And the renewables ever more dominated by solar as opposed to wind?

- Yeah, I think the long-term path is that the biggest change we're gonna see over decades is gonna be the rise of what we don't have today, which is fusion, but solar over wind onshore.

And increasingly, I think we will see, despite some of the real challenges, we will see more and more wind offshore, but also integrated it with tidal and offshore floating solar and a variety of other things coming online.

Will we do it?

Your guess as good as mine.

We're almost always wrong when we make energy forecasts, but there is absolutely a pathway to get there.

- Robert, you've advocated for kind of this natural gas to nuclear future.

- Sure.

- And help us understand how that would work.

- Well, I've been saying the same thing for 15 years.

If we're serious about decarbonization, small footprints, preserving the natural environment, this is the way forward.

And why?

Natural gas resources globally aren't just abundant, they're super abundant.

Huge discoveries offshore Africa in the last few years.

There's huge resources in the eastern Mediterranean.

Here in the U.S., we're producing more natural gas than any other country in the world by far.

Global gas consumption last year in 2024 grew 1.3 times faster than wind and solar combined.

- In actual units?

- In actual units.

- Yeah.

Okay.

- So what we're seeing globally is in fact this move toward end to end.

Nuclear is starting to, we've seen, especially since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a massive push toward more nuclear deployment, particularly in Eastern Europe.

China is also leading the world, building more nuclear capacity than any other country in the world.

End to end is clearly the way forward.

It's scalable.

These are low carbon sources.

The technologies are well developed, and you know, look, Ray Charles could see this.

There is no way to decarbonize without large scale deployment of new nuclear.

That's just full stop.

Yeah, I'm very bullish on natural gas, and nuclear is gonna grow.

Sober about the prospects in the near term, but it's gonna grow.

- Bipartisan, nuclear, you agree?

You see bipartisan support for that?

- It's certainly pushing that way.

So I've been a professor of nuclear for the past 25 years, and I do believe there will be some fortunes made in nuclear, whether it's made on actual generation of really good-quality generation for least-cost, low-risk technology, or whether it's based on these subsidies, we're gonna see.

We have some exciting new reactor designs.

Some of the liquid metal, some of these thorium designs just announced in China and elsewhere look promising, but nuclear fission has been saying, "It looks promising," for decades and they have not made the same kind of progress we've seen in solar, wind, batteries, and other technologies.

So it remains a risk despite decades of deployment.

- You see-- - But I think we're getting past that though.

I think that now we're seeing this bipartisan support, but we passed an inflection point here.

I think with the AI revolution, the AI, the demand coming from big tech, these are not idiot people at Google and Meta.

They understand what's going on.

But what is Meta doing?

They're building 1.2 gigawatts of gas in Louisiana.

They're betting on and the other big tech companies are betting on nuclear.

They're restarting closed nuclear plants, including Three Mile Island.

So the smart money, where's the smart money going?

Right now, it's going on gas and nuclear.

- Even the governor of Michigan's bringing back their nuclear plant, right?

- Right, yeah.

The Palisades Nuclear Plant.

- But just real succinctly, I'll ask the same question to each of you.

What's the future of solar and wind in the U.S.

and globally?

- Well, solar is gonna grow and it's growing rapidly, and solar growth has now outstripping wind by large margins.

I think the wind industry story in the U.S.

is largely over.

They are gonna plateau and not build a lot more, particularly now that the subsidies are running out.

Again, I'll repeat what I've said before.

The growth in hydrocarbons, both here in the U.S.

and around the world, is still exceeding the growth of wind and solar combined.

So hydrocarbons are here to stay.

- You mentioned early that solar and wind are about three plus or minus percent of total energy in the U.S.

- And the same globally.

- And the same globally.

Where do you see that plateauing?

What percentage?

- You know, my crystal ball is cloudy, but I think that solar is, you know, could get up to, I'd say maybe for a total primary energy globally, I guess it's gonna top out at nine or 10%, wind, you know, maybe three percent or so, and then the rest is gonna be hydrocarbons, nuclear.

Nuclear is going to grow.

Hydro, biomass will be a small percentage.

But yeah, I think I'm bullish on solar.

It's clearly gonna grow.

- Same question, Dan.

Where do you see the future of solar and wind?

- Yeah, so I have dramatically different numbers.

I think that solar grows to be about 1/3 of our total global energy.

- Okay.

- So three times, at least the numbers that you heard here.

It's not about land use constraint.

We use a very small amount of rooftop area.

We're now seeing innovative projects to make roads that are solar to cover canals.

We have all kinds of opportunities, floating solar, and in particular, low cost, low materials, transparent solar so that every window, every glass office building, they can all have solar at a cost low enough that it doesn't matter if part of that building is not facing the sun part of the day.

As I said, I see fusion being about a third and that is the hail Mary 'cause we don't have it today.

So I would say, call it a third, energy from solar, about a third from fusion, and the rest, dominated by wind, but not only.

And if we don't make that the priority, then we are really rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic because if we don't center climate and climate justice, we don't make it.

- And just the catastrophist view, I think is just flat wrong.

Climate change is a concern.

It's not our only concern.

- That's true.

- What is the biggest killer today of the poor in around the world?

It's indoor air pollution.

It kills more people than malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS, HIV, and cholera combined.

Those people, yeah, solar, okay, fine.

What they need is propane, they need hydrocarbons.

- No, they need solar.

- So I this idea that, "Oh, we're never gonna use hydrocarbons again," again, the numbers don't show this.

So let's be clear about what is actually happening and the footprint issues and the talk about social justice.

To me, cheap hydrocarbons are social justice.

- Right, so I work directly on cook stoves, on indoor health around the world, have done now almost 40 years.

And finally, we're seeing the opportunity for electric cooking, not just for the rich, but we're seeing electric cooking in what we call slum areas in East Africa.

We're seeing it in Southeast Asia.

This is something that was not possible 10 years ago 'cause the high prices.

That's the best way to clean the air, the best way to clean the water.

Those are opportunities that we might not embrace, but we have the opportunity to do so.

And it's not cheap hydrocarbons that benefit the poor.

Cheap hydrocarbons benefit rich industrialists wherever they build the big power plant-- - We're agreeing on cleaning up the air for poor people.

- Got to do that.

- They have to breathe.

- Yep.

- Let me ask you this question.

You've agreed on some things, but some really different views of how that world might play out, which can be confusing to the listener.

So I'm gonna ask, first, I'll ask you, Robert, and come back.

Where do you agree with Dan?

And how would you parse the differences?

- We're both in agreement on nuclear broadly.

I'm not as bullish on fusion because I see the obstacles there both on, you know, material science side and the rest of it that it still has to scale, right?

The supply chain there is going to be strained.

So I see the growth in fission rather than fusion.

We agree on solar, we agree on the growth of solar rather, we disagree on the scale of it, but we fundamentally disagree on the role of hydrocarbons.

The reality is that while wind and solar have grown, alternative energy has grown, they have not supplanted hydrocarbons really anywhere in the world.

They've added to global primary energy, but not, in a large way, displaced hydrocarbon.

So I think we completely disagree.

Hydrocarbons are here to stay.

They're not going away because they provide the scale of the energy the world demands at prices that consumers can afford.

- Coming back, where do you agree?

And then... - Right, so I think Robert summarized it well.

I mean, we do agree on technology.

I think I'm more bullish on innovation in these areas.

Clean energy is not gonna be in short supply if we push this process forward.

- Look, I've really enjoyed this visit.

What would you like our viewers to take away, Dan?

- So to me, climate change has gotta be central to our thinking, and right now it's peripheral and that it affects everyone.

And if you don't think about climate change, you are denying a future to your children and your grandchildren.

Clean energy is far from perfect, but it's a way to get there and we could make it ubiquitous.

We're already seeing it in a few isolated places, but we've gotta make it a justice-first economy, not a justice-third or fourth economy.

[Scott] Great, thank you.

Robert?

- I'd say, you know, what is my core when I look at energy and power?

Affordable, reliable, and resilient, in that order.

Expensive energy is the enemy of the poor, full stop.

So what do I want to, as we look at the future, I want to see a more rapid build out of nuclear power.

We're going to see that, it is happening now.

It's going to happen.

And solar and wind are gonna grow, batteries are gonna grow, but the energy sprawl from solar and wind, they may be renewable, but they are not green.

- Well, I appreciate the dialogue and really want to thank you both for taking the time to be with us.

I've certainly learned a lot and I know our listeners will too.

So, Scott Tinker, "Energy Switch."

Dan, thanks for being here.

- Thank you so much.

It was really a pleasure.

- Robert, thank you.

- Yeah, thanks a lot.

[Scott] My guests have very different energy philosophies.

Robert's priorities are affordable, reliable, resilient energy.

Dan prioritizes climate and justice.

Still, they agreed in varying degrees on many things.

Dan thinks solar could grow to 1/3 of global primary energy by 2070.

Robert thought 10% was more realistic.

They both see more nuclear, but different types.

Robert predicts more fission reactors, especially small modular reactors or SMRs.

Dan believes fusion reactors will replace fission, also reaching 1/3 of total energy.

Robert's Renewables Rejections Database tracks hundreds of solar and wind projects that communities have stopped.

Dan countered that hundreds more have been approved and built, but agrees that poorly designed projects are problematic.

So success or failure?

Solar, they agree is a success and will continue to be, but again, they vary on degree.

On wind overall, they're less enthusiastic.

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