Casual readers of the news get misled by the claimed advances of wind and solar electricity generation. Indeed, these renewable sources have been advancing steadily and impressively: in 1992 they supplied only 0.5 percent of the world’s electricity, and by 2017 they contributed 4.5 percent. But this means that, during those 25 years, more decarbonization of electricity generation was due to expanded hydroelectricity generation than to combined solar and wind installations. And because only about 27 percent of the world’s final energy consumption is electricity, these advances translate to a
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