Hacker News Reader

Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Big pie chart is labelled "The share of each source that was used to meet changes in energy demand vs. 2024". What does that mean?

View on HN

My guess. Total energy consumption in 2024 was x. Total energy consumption in 2025 was x + y. For example, solar PV was installed and led to increased electricity consumption. Or more oil was extracted and used to drive cars around more.

They broke down y into all these different energy sources and made a pie chart. So roughly 25% of y was solar PV.

Correct.

Isn't it still flawed? If a coal plant gets switched off, that needs to be replaced but this graph excludes it. Unless you do it properly rata, but then the graph is essentially showing all generating capacity that's been added?

This isn't capacity.

The parent used the example of 2024s usage being X and 2025s being x+y.

So this shows us what y is.

But the precise mix that supplied X no longer exists, due to closures, so something must have back filled that x. So is that pro rata from these figures?

Yes I understand this isn't strictly capacity, but in practical terms, wind turbines and solar panels have been installed to allow this increase.

I'm still confused by this chart. Nuclear is shown to be a bit more than half the addition of wind power but if you look at the bar chart for electricity, it's suddenly only a small fraction. How does that fit together?

This chart is ultra-processed data. It's a one-year delta. That's the problem. The usual presentation for this data looks like this.[1]

[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65445

Reply on news.ycombinator.com