I think the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) furnishes a clear case of this. In the 1960s, nuclear power was on a growth trajectory to provide roughly 100% of today’s world electricity usage. Instead, it plateaued at about 10%. The proximal cause is that nuclear power plant construction became slow and expensive, which made nuclear energy expensive, which mostly priced it out of the market. The cause of those cost increases is controversial, but in my opinion, and that of many other commenters, it was primarily driven by a turbulent and rapidly escalating regulatory environment around the late ’60s and early ’70s.
I do not follow you here. The paper you link to (in page 14) compares the energy generated by fuel types in three scenarios: what actually happened, and two contrefactual scenarios regarding how nuclear could have grown, one “linear” and one “accelerating”.
In the actual scenario, nuclear indeed plateaued at about 10%. But in the “linear”, it only reaches 25%, and even in the “accelerating”, it only reaches about 75% of total capacity.
Did you take the most favorable scenario, and make it look significantly shinier, for good measure?
Looking at the “accelerating projection of 1960–1976” data points here, it reaches almost 3 TW by the mid-2010s:
According to Our World in Data’s energy data explorer, world electricity generation in 2021 was 27,812.74 TWh, which is 3.17 TW (using 1W = 8,766 Wh/year).
Comparing almost 3TW at about 2015 (just eyeballing the chart) to 3.17 TW in 2021, I say those are roughly equal. I did not make anything “significantly shinier”, or at least I did not intend to.
I do not follow you here. The paper you link to (in page 14) compares the energy generated by fuel types in three scenarios: what actually happened, and two contrefactual scenarios regarding how nuclear could have grown, one “linear” and one “accelerating”.
In the actual scenario, nuclear indeed plateaued at about 10%. But in the “linear”, it only reaches 25%, and even in the “accelerating”, it only reaches about 75% of total capacity.
Did you take the most favorable scenario, and make it look significantly shinier, for good measure?
Looking at the “accelerating projection of 1960–1976” data points here, it reaches almost 3 TW by the mid-2010s:
According to Our World in Data’s energy data explorer, world electricity generation in 2021 was 27,812.74 TWh, which is 3.17 TW (using 1W = 8,766 Wh/year).
Comparing almost 3TW at about 2015 (just eyeballing the chart) to 3.17 TW in 2021, I say those are roughly equal. I did not make anything “significantly shinier”, or at least I did not intend to.
Crystal-clear, thank you!