Imagine falling off the roof of a 565 foot building.
Imagine falling off the roof of a 208 foot tall building.
Imagine falling off the roof of a 31 foot tall building.
Which fall is most survivable?
Is there really any difference between the 565 foot fall and the 208 foot fall?
The carbon intensity of Poland is 565 gCO₂eq/kWh.
The carbon intensity of hybrid-solar-wind-gas-battery utopia California is 208 gCO₂eq/kWh.
The carbon intensity of nuclear France is 31 gCO₂eq/kWh.
Here in California adding additional wind or solar power to the grid will require the installation of additional energy storage (battery or hydro) which will only raise the price of our electricity further without a proportional decrease in our carbon intensity. Simply dumping excess solar and wind generated electricity whenever supply exceeds demand also increases the price of electricity.
California already has some of the most expensive electricity in the nation. At this point any further reductions to the state's greenhouse gas emissions by renewable energy would be the result of demand destruction and that would be most harmful to lower income people and make additional renewable energy capacity even less attractive.
Or we could increase the demand for electricity by building data centers or other energy intensive industry, keeping our carbon intensity much the same but increasing overall greenhouse gas emissions.
This past year about 23% of California's electricity was generated by fossil fuels, nearly all of that natural gas. Sounds great, doesn't it?
Back to the falling analogy, 208 gCO₂eq/kWh isn't going to save the world but 31 gCO₂eq/kWh nuclear power might make the inevitable collapse of earth's climate as we have known it more survivable.
I like to watch the behavior of California's electric grid at these sites:
https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-CAL-CISO/all/yearly
Whereas many renewable energy enthusiasts see the glass as "half full" and not "half empty" I see a glass full of mud. Even with California's immense renewable energy and storage capacity our electricity is still much dirtier than France's electricity. Adding more renewable energy to our grid isn't going to fix that.
Like it or not, the only energy resource capable of displacing fossil fuels entirely is nuclear power. It usually goes unsaid, for religious reasons I suppose, that nuclear power also makes large scale renewable energy schemes redundant. This may be one of the reasons anti-nuclear activists and renewable energy enthusiasts rarely criticize the filthy natural gas industry. They may also know that their renewable energy schemes are not economically viable without fossil fuels.
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China is building several nuclear power plants. However, in the meantime, they’re essentially deploying renewable power plants faster than the rest of the world combined.
In 2025, 3 GW of new nuclear capacity came online, with China, India and Russia each completing work on a new reactor. However, these additions were offset by the retirement of 3 GW of nuclear capacity, two-thirds of which was in Belgium. In total, global nuclear capacity remained at 420 GW at the end of 2025, with reactors in operation in over 30 countries. There were ten construction starts in 2025 – nine in China and one in Russia – with a total capacity of 12.2 GW. Over the past decade, 94% of nuclear reactors that started construction were of Chinese or Russian design.
The capacity of nuclear reactors under construction is one of the highest levels seen in the last 30 years
Nuclear reactors with a combined capacity of 78 GW are currently under construction in 15 countries. Half of capacity under construction globally is in China, with total installed capacity in the country expected to reach 100 GW by around 2030. Among other emerging market and developing economies, Egypt, India and Türkiye each have around 5 GW under construction. In advanced economies, Japan, Korea and the United Kingdom each have two reactors under construction, while Slovakia has one; their combined capacity is 9.5 GW. Japan continues to restart reactors whose operations had been suspended.
Nearly all nuclear reactors currently under construction are large scale, most with capacities above 1 000 MW. At the same time, China already operates one land-based small modular reactor (SMR), and Russia a marine-based one. There is one 125 MW commercial SMR under construction in China and one with 300 MW of capacity in Russia. Additional SMRs are likely to begin construction in the near term in Canada, Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States.
