Image by Nuno Marques.
A dozen nations of the world and two US states have officially entered Solartopia.
They all now generate more electricity with renewable sources than they consume.
Coming from Stanford University’s world-renowned engineering professor, Dr. Mark Jacobson, the numbers reflect a global transition away from fossil fuels and nuclear power, toward wind, water and solar (WWS) sources. They are increasingly backed by massive leaps in battery backup while prices drop—all amidst an epic shift from lithium to sodium batteries.
According to Jacobson, Laos (population: 7.87 million) now uses WWS in 257% of the electricity it consumes. It exports the rest.
Jacobson says further that Paraguay (population: 7 m) generates by WWS 152% of the electricity it consumes. The Central African Republic (pop: 5.5 m) uses WWS to generate 140% of the electricity it uses; Tajikistan (pop: 10.8 m) generates 121%; Norway (5.6 m) 115%; Ethiopia (115 m) 108%; Costa Rica (5.2 m) 104%; Zambia (22 m) 103%; Lesotho (2.4 m) 100.2%.
Jacobson says Albania, Bhutan, Nepal and Iceland all use renewables to generate a 100% equivalent of the electricity they produce.
In the U.S., South Dakota and Montana also produce substantially more electricity with WWS than they consume.
Despite the Trump regime’s attack on renewables, for at least a few hours most days, California entirely fills its grid with electricity generated by solar panels in the Central Valley. In Texas and Iowa, wind-generated electricity fills parts of the western grid through numerous winter nights, arriving “too cheap to meter” for eligible consumers, who power their computers, charge their pickups and do their laundry for free.
Worldwide, 80% of new electric generating capacity now comes from Solartopian sources. China dominates more than half the global market, with its 1.4 billion people now getting 35% of their electricity from renewables. Germany (84 m) has shut all its nuclear power plants and now gets nearly half its electricity from renewables. The U.S. (347m) gets about a quarter of its electricity from WWS. Less than 20% comes from nuclear, less than even that from Trump’s beloved coal. WWS is expected to soon pass methane gas.
The percentage of electricity produced by photovoltaics is poised to soar further as various states (starting with Utah as of 2026) approve “balcony solar” laws allowing homeowners and apartment renters to deploy “behind the meter” PV panels without special permits. Sales are likely to reach into the millions.
Since the 1990s, just two new large nuclear power plants (Vogtle 3 and 4 in Georgia) have opened in the U.S. They opened years late, massively over budget, forever unable to compete with renewables in cost, safety, reliability or job creation.
No large new reactors are now under construction or are permitted to build in the U.S.
Heavily hyped Small Modular Reactors can’t substantially produce electricity until deep in the 2030s, if at all. Already soaring in projected cost and delays, SMR cancellations have begun to mount far in advance of tangible construction.
With the U.S. Supreme Court’s Slaughter decision, Donald Trump now personally controls all health and safety regulation at all nuclear power plants in the U.S. Through his Truth Social’s $6 billion merger with TAE, a California-based fusion company, Trump now partly owns the nuclear industry he regulates. The obvious conflict of interest awaits court action.
Meanwhile, Canada and Mexico have begun producing electric vehicles, in some cases with Chinese partnership.
Worldwide, the European, African, Asian, South American and Australian markets are at China’s mercy. Some 93% of the new cars being bought in Norway are electric. The rest of Europe is lining up.
China’s BYD has soared past Tesla with sodium-ion batteries that can run for 900+ miles on a single charge delivered in less than 20 minutes. Selling prices have fallen below $25,000 for cars that are significantly more safe and solid.
China’s low labor costs come with robots. Despite Trump’s tariffs, China’s EV tsunami is blowing what’s left of the US auto industry out of the global market.
Likewise, wind, PV, hydro, geothermal, battery, and other Solartopian technologies are now cheaper, faster to build, cleaner, safer, more reliable, and more abundant than our own fossil/nuke electric supply, now being rendered obsolete and uncompetitive.
Does that mean the US industrial economy as a whole is inevitably doomed?
That probably depends on how much longer Trump’s lethal corruption dominates here… and where it leaves us in the face of a rapidly rising Solartopian tide.
