The energy system has investment cycles counted in decades.
Looking at TWh of renewables added each year we will have grids entirely dominated by them in 10-15 years. That is lightning speed for the energy system, and we’re still speeding up.
But people still want results immediately. Which is the explanation I've seen for why nuclear isn't as big. Takes multiple times longer for a nuclear plant to come online vs coal. So some aspects are decades, others are one politician term.
This delay in nuclear means that, by now, nuclear is no longer a solution. Had we started with nuclear somewhere in the first decade of this millennium, then it would have been a good solution to climate change, and we would be in a better position.
But in our current position, nuclear is too slow, and luckily we have alternatives in wind and especially solar. Where the main advantage of solar is how quickly it’s scaling. Notably, the slowness in building nuclear also limits how fast you can improve the process of building nuclear. Whereas solar is so quick to build you can learn lessons and try innovation much faster.
Solar generation capacity is growing by 30+% a year with the cheaper grid batteries and the current world political situation the growth might even accelerate. Solar will get ahead of Natural gas by end of 2028 I predict as the next 2 years there will be huge move to renewables in Asia from gas and oil.
Coal: 10858 TWh
Natural Gas: 6822 TWh
Hydro: 4470 TWh
Nuclear: 2859 TWh
Wind: 2723 TWh
Solar: 2653 TWh
Decent growth, but still a long way to go.