It's not about regulation. China has almost the complete photovoltaic production of the world. Essentially all panels installed in the rest of the world are also Chinese. It's about a smart government knowing which technologies to pursue, instead of things like the Spanish "sun tax" of the 2010s that killed whatever solar industry there might have been in the sunniest country in Europe.

Why is Polution per GDP a better measure? I don't care how much they export when they're killing the planet at a faster rate every year with no intentions to stop it. I will praise China and the rest of the world when they reimplement and follow through with plans to ethically lower the world population, such as investment in education especially for women and incentives or fines based on numbers of children.

Coal is unreliable and dirty.

China use absurd amounts of coal and they're not slowing down. They're the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal. They're increasing use of all power generation types - coal, solar, nuclear.

I mean the UK has 6% of its energy over the year come from solar, and 30% from wind, and installations are only accelerating, so this amount of installed solar is far from unrealistic.

Installing storage approximately doubles the LCOE of solar energy, so this is also feasible from a cost point of view as we get rid of dispatchable gas turbines.

Basically if we solve storage, we can get rid of nuclear, but not before.

I am not saying we should get rid of nuclear. I am saying we should keep some nuclear, also once we have got less gas and more storage. Does this resolve some things in this discussion for you?

They were also responsible for 95% of the world's new coal construction (2023). With just 1/5th of the world population.

I'll give them props for solar. They build a lot of it, and thanks to us outsourcing practically everything to China over the last few decades, they build most of our solar as well.

The important metric for the moral debate is cumulative CO2 per capita, because that's the whole reason why we're measuring coal production history, not because we hate coal per se.

I showed you that, even moving to cumulative coal production, China still has 1/3 that of the US per capita, which is the important metric because why the fuck would we compare a country with 1.4bn inhabitants to one with 340mn without taking population size into account.

So yeah, China still has a lot of margin for coal burning until they reach the evil levels of the US/EU, but thankfully they won't because they're the strongest country in renewables, producing essentially 100% of all solar panels in the world.

Pollution per GDP is a bad measure. Mali has a high CO2 intensity, but the GDP per capita is low, so pollution is low. The best measures are emissions per capita in consumption and production terms. China is not a saint in either of those metrics, being rather close to the EU in both of them today.

First of all greenhouse gases not just CO2.

It is also a metric China will not want to use. Per capita annual emissions are already higher in China then in many Western countries. More so UN population forecast shows Chinas population falling much more quickly then that of the West.

It's about energy independence. The CCP doesn't give a fuck about the environment, but not having to bring in energy from out of country is high on any governments priority list.

Coal is unreliable

How? I would've said coal is very reliable, it worked for over a hundred years.

Unreliable may have been a poor choice of words.
You can’t move coal around with pipes or wires. Someone needs to drive trucks full of coal to a power plant.

The pollution from coal tends to have a lot of externalities that drag on the economy. Lost work days, faster equipment degradation, etc.

They use coal but they have practical reasons to want to reduce reliance on coal.

You should be pretty happy with China then. They have a replacement rate just over one. That's lower than the US or Europe.

Last year, China generated 834 terawatt-hours of solar power.

Which is more than the G7 countries generated, and more than the US and EU combined. In fact the only country group that generates more solar power than China is the OECD, all 38 countries of it.

Data:
@ember-energy.org

Source: https://bsky.app/profile/nathanielbullard.com/post/3lsbbsg6ohk2j

I think that you misunderstood his comment. He's not criticizing solar energy, he's calling out China's green washing as they have the same solar production per Capita than Europe but they have way more coal production per Capita than Europe.

A right wing politician would throw a fit about how solar energy is dangerous and make kids trans.

95% of the world’s new coal construction (2023)

China had the largest new coal construction in 2023 but it was far below 95%. I didn’t do all the math but it drops below 50% when you compare it to just the growth of the next three biggest coal producers.

They build most of our solar but we’ve effectively banned it now. They’re not only growing capacity to produce renewables, they’re taking the outputs that were planned for sale here and installing them locally.

This is also such BS the west has outsourced our pollution to China. They manufacture almost everything and we go look at them.

It's a bit hard to believe, but the vast majority of China's manufacturing is consumed in China. They're actually not that export oriented compared to other countries like Germany or Japan, it's just the scale that makes them such an export juggernaut. The flip side of this is that most of the energy use is also actually China's own energy use.

And China's energy use is increasing simply because its people are getting richer and consuming more. Based on this, I don't think China is the main concern. There are lots more developing countries that will likewise use more energy as they develop. China's green transition seems to be going full tilt, but I'm not sure those other countries can transition as quickly.

The US may have effectively banned it, but everybody else is buying loads of it.

As far as I can tell it's operating at capacity. China's installing it for the same reason everyone else is. It's cheap as chips. Power stations take a lot of planning and management, while you can take a few acres of fields and effectively turn it into a money generator with no moving parts.

I'd have got some myself, but my house faced the wrong way to get in on the free solar panels boom, and the up front costs mean it won't pay itself back for like 20 years. I was tempted once the prices went through the roof when Russia invaded Ukraine, but I moved to a tariff priced every 30 minutes or so and the benefits vanished. I might as well let a local farmer build it all instead.

Trucks? If you move coal for a power plant using trucks you're going to need a lot of trucks, you use trains or ships instead, or just build the power plant next to the mine and use conveyor belts.

They're attempting to raise the replacement rate to maintain their still massive population. It is problematic.