Last year China generated almost 3 times as much solar power as the EU did, and it's close to overtaking all OECD countries put together (whose combined population is 1.38 billion people)
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China also continues to increase coal generation by more than renewables.
I don't believe this:
China | Energy Trends | Ember
Explore the latest data on China’s energy transition. How clean is China's electricity? How much renewable electricity does China generate?
Ember (ember-energy.org)
In 2024, China approved 66.7GW of new coal-fired capacity, started construction on 94.5GW of coal power projects
Even if you add these 2 together and pretend they were finished the same year it's not even close to:
China’s renewable energy sector made remarkable progress in 2024, adding 356 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar capacity
China’s Energy Production: Coal and Renewables Locked in Competition Amid Clean Energy Boom
China’s energy production strategy in 2024 has been marked by both an unprecedented surge in renewable energy and a persistent reliance on coal, according to a new analysis by two think tanks, the Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).
The Asia Live (theasialive.com)
They have missed every single renewable target and goal they’re set.
I don't believe this is true either unless you are referring to some other targets?
In 2020, China set a goal to install at least 1,200 gigawatts (GW) of solar and wind power by 2030. By the end of 2024, China had already surpassed this target, reaching this milestone 6 years ahead of schedule. This was made possible by aggressive investments, government policies, and a surge in solar and wind installations.
China’s solar capacity grew by an incredible 45.2% in 2024, adding 277 GW. Wind capacity also saw a strong increase of 18%, with an additional 80 GW installed. Overall, total power generation capacity rose by 14.6% in 2024, driven mainly by renewables.
China’s Renewable Energy Boom: A Record-Breaking Shift or Still Chained to Coal?
China has surpassed its 2030 renewable energy goal six years early, leading global clean energy growth. But coal reliance remains a challenge.
Carbon Credits (carboncredits.com)
China is only %27 renewables while the EU is 47%.
Don't worry, just like everything else I'm sure that will flip in the future
Europe has plenty of money apparently to suddenly:
NATO leaders on Wednesday confirmed their commitment to more than double defence spending by 2035 banding words like "crucial", "momentous" and "quantum leap"
Defence up to 5% GDP, Ukraine, Russia: Key takeaways from NATO summit
The summit ended with a commitment to spend 5% of GDP on defence - more than double the current target of 2%.
euronews (www.euronews.com)
Just why does it take an emergency to make some proper progress:
Global energy storage owner-operator BW ESS and Spanish energy storage developer Ibersun say a new joint venture is intended to build eight four-hour battery projects across the country, with a combined capacity of 2.2 GW, 8.8 GWh.
“No time to waste:” Huge big battery plans unveiled for Spain as accusations traded over blackout
Two battery storage companies unveil plans for eight big projects in Spain, as the government, regulator and power companies trade accusations over cause of blackout.
RenewEconomy (reneweconomy.com.au)
Where will the batteries be made I wonder?
On top of this energy prices in the EU are ridiculous and for some reason they still can't get off the gas, which leads to an unreal point of France giving more money to Russia for gas than in aid to Ukraine, so they have high energy prices and they're funding Russia's invasion of Ukraine and their companies and manufacturing are leaving them... to go to China...
Eurozone business activity almost flat again in June - Aussie Zone
> “The eurozone economy is struggling to gain momentum. For six months now, growth has been minimal, with activity in the service sector stagnating and manufacturing output rising only moderately,” Cyrus de la Rubia, chief economist at Hamburg Commercial Bank. >“In Germany, there are signs of a cautious improvement in the situation, but France continues to drag its feet”. >The expansion in the 20-country currency area was centred on the manufacturing sector, where production increased for the fourth successive month, according to the survey.
(aussie.zone)
But I appreciate your scepticism (I gave your post an upvote because China does sometimes get a little bit too much credit), they are the worlds top producer of CO2 by FAR but I do want to address
Greenwashing
This is something I've wanted for a while:
It requires EU importers to pay a levy corresponding to the embedded carbon emissions in 303 emission-intensive products
I've long disliked that places like the EU and the rest of the west can export their dirty manufacturing over to China where companies take advantage of lax or no environmental regulations, it's a false economy and makes the west look a whole lot greener and cleaner than it would if we were manufacturing what we used back at home
‘China has Apple by the balls’: How the rising superpower captured the tech giant
‘China has Apple by the balls’: How the rising superpower captured the tech giant
Apple Inc reaped staggering profits by outsourcing its manufacturing – but its “epic” technology transfer has consequences, says one long-time observer.
The Sydney Morning Herald (www.smh.com.au)
edit: boy I sure do love to procrastinate and talk about energy and co2 instead of studying
China approved 66.7GW of new coal-fired capacity, started construction on 94.5GW of coal power projects
New power plants don't mean using those power plants. Resilience/backup power. Use of coal for electricity has declined despite new coal plants.
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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.orgSource: https://bsky.app/profile/nathanielbullard.com/post/3lsbbsg6ohk2j
They also expanded coal power, roads, and removed their population limiting policies, though. They produce about 3 times as much CO2 per person as India, Indonesia, and many South American nations, likely many nations in Africa as well but theres a lot of missing data.
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They‘ll keep building more coal power plants in the global south and export coal. There‘s a lot of money to be made.
They're also actually still building more coal power in mainland China.
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The question is simple. If you have installed solar power of 40% your country peak use, how much nuclear power you need - assuming simplified you have only these two power sources.
In a market or effincient economy, where peak occurs mid hot summer day, 100% solar dominated renewables makes sense. In Spring and fall, EVs can absorb daily oversupply and profit from trading back at night. Winter is when solar can fail to meet heating and electricity needs, and so either backup energy sources or having much more than 100% peak demand in order to make green H2 that can be exported to where it gets cold is needed.
0 new nuclear is best amount of nuclear for any economy.
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What batteries are you referring to? Do you realize the amount of energy those batteries would have to store? Perhaps somewhen in the not so near future, but today? Go ahead and show me a western city able to store a couple of days worth of energy. More realistically a week.
OP sepcifically mentioned EVs. This sector is deflationary even in US, where better value/performance cars cost less every year. More dramatic deflation in less corrupt countries. Australia home solar costs under 1/3rd of US due to different politico-social corruption levels.
EVs and home solar are a great match that permits going offgrid at substantially lower cost if an EV is parked at home during day. That same dynamic allows a society/community to power itself through solar+batteries, and EVs parked at work. It's not a question of look at our corrupt obstructionist oligarchical monopoly state of societies for examples of lack of economic success as proof that it will forever be impossible.
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Yes, of course I've meant it in a positive way - a way to replace coal and gas. But solar is not just positive, they are problematic when you couple them with nuclear for the simple reasons that solar is not reliable and you can't throttle nuclear - they are like big ships, they require a lot of time to steer. Furthermore solar energy low price causes problems for nuclear higher prices. Which wouldn't be a problem if solar was reliable and continuous (long winter nights much?). But it's not, but you still need a reliable energy source. And so on.
The pro solar panel crowd don't understand many of these implications and go with simple "idiotic" and downvotes.The idiot digs deeper, and shows his true colours. Asinine.
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People talk about China's energy use like it's not* their* energy use. They used that power to produce the stupid shit that you bought, dumbass. You're responsible for that energy use, despite it being generated in China.
So you're saying we should stop trading with China?
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What batteries are you referring to? Do you realize the amount of energy those batteries would have to store? Perhaps somewhen in the not so near future, but today? Go ahead and show me a western city able to store a couple of days worth of energy. More realistically a week.
Las Vegas has already achieved 97% storage supply for its needs - a city that barely sleeps at night.
Again, where is your evidence that it is not going to improve across the board, and will all fail?
"It's not all happening right now," is not even close to a convincing answer. If that was the reason to exclude any technology, there'd be none.
And it's an especially ironic answer given that it takes up to 20 years to commission a nuclear power plant. And they are down for scheduled maintenance for up to a month a year, etc.
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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.orgSource: https://bsky.app/profile/nathanielbullard.com/post/3lsbbsg6ohk2j
Amazing how fast you can build stuff when there's safety standards, no environmental regulations, no labour rights and the government can expropriate property without a time consuming legal process!
Though I think a prefer living in a country where I have rights even if it takes a bit longer to build stuff.
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Amazing how fast you can build stuff when there's safety standards, no environmental regulations, no labour rights and the government can expropriate property without a time consuming legal process!
Though I think a prefer living in a country where I have rights even if it takes a bit longer to build stuff.
We tried getting rid of environmental regulations, safety standards, labour rights, etc. in America and I'm still waiting for when stuff gets built faster... At least the government can't expropriate property! oh wait... Well at least we still have our rights? oh wait...
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We tried getting rid of environmental regulations, safety standards, labour rights, etc. in America and I'm still waiting for when stuff gets built faster... At least the government can't expropriate property! oh wait... Well at least we still have our rights? oh wait...
I think you call it eminent domain in the US. But I think it can still be challenged in court, but wait a couple months.
Yes, the US is becoming China. You put a guy into power that admires Xi Jinping for the same reason China made Xi President for life: wanted a strongman to run the economy and protect you from evil foreigners. And now you're getting corporate socialism, just like China has.
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What batteries are you referring to? Do you realize the amount of energy those batteries would have to store? Perhaps somewhen in the not so near future, but today? Go ahead and show me a western city able to store a couple of days worth of energy. More realistically a week.
It's not perfect so it must be bad! Hot take. Fuck off with your green energy negging. You're a paid assassin or an idiot. Doesn't really matter which. Good day
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They also expanded coal power, roads, and removed their population limiting policies, though. They produce about 3 times as much CO2 per person as India, Indonesia, and many South American nations, likely many nations in Africa as well but theres a lot of missing data.
Pollution per GDP is a better measure.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-intensity
Pollution per GNP would be even better but I can’t find it.Individuals don’t pollution much, it’s mostly industry. Really poor countries often don’t pollution much because they can’t afford to. Sometimes they pollute prodigiously because the only thing they can afford to do is destructive resource extraction. Rich countries can often outsource their pollution to poorer countries.
China has been making mind boggling investments in renewables. They have been expanding all their energy sources but their renewables have the lions share of the growth.
They’ve been building roads and all kinds of infrastructure. That’s what the BRI is all about, even if they’re being a bit quieter about saying the phrase. They like to build their long haul roads on elevated columns; not only because it’s less disruptive to wildlife but because it lets them use giant road laying robots to place prefab highway segments.
They dropped the one-child policy a while back but they’re having some trouble getting people to have more babies. That said, there’s some research that suggests that rural populations around the world are severely undercounted, so they may have a bunch more subsistence farmers than they, or anyone else, realizes.
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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.orgSource: https://bsky.app/profile/nathanielbullard.com/post/3lsbbsg6ohk2j
This has been going on for years and will continue.
China really really really needs a robust and diverse energy infrastructure.
Industry needs huge amounts of energy. AI needs huge amounts of energy. The military needs huge amounts of energy.Coal is unreliable and dirty. Oil can be blocked at the Straight of Malacca and a few pipelines.
China is also the world’s factory. They own the entire logistics chain for producing renewable generators; from raw materials to final assembly. They have all the infrastructure to not only build solar panels and wind turbines at scale, they’ve scaled up building the machines that build them.
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Pollution per GDP is a better measure.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-intensity
Pollution per GNP would be even better but I can’t find it.Individuals don’t pollution much, it’s mostly industry. Really poor countries often don’t pollution much because they can’t afford to. Sometimes they pollute prodigiously because the only thing they can afford to do is destructive resource extraction. Rich countries can often outsource their pollution to poorer countries.
China has been making mind boggling investments in renewables. They have been expanding all their energy sources but their renewables have the lions share of the growth.
They’ve been building roads and all kinds of infrastructure. That’s what the BRI is all about, even if they’re being a bit quieter about saying the phrase. They like to build their long haul roads on elevated columns; not only because it’s less disruptive to wildlife but because it lets them use giant road laying robots to place prefab highway segments.
They dropped the one-child policy a while back but they’re having some trouble getting people to have more babies. That said, there’s some research that suggests that rural populations around the world are severely undercounted, so they may have a bunch more subsistence farmers than they, or anyone else, realizes.
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.
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This has been going on for years and will continue.
China really really really needs a robust and diverse energy infrastructure.
Industry needs huge amounts of energy. AI needs huge amounts of energy. The military needs huge amounts of energy.Coal is unreliable and dirty. Oil can be blocked at the Straight of Malacca and a few pipelines.
China is also the world’s factory. They own the entire logistics chain for producing renewable generators; from raw materials to final assembly. They have all the infrastructure to not only build solar panels and wind turbines at scale, they’ve scaled up building the machines that build them.
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.
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Good for China on that!
To add some perspective, China is about 2 and a quarter times as large as the EU nations, and according to currentresults.com seems to get a bit more sunshine than the EU does. So the difference isn't quite as stark as this post makes it seem.
But still, it's good that China is taking solar power seriously. I didn't realize they were doing that well.
China are the worlds biggest coal producer and consumer, started building like 100GW of coal power plants last year alone, and are increasing their use of coal every single year.
People getting excited about china's massive solar power generation are hilarious. Basically unless china stop using coal, the rest of the world being completely net-zero is irrelevant.
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Amazing how fast you can build stuff when there's safety standards, no environmental regulations, no labour rights and the government can expropriate property without a time consuming legal process!
Though I think a prefer living in a country where I have rights even if it takes a bit longer to build stuff.
To give China credit the solar push was very capitalistic and very well executed. There are so many solar salesmen that will bother you to no end with one offering better deals than another. They come install everything and set up for you and guarantee returns in like 5 years plus mountains of other bonuses (obviously based on location etc.). The environment kinda make you feel stupid for not taking the deal too so you're really pressured which imo is a win. It's basically a free market under a dictatorship for a product in high natural demand.
Though I can't comment on industrial solar panel fields but the consumer part is very well executed and the rest of Asia is like 10 years behind.
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Las Vegas has already achieved 97% storage supply for its needs - a city that barely sleeps at night.
Again, where is your evidence that it is not going to improve across the board, and will all fail?
"It's not all happening right now," is not even close to a convincing answer. If that was the reason to exclude any technology, there'd be none.
And it's an especially ironic answer given that it takes up to 20 years to commission a nuclear power plant. And they are down for scheduled maintenance for up to a month a year, etc.
Las Vegas has already achieved 97% storage supply for its needs - a city that barely sleeps at night.
Hard data is where? And I bet LV heavily relies on hydro and gas powerplants. Solar is a tiny fraction, even though, where is its energy stored?
Again, where is your evidence that it is not going to improve across the board, and will all fail?
Instead of trying to pick a fight, please read what I write: "Perhaps somewhen in the not so near future, but today?"
And it’s an especially ironic answer given that it takes up to 20 years to commission a nuclear power plant. And they are down for scheduled maintenance for up to a month a year, etc.
The difference with nuclear power plants is that we have the technology today. Can you say the same for batteries? Also you'd build a surplus of nuclear energy power plants (or have another backup plan) just for cases like you mention. The maintenance frequency varies, i.e. for a Slovene one is once per 18 months. But that's something you know in advance and one plans for.
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OP sepcifically mentioned EVs. This sector is deflationary even in US, where better value/performance cars cost less every year. More dramatic deflation in less corrupt countries. Australia home solar costs under 1/3rd of US due to different politico-social corruption levels.
EVs and home solar are a great match that permits going offgrid at substantially lower cost if an EV is parked at home during day. That same dynamic allows a society/community to power itself through solar+batteries, and EVs parked at work. It's not a question of look at our corrupt obstructionist oligarchical monopoly state of societies for examples of lack of economic success as proof that it will forever be impossible.
EVs are rare (in the context of total energy consumption, even more so because not so many models offer this feature), limited to houses (what do you do when you live in a flat?) and not a reliable source - "honey, I need to drive fetch some groceries, you won't have energy in meantime". How many houses with only EVs as energy storage are disconnected from grid? I bet the number is next to 0.
OTOH EVs as energy storage can provide buffering to energy grid when properly connected. This feature has its place, but they can't be used for reliable storage.
