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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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
3 times as much solar as the EU.
Has 3 times the population.
They are using 50% of the world's coal though, so maybe let's not start tugging each other off just yet.
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3 times as much solar as the EU.
Has 3 times the population.
They are using 50% of the world's coal though, so maybe let's not start tugging each other off just yet.
Last year China installed more solar than the rest of the world combined, but they have less than 1/5th of the worldpopulation
There are lot's of things you can criticize China about, their commitment to renewable energy isn't one of them.
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How much coal has China cumulatively used in its history compared to the US or Europe? Spoiler alert: much less. Almost as if countries in the process of developing used coal for a reason...
Not so sure about that. China overtook the EU in 1987 in coal consumption, but today it is at 25,000TWh or so. In 1965 the current EU countries were at 4,500TWh. It certainly is not much less, if China has not overtaken the EU by cumulative coal consumption.
Coal consumption
Coal consumption by country or region, measured in terawatt-hours (TWh).
Our World in Data (ourworldindata.org)
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True, but the positive dynamics is there.
The country needs a lot of energy, and it does good job making a lot of it renewable/hydro. The coal industry growth is slowing down, while solar roars up
5 years ago, they had one-third of the current solar capacity.
the coal industry growth is slowing down
Wow I hope that really really recently changed. Last I checked China was one of the world's worst polluters, and they reached a 10 year high last year.
China’s construction of new coal-power plants ‘reached 10-year high’ in 2024 - Carbon Brief
A “resurgence” in construction of new coal-fired power plants in China is “undermining the country’s...
Carbon Brief (www.carbonbrief.org)
Please explain how being the #1 coal guy is a "positive dynamic".
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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.
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.
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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.
Fully propagandized idiot who will follow you around commenting on all your posts if you say a single nice thing about China btw ^
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True, but the positive dynamics is there.
The country needs a lot of energy, and it does good job making a lot of it renewable/hydro. The coal industry growth is slowing down, while solar roars up
5 years ago, they had one-third of the current solar capacity.
Explain how a 10 year high in Coal is a "positive dynamic" to anyone who isn't wearing rose-tinted goggles that were made in China.
Your full comment is Rose-Tinted 'See how marginally less shitty China is in X area now compared to Y years ago. '
Fuckin sad.
China’s construction of new coal-power plants ‘reached 10-year high’ in 2024 - Carbon Brief
A “resurgence” in construction of new coal-fired power plants in China is “undermining the country’s...
Carbon Brief (www.carbonbrief.org)
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Last year China installed more solar than the rest of the world combined, but they have less than 1/5th of the worldpopulation
There are lot's of things you can criticize China about, their commitment to renewable energy isn't one of them.
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.
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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.
Why is Polution per GDP a better measure?
They wanted a measure that makes China look better.
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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.
Not really enough information. I will assume that by "installed solar power" you mean peak generation when the sun is shining, and that instead of peak use, you mean 40% of average use, i.e. let's suppose that at an average moment the country consumes 100GW and, if the sun is shining, generates 40GW from solar.
Assume further the sun is up for half the year and the sky is clear for half the year, meaning the total amount of your yearly electricity you can generate with solar is 10% assuming typical weather. Then you would be able to reliably power the country with a combination of nuclear totalling 90% of average use (90GW) and enough storage that you can ride out cloudy periods.
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Not so sure about that. China overtook the EU in 1987 in coal consumption, but today it is at 25,000TWh or so. In 1965 the current EU countries were at 4,500TWh. It certainly is not much less, if China has not overtaken the EU by cumulative coal consumption.
Coal consumption
Coal consumption by country or region, measured in terawatt-hours (TWh).
Our World in Data (ourworldindata.org)
If you "aren't sure" about that, then why the hell are you trying to discuss it making guesses instead of informing yourself?
China, a country with 4-5 times the US population, has half the cumulative historic emissions. And yet you have the fucking nerve to blame china for coal. The US and the EU get to pollute the fucking Earth for 2 centuries, and China does a renewable revolution in its 40 years since industrializing and you cry about how they still have plans for coal.
Just, seriously, stop arguing from ignorance. If you do not know about cumulative emissions, don't make "Oh I'm not so sure about that because look at the trends for the past 60 years", as if the US and EU hadn't been emitting fossil CO2 since the fucking late 18th century.
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Good on them. The earlier they can shut down those coal plants, the better.
They are going to keep those coal plants as back up but the amount they use then is decreasing.
At the same time they are rapidly moving transport into electricity and they are growing their electrical demand.
This year should be the tipping point where coal and oil usage drops. Capacity and number of coal is meaningless.
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to be fair, they have about 3x the population too. but nonetheless good to see that they are moving fast. dictatorship works faster when it comes to regulation ¯_(ツ)_/¯
The dictatorship is fast is a lure, it's actually not useful, as they run in the direction of the dictator but usually doesn't adjust or stop in time. Sometimes you see something good coming out if it, but you shouldn't forget all the bad things they do too.
That said, I hope we'll have enough solar for everyone in a decade or so!
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Not really enough information. I will assume that by "installed solar power" you mean peak generation when the sun is shining, and that instead of peak use, you mean 40% of average use, i.e. let's suppose that at an average moment the country consumes 100GW and, if the sun is shining, generates 40GW from solar.
Assume further the sun is up for half the year and the sky is clear for half the year, meaning the total amount of your yearly electricity you can generate with solar is 10% assuming typical weather. Then you would be able to reliably power the country with a combination of nuclear totalling 90% of average use (90GW) and enough storage that you can ride out cloudy periods.
Yes, something like that. Now, while you can theoretically install that many solar panels, the kicker is that you don't have nowhere enough storage. And even if you had that 10%, you could increase solar all you want, but the nuclear would be still running at 90MW because of the storage, or better, the lack of it. And because you would have a surplus of cheap solar power energy during the day - assuming more solar panels than 10%, it would erode more expensive nuclear one to become even more expensive.
Basically if we solve storage, we can get rid of nuclear, but not before. -
3 times as much solar as the EU.
Has 3 times the population.
They are using 50% of the world's coal though, so maybe let's not start tugging each other off just yet.
You sound like all the right-wing politicians the world over who don't want to implement zero carbon solutions because "China still burn coal".
We're on a sinking ship and you're complaining that you don't like the colour of the life raft.
If China was the only country in the world that burned coal, but they exclusively burned coal, and everybody else was on solar panels the world would still be an infinitely better place and it is right now. Not doing something just because other people also aren't doing it just ensures that nobody does anything.
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the coal industry growth is slowing down
Wow I hope that really really recently changed. Last I checked China was one of the world's worst polluters, and they reached a 10 year high last year.
China’s construction of new coal-power plants ‘reached 10-year high’ in 2024 - Carbon Brief
A “resurgence” in construction of new coal-fired power plants in China is “undermining the country’s...
Carbon Brief (www.carbonbrief.org)
Please explain how being the #1 coal guy is a "positive dynamic".
Huh, I was under the impression the total coal capacity is still growing, not the speed at which new coal plants are built. Thanks for that piece!
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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
How? I would've said coal is very reliable, it worked for over a hundred years.
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If you "aren't sure" about that, then why the hell are you trying to discuss it making guesses instead of informing yourself?
China, a country with 4-5 times the US population, has half the cumulative historic emissions. And yet you have the fucking nerve to blame china for coal. The US and the EU get to pollute the fucking Earth for 2 centuries, and China does a renewable revolution in its 40 years since industrializing and you cry about how they still have plans for coal.
Just, seriously, stop arguing from ignorance. If you do not know about cumulative emissions, don't make "Oh I'm not so sure about that because look at the trends for the past 60 years", as if the US and EU hadn't been emitting fossil CO2 since the fucking late 18th century.
Maybe that is because I have the elementary school education necessary to understand that burning coal and gas also causes emissions. So when I am looking at cummulative coal consumption, I have the very basic common sense to not look at CO2.
EDIT: Btw 2/3 of EU emissions happened in the last 60 years. So this very likely shows most of the EU coal consumption. Also if you happen to have actual coal numbers and want to share them, I am happy to have a look at them. But please no CO2 = coal bs.
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Ain't that neat! Do they just happen to be the biggest coalie bois too?
This is also such BS the west has outsourced our pollution to China. They manufacture almost everything and we go look at them.
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You sound like all the right-wing politicians the world over who don't want to implement zero carbon solutions because "China still burn coal".
We're on a sinking ship and you're complaining that you don't like the colour of the life raft.
If China was the only country in the world that burned coal, but they exclusively burned coal, and everybody else was on solar panels the world would still be an infinitely better place and it is right now. Not doing something just because other people also aren't doing it just ensures that nobody does anything.
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.
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