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.

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.

Ain't that neat! Do they just happen to be the biggest coalie bois too?

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.

It's a better measure because western countries outsource manufacturing and associated pollutions to other countries and then pretend to be green.

And China is continuing to increase market share on goods like electronics and vehicles, by choice.

The USA has the highest GDP in the world and has a CO2 per GDP of 0.26 to Chinas 0.44. Are you saying China is just pretending to be green and the USA is a beacon of hope for the environment? Rhetorical Question, Farley.

You're comparing GDPs in dollars, not PPP. Your calculation is invalid because of that. Since cost of life in China is several times lower than in the USA, pure GDP metrics in dollars are a bad comparison unless you convert them to purchase power parity (PPP), which gives a much more comparable metric in terms of amounts of goods/services manufactured and traded than straight GDP. Run the calculation again using PPP adjusted GDP and tell me your findings.

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.

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.

If you trade too much EV energy during night, then you can't drive during the day. And again, EVs capacity is not reliable at all. As per green H2, please show me a production and a storage capable of providing energy to a city. Or at least a real project that's building it. Storing H2 is a big problem, like a huge one. If nothing else, Hindenburg tells a story. The fact that energy loss is at more than 50% when producing green H2 is a minor problem compared to storage.

I am not comparing them with USD, the user who brought up GDP did because their source specifies it.

You need H2 only after solar + EVs provides more than 24 hours of needed energy in an area. Although H2 does save on transmission costs for medium to long distance. One of the remarkable aspects of BYD Dolphin, now under $9000 for 32kwh battery is that the battery value alone is $260/kwh capacity, and if you never drove it, but sold electricity 2.6c/kwh higher at night than you pay at day, then you pay for the car in its entirety. Just batteries can be sold under $100/kwh in China, and you could make 200% ROI from 3c/kwh price differential. EVs and batteries can be paid by private sector instead of utility investment markup model.

H2 technologies are advancing, including storage and pipes. Electrical transmission is more than 10x more expensive than transmitting gas/H2, and saves money on that end relative to efficiency loss. Surplus solar with input cost at 2c/kwh or less achieves under $2/kg H2 target which is equivalent driving distance to $1/gallon gasoline, and 10c/kwh electric only value delivered energy, and 6c/kwh combined heat and electricity value.

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.

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.

V2L and V2H are desirable features worth paying for. Grid sharing is not rocket appliances. In other thread, I showed how a 2nd EV that is barely used can pay for itself, but some static batteries are cheaper. 10kwh can power 2-5 homes overnight. Apartment units don't individually pay for exterior flood lighting. Mid to higher end cars have 50-100kwh battery packs. As an overall society, 80%+ of cars are parked somewhere at any time. The point of powering one house, applies to sharing for 1m houses.

But in Europe they also burn coal, no? Or burning gasoline, natural gas, trash, anything.

I'm with you on solar. We literally have a fusion reactor at the core of our solar system, so there's no point in having ones on earth. And the more we use solar, the more it'll be improved through research.

There's no argument for any carbon based fuels

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...

What's the point of comparing coal if not for CO2? Most other forms of pollution from coal are local, not global, the international debate here is on climate change, a western-world inhabitant has no right to say what China should be doing with the local pollution. The discussion on coal is started because of its horrendous climate change potential, which comes exclusively from its cumulative CO2 emissions.

But if you want to compare coal numbers, I ran the calculations using this source for US production and this source for China production. Downloading the CSVs from both sources, I get that the US has produced 85643270043 short tons of coal, which at 21GJ of energy per short ton amount to 496731 TWh, whereas China has extracted 617787 TWh, i.e. a bit below 25% more than the USA. Since China has 1411 mn inhabitants and the US has 340 mn inhabitants, i.e. China has 415% the population of the USA, China has along its existence as a country extracted about 1/3 as much coal per inhabitant than the USA.

So yeah, China would have to literally consume twice as much coal as it's already consumed to reach US values of per-capita historical cumulative coal consumption.

Now what will you come up with? Suddenly coal numbers don't matter anymore?

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.