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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is legit true IDK why you’re getting downvoted. Just because it doesn’t show on US energy usage, every time you buy stupid shit you don’t need like an automatic corn dog maker or a taco holder shaped like a sombrero that holds a shot glass in the middle, that has a real cost in terms of CO2 and that is done in China.
i think I need an automatic corn dog maker and a taco holder shaped like a sombrero that holds a shot glass in the middle
I immediately went looking on temu :)
I don’t the poster meant to happen!
So you’re saying we should stop trading with China?
Nice I love seeing China Greenwashing get reposted. Remember that China is 3x the size of the EU so them having 3x the solar power is a stupid comparison. China also continues to increase coal generation by more than renewables. China is only %27 renewables while the EU is 47%. China is 17% of the world and almost 40% of the emissions.
OECD countries are actually working on emission reduction instead of china which continue to increase emissions with absolute no signs of stopping. They have missed every single renewable target and goal they’re set. But dont worry im sure they will stop building more coal plants in 2030, im sure it wont be to late by then.
China also continues to increase coal generation by more than renewables.
I don’t believe this:
https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/china/
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
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 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”
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.
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…
https://aussie.zone/comment/17361559
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
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.
While everyone else is paying the costs that come with environmental regulation china is exploiting it and getting celebrated for it. Its insane what a few dollars can do to change peoples minds on a topic.
tbh I’m surprised that you even got upvotes, didn’t went that well for me with a similar answer on another post…
Yeah the .ml must have missed this thread.
It is strategic necessity for China for energy security and for their own environment. Their predominant source of electricity has been coal which they have abundant of but is polluting the air they breathe. Does anyone recall the issues they had at Beijing Olympics? They have insufficient sources of oil and gas domestically. Alternative energy sources are their best domestic source of energy.
Good on them. The earlier they can shut down those coal plants, the better.
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.
Yep, solar is awesome when you have coal and gas power plants, not so much when you have nuclear ones.
???
How idiotic.
Do explain, I’m all ears.
No. I type less.
I think they don’t get that your comment is fighting the same fight by being pro solar & anti coal/gas.
Unless you meant keeping the coal and gas plants, which really should be turned off and ended at this point. They’re just sources of lung cancer & emissions
No. We get exactly what his comment is about.
If he was in the renewables camp, there would be no point, in this discussion over solar, to bring up nuclear. It’s absolutely unrelated.
What he’s doing is pushing the thought into people’s heads that nuclear is a good solution, and that’s why I’m calling him out for. For being a shill.
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
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.
Why wouldn’t solar and other renewables combined with batteries be better?
It’s very early days, yet California recently had 98 days on renewables. That started in winter.
What is it about renewables with batteries that you believe will fail, despite the mass adoption that is under way?
Why will the projected, continued decline in battery prices and advances in battery tech not occur?
Why would adjacent solutions, like the massive storage ability of vehicle-to-grid, be worse compared to nuclear?
Why are so many “in the know” getting it so wrong?
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.
Solar and nuclear work just fine together. Nuclear is expensive (and most cost effective if kept running all the time, rather than switched on and off) but it reduces the cost of solar (lower proportion of solar means you don’t need as much storage) and hedges against bad weather.
You can’t just switch it off and on. It runs at more or less full power all the time. So tell me, at what power is that taking into consideration that sun doesn’t shine during night + mornings and evenings when days are short or cloudy?
I don’t understand what you’re asking, sorry.
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.
Huh? No
Cool if true, but the source seemed to be bluesky soooo it’s a big gain of salt
Solar panels don’t work as well with greysky.
Yeah I think by “source” they just mean they’re just giving credit to the bsky post they got the graph from, the data seems to be from a green energy transition thinktank. No idea if you’d put more stock in ember-energy.org/, so make of that what you will 🤷♂️
From the website:
Data into action
Open data and intelligent policy analysis to unlock a clean, electrified energy future
Yeah, that’s where I ended up and didn’t know what to do with them. I guess I trust them as much as any unknown internet source
It’s great that they are creating that much. They have the largest incentive too, the U.S. second. The G7 they refer to (U.S. U.K. Japan Germany France Italy Canada) used a total of ~7 PWh of electricity in 2023. China used ~9 PWh.
Hopefully the G7 starts catching up. Chinas form of government puts their long term expendetures into play when figuring out where to invest as they have a monetary stake in how much it costs to produce the electricity.
In countries like the U.S. we see companies who have large investments in oil, coal, and such trying to manipulate the transition because they didn’t have the investments already in place with alternative energy sources. The U.S. government has no money “invested” per say, so long term they don’t care that it costs more during the transition as those profits are made by the companies. The old oil tycoons will milk every penny under the attitude “I got mine.”. Then they’ll die, and we will hope some companies have transitions in place that bring low cost efficient renewable systems long term
🤔 it was made into fancy graphs by the guy on Bluesky but the data was from ember-energy.org who are well known for supplying renewable stats
Yeah I tracked it back to that, but couldn’t find the graph shown and had no knowledge of the ember.
Having said that, I’m all for the green revolution and would love to see it go harder. As a petrol head the idea of guilt free fuel is like a holy grail
I’m curious how much of it they consumed though. I read recently the UK keeps on paying Wind farms (for example) to NOT supply the grid as they don’t need it at certain times, and it wasn’t going into batteries for later either. Just generated and…gone?
They pay the windfarms when too much power is generated for the grid to handle. The wind turbines are then throttled accordingly and the windfarm owners are reimbursed for the lost potential. At least that’s how it goes in Germany. It’s kind of an incentive to upgrade the power grid.
Can be sold as well. I looked at this chart to get numbers, not sure about accuracy. Shows China made around 9.27 PWh and used 8.93 PWh. The G7 used about 7 PWh total.
https://countryeconomy.com/energy-and-environment/electricity-consumption
Edit: realized my typo and now I’m questioning. in Watt hours, does it use Petawatt hours like computers do… I assume? Changed TWh to PWh
