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
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.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-by-country-terawatt-hours-twh?tab=chart&country=CHN~OWID_EU27
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.
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?
Do you think I am here to hate on China or something? Your inital claim was:
And when you looked at the numbers and you were clearly wrong, you moved the goal poast again:
Or 50% more to be at the level of the EU, using the Our World in Data numbers from 1900(thanks btw). Given current production, China would overtake the EU around 2040 in that metric.
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.
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.
For cumulative that’s debatable. CH4 is the second most important gas, and its half-life in the atmosphere is short enough that over spans of 100s of years it can decompose into CO2 which has a much lesser greenhouse potential.
See? Moving the goalposts. Moving from cumulative, the real important metric, to per capita current emissions during a renewable transition, because otherwise the data doesn’t fit your preconceived, chauvinistic anti-china views.
I initially just wanted to point out that China does in fact consume a lot more coal, then you claimed. If you want to have the moral discussion, we can have that. The fundamental problem with your logic, is that you presume future emissions do not matter. The fact of the matter is that we will emit much more in the coming decades. Higher current per capita emissions make it much more likely that future emissions will be higher as well. At the 2023 rate of emissions, China emits as much as the EU cumulative did until 2023 in 25 years. Last year China increased its emissions by 0.8%. Current UN forecast put the population of China 633million and the EU at 347million. I hate to say it, but it is very realistic to presume that China ends up just as guilty by your metric as say the EU.