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All we need is for one totalitarian dictatorship to make green power generation infrastructure a bragging item domestically and internationally. The rest will f

All we need is for one totalitarian dictatorship to make green power generation infrastructure a bragging item domestically and internationally. The rest will follow suite more readily. Imagine if China was able to claim they are adding world record amounts of renewables. There would be a race for #2.

titzer 5y ago
China already has more solar than all of Europe. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-add-55-65-gw-solar-power-capacity-2021-industry-body-2021-07-22/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-add-55-65-gw-s...
- kyrra 5y ago
  China is also building more coal power plants than the rest of the world. https://e360.yale.edu/features/despite-pledges-to-cut-emissions-china-goes-on-a-coal-spree https://e360.yale.edu/features/despite-pledges-to-cut-emissi...
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    Yeah, unfortunately, China has worse percapita emissions than a place like the UK, including effects of imports/exports, and it’s getting worse.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
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- HenryKissinger 5y ago
  China also has more people than all of Europe.
  - brodouevencode 5y ago
    username checks out </reddit-tier-snarky-comment>
    - brodouevencode 5y ago
      I guess no one knows the relationship of Kissinger to China.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    By roughly a factor of 3. 444m EU, 1.4 billion, China. All of Europe is still only half China: 770 million. https://www.worldometers.info/population/china-eu-usa-japan-comparison/ https://www.worldometers.info/population/china-eu-usa-japan-...
Macha 5y ago
As the sibling comment mentions, China already is the #1 renewable energy producer by wattage, and even by % they beat a lot of the west, including countries like France and the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable_electricity_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable... The reason China is seen as a big outlier offender in terms of energy production is that remainder of fossil fuel power is pretty much entirely coal.
- fabatka 5y ago
  Renewable != low emission France is overall a pretty low emission country (regarding electricity production).
Haga 5y ago
All it needs is eco terrorists to fire Torpedos on oil rigs and coal ship or drone bomb gas pipelines. Carbon has a soft belly.
lwouis 5y ago
> all we need > green power There is no such thing as green power. Solar and wind are not renewable. They require heavy industries only possible with fossil fuel to manufacture the appliances. They require physical elements that are not in every country (thus you need to transport things). They require storage that's absolutely not possible at the scales we are talking about (replacing current fossil). Etc etc. There is no clear path forward where we continue to gorge in energy and objects. There is a clear de-growth path if we want to be reasonable and not toast our planet. But there is no existing magic tech today. Calling wind/solar green is green washing. Look into the lifecycle of these things and you will realize why they are not sustainable at all.
- nanomonkey 5y ago
  There are literally green power sources, it's called plants. Plants produce all of the chemicals available in petroleum, and pull CO2 out of the air. After converting the plants into methane, syngas or biodiesel you are left with the remaining carbon chain which can be used for soil building, thus "reverse mining" carbon from the air, putting it back into the soil. This can be done without using petroleum, or using land that would be used for growing food crops. It can also be done with food wastes like walnut shells, bigasse, or corn stover.
- mbgerring 5y ago
  > Only possible with fossil fuel Why? Many heavy industrial process that currently require fossil fuels are moving to electric machinery. The first batch of steel made without coal shipped from Sweden last week: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/19/green-steel-swedish-company-ships-first-batch-made-without-using-coal https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/19/green-steel-... > Look into the lifecycle Here’s the summary of a recent NREL study on lifecycle emissions of various renewable energy technologies: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56487.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56487.pdf Solar beats coal (not sure about natural gas, I’d like to see that on the chart), at current efficiencies and with current manufacturing methods. These lifecycle emissions figures need to be considered on a curve — as more electricity on the grid comes from renewable sources, and more industrial processes are electrified, the lifecycle emissions for solar go down. The same is obviously not true for coal or gas.
nickff 5y ago
That's not how totalitarian dictatorships work... They don't usually care about 'prestige', they care about legitimacy in the eyes of foreign countries, as well as maintaining their grip on domestic power.
- datameta 5y ago
  The items you list are precisely what I implied they could seek through reinventing renewables as a world industry to compete in.
  - nickff 5y ago
    How many totalitarian dictatorships have you seen prioritizing technological innovation? Keep in mind that a majority of the world's governments are dictatorships. Legitimacy usually involves meetings with well-respected and powerful world leaders, such as the president of the USA. Maintaining domestic power usually involves forming a secret police force and disposing of internal rivals. Prestige is not a highly sought-after goal for dictators, as evidenced by the fact that most choose to accumulate private wealth rather than invest in domestic start-ups.
    - datameta 5y ago
      For a country that has the industry to make such a pivot what heavily investing in renewables would result in is not simply prestige but a source of national pride. The way the USSR approached this is vastly different from how technological progress was perceived in the US. In the Soviet union domestic industrial capacity was something highly regarded by the people in general even if we know on many levels theft and organizational inefficiency didn't make it an actual shining example. Technological innovation was a national goal in the USSR. It is what won legitimacy as a world power. A country like China is similarly poised to make such a goal their focus. It can be spun positively in so many ways. Off the cuff: "Saveguarding our ancestor's land by building renewables" "Using the intellectual might of our nation's engineers and scientists to stand above other nations" etc For all its baggage let patriotism be used to help the Earth which knows not of nations' borders.

titzer 5y ago

China already has more solar than all of Europe. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-add-55-65-gw-solar-power-capacity-2021-industry-body-2021-07-22/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-add-55-65-gw-s...

kyrra 5y ago
China is also building more coal power plants than the rest of the world. https://e360.yale.edu/features/despite-pledges-to-cut-emissions-china-goes-on-a-coal-spree https://e360.yale.edu/features/despite-pledges-to-cut-emissi...
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Yeah, unfortunately, China has worse percapita emissions than a place like the UK, including effects of imports/exports, and it’s getting worse.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
HenryKissinger 5y ago
China also has more people than all of Europe.
- brodouevencode 5y ago
  username checks out </reddit-tier-snarky-comment>
  - brodouevencode 5y ago
    I guess no one knows the relationship of Kissinger to China.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  By roughly a factor of 3. 444m EU, 1.4 billion, China. All of Europe is still only half China: 770 million. https://www.worldometers.info/population/china-eu-usa-japan-comparison/ https://www.worldometers.info/population/china-eu-usa-japan-...

Macha 5y ago

As the sibling comment mentions, China already is the #1 renewable energy producer by wattage, and even by % they beat a lot of the west, including countries like France and the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable_electricity_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable... The reason China is seen as a big outlier offender in terms of energy production is that remainder of fossil fuel power is pretty much entirely coal.

fabatka 5y ago
Renewable != low emission France is overall a pretty low emission country (regarding electricity production).

Haga 5y ago

All it needs is eco terrorists to fire Torpedos on oil rigs and coal ship or drone bomb gas pipelines. Carbon has a soft belly.

lwouis 5y ago

> all we need > green power There is no such thing as green power. Solar and wind are not renewable. They require heavy industries only possible with fossil fuel to manufacture the appliances. They require physical elements that are not in every country (thus you need to transport things). They require storage that's absolutely not possible at the scales we are talking about (replacing current fossil). Etc etc. There is no clear path forward where we continue to gorge in energy and objects. There is a clear de-growth path if we want to be reasonable and not toast our planet. But there is no existing magic tech today. Calling wind/solar green is green washing. Look into the lifecycle of these things and you will realize why they are not sustainable at all.

nanomonkey 5y ago
There are literally green power sources, it's called plants. Plants produce all of the chemicals available in petroleum, and pull CO2 out of the air. After converting the plants into methane, syngas or biodiesel you are left with the remaining carbon chain which can be used for soil building, thus "reverse mining" carbon from the air, putting it back into the soil. This can be done without using petroleum, or using land that would be used for growing food crops. It can also be done with food wastes like walnut shells, bigasse, or corn stover.
mbgerring 5y ago
> Only possible with fossil fuel Why? Many heavy industrial process that currently require fossil fuels are moving to electric machinery. The first batch of steel made without coal shipped from Sweden last week: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/19/green-steel-swedish-company-ships-first-batch-made-without-using-coal https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/19/green-steel-... > Look into the lifecycle Here’s the summary of a recent NREL study on lifecycle emissions of various renewable energy technologies: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56487.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56487.pdf Solar beats coal (not sure about natural gas, I’d like to see that on the chart), at current efficiencies and with current manufacturing methods. These lifecycle emissions figures need to be considered on a curve — as more electricity on the grid comes from renewable sources, and more industrial processes are electrified, the lifecycle emissions for solar go down. The same is obviously not true for coal or gas.

nickff 5y ago

That's not how totalitarian dictatorships work... They don't usually care about 'prestige', they care about legitimacy in the eyes of foreign countries, as well as maintaining their grip on domestic power.

datameta 5y ago
The items you list are precisely what I implied they could seek through reinventing renewables as a world industry to compete in.
- nickff 5y ago
  How many totalitarian dictatorships have you seen prioritizing technological innovation? Keep in mind that a majority of the world's governments are dictatorships. Legitimacy usually involves meetings with well-respected and powerful world leaders, such as the president of the USA. Maintaining domestic power usually involves forming a secret police force and disposing of internal rivals. Prestige is not a highly sought-after goal for dictators, as evidenced by the fact that most choose to accumulate private wealth rather than invest in domestic start-ups.
  - datameta 5y ago
    For a country that has the industry to make such a pivot what heavily investing in renewables would result in is not simply prestige but a source of national pride. The way the USSR approached this is vastly different from how technological progress was perceived in the US. In the Soviet union domestic industrial capacity was something highly regarded by the people in general even if we know on many levels theft and organizational inefficiency didn't make it an actual shining example. Technological innovation was a national goal in the USSR. It is what won legitimacy as a world power. A country like China is similarly poised to make such a goal their focus. It can be spun positively in so many ways. Off the cuff: "Saveguarding our ancestor's land by building renewables" "Using the intellectual might of our nation's engineers and scientists to stand above other nations" etc For all its baggage let patriotism be used to help the Earth which knows not of nations' borders.