9 ms·

The article hints at it through the "investments" angle but doesn't come out and state the importance of political will. One big reason renewables became so ch

by sfifs 5y ago

The article hints at it through the "investments" angle but doesn't come out and state the importance of political will. One big reason renewables became so cheap is because around 2008 Beijing Olympics, China decided that they were done with air pollution in the cities. IIRC at that time coal power and other industrial production had to be stopped for a couple of months in the surrounding provinces to make the games happen and people (importantly top bureaucrats who lived in Beijing) decided they liked the clean air. China doesn't have any substantial deposits of fossil fuels that give get clean air (like gas that US has) and Oil and Gas has to be largely imported leaving them at the mercy of international market prices and currency fluctuations. So they started heavily investing in renewables production capacity, first in wind (China's installed capacity started doubling yoy around then) and then Solar from 2010/11 even if they were expensive then and it wasn't clear how much of a learning rate benefit there would be. Similarly massive electrification of public transport and introducing subways later in the decade again to reduce pollution in the cities. Now i believe they have 3X the installed base of the next biggest country (US) and still accelerating. Later on the Paris Climate treaty just added extra momentum with the climate change and carbon reduction angle. But it was originally a political decision that took political will - to get cleaner air in the cities even at a possibly higher cost.

gibolt 5y ago
Last I saw, China has 97% of the world's electric buses, and probably a similar figure for taxis. The scale and transition is crazy and rapid. The savings on fuel alone easily made the upfront cost worth it; growing a new industry and cleaning up the air were nice bonuses
- sfifs 5y ago
  Yes and I've seen the transition happen before my eyes as i have visited China at least couple of times a year ever since the early 2010s till literally the weekend before the Pandemic blew up. I still remember the air pollution of old (which made me decide to NOT take up a role with a promotion offered to me there at one point as my family members are asthmatic) and how one of my direct reports there used to get continuous coughing bouts every winter and hasn't really had them in the last couple of years.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I used to work with company part-taking public transport infrastructure and the number of projects that regularly popped up was large. And in places most of us have never heard off. In the end all of this electric transport.
- dathinab 5y ago
  What is also interesting that a lot of this approaches are pragmatic instead of holistic. I.e. you can pragmatically already use electric vehicles in many places. But transition away from coal power plants will still take quite a while.
Retric 5y ago
China had little to do with the root causes, which largely relate to simple economies of scale and massive R&D investments. You can look at various log plots and the same tends continue for decades. If anything I would suggest Germany as the country that really subsidized early solar to reach the point of economic viability, almost everything after that point was just economics and market fluctuations. That said as of 2020 China does have 32% of global solar capacity installed, which has pushed prices even lower. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics#/media/File:PV_cume_semi_log_chart_2014_estimate.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics#/media... The slight price bump around 2002-2005 relates to them starting to be financially viable with subsides resulting in a shortage, but factories where being spun up worldwide to meet demand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics#/media/File:Solar-pv-prices-vs-cumulative-capacity.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics#/media... While panel costs have continued to drop they stopped being a significant issue for adoption years ago. Prices that used to be incidental such as labor, inverters, and grid connections now make up an increasing share of insulation costs.
- qiskit 5y ago
  No. It was china. Their productive capacity is what lower solar panel prices. So much so that we blocked chinese solar panels/materials to protect our solar panel industry. On the one hand, cheap chinese solar panels is a good thing for the environment. But it can be terrible for solar panel manufacturers in the US and EU. At the end of the day, industry/jobs always trumps environment.
  - Retric 5y ago
    If “it was China” then explain the drop from 100$ -> 4$ that preceded China’s involvement and then what changed. Trump did add a 30% import tax, but that’s almost a rounding error on the price drops we are talking about. Some US and EU manufactures where able to keep up with the price drops and they would have reached similar price drops with or without any involvement from China. Completion and increased investment (Ed: and arguably dumping) did result in a short term drop in prices, but current prices are in line with trends going back to the 1970’s. For example LG Solar, a South Korean company, is manufacturing 500 megawatts of solar panels annually in Huntsville, AL cost competitively. SunPower a US company manufactures some of the highest efficiency mass market solar cells in Malaysia and the Philippines etc. People want to simplify things and say country X did Y, but it’s far more complicated especially when you look into how long it takes to bring new manufacturing methods to market.
rr808 5y ago
Yeah I'm pretty sure with removing Russia as a gas supplier to Europe renewables are going to get pushed even harder there. Other regions too.
- dathinab 5y ago
  Honestly cutting out Russia as a gas supplier is one of the most interesting considerations. - It would probably be what hurts Russia most - It might have pretty good long-term effects - But it also would hurt the EU a lot, especially eastern EU countries, like the _huge_ majority of heating (both rooms and water) in Germany is done by Gas (through also by house-central gas powered heating units in many cases). Also gas-powered ovens and stoves are still pretty common, too. This is not something which can be easily migrated, even less until next winter. So doing this decision will lead to quite a bit of civil hardship and even death next winter... It might still be the right thing to do. I just don't see it happen tbh.
  - rr808 5y ago
    Europe also gets gas from the North Sea countries Norway/UK/Netherlands, also Algeria and Libya. It can also import from US and Middle East via ship. Russia is a critical supplier but it isn't everything.
    - dathinab 5y ago
      Yes, my assessment was based on this knowledge. EDIT: Maybe I should add a bit of context: Even if Gas can be filled in from other sources there are limits and the price will hike quite a bit even if there is enough. Furthermore it's unlikely that Russia will take it lying down, cyber attacks on infrastructure for deviling Gas are to be expected and maybe even physical sabotage. At the same time to safe money many Countries have kept increasingly smaller Gas reserves in recent years.
    - Archelaos 5y ago
      I agree. But cutting imports from Russia quickly will be a major task. Is the US going to support the EU with subsidized energy to help with the transformation? Shares of EU imports as of 2019 from Russia where as follows: Coal: 46.7 % Gas: 41.1 % Crude oil: 26.9 % (Note: These figures are shares of imports, i.e. they do not consider domestic EU production.) Source: Eurostat at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-2c.html https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-2...
Taniwha 5y ago
I flew over western China back around 2015 (Shanghai->Amsterdam) I have never seen so many windmills, hundreds of them, spread around open cast (probably coal) mines and power plants, probably sharing the same power grids
WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> IIRC at that time coal power and other industrial production had to be stopped for a couple of months in the surrounding provinces to make the games happen and people (importantly top bureaucrats who lived in Beijing) decided they liked the clean air. I think this undersells the demand for clean air. It's a huge political issue in China, one which animates people on the street even though the people of China are legendarily passive on political questions. If the government saw any way to clean up the air without impoverishing the country, they'd be all over it. You don't need to face reelection to appreciate a free win. A brief experience of clean air in Beijing is a small thing compared to the constant massive demand for cleaner air everywhere.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  I remember visitors from China about ten years ago asking why the air in the US was so clean. I explained it was lower population density and the Clean Air Act. The latter has been so enormously successful (estimated benefit some 40 times the estimated cost) that not even Republicans object to it.
ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
As a counterpoint to this, a lot of the Chinese air improvement has come by moving factories downwind of the major cities. While Chinese air has gotten better, the air quality in Korea (on days when prevailing winds come from China) has gotten much worse since 2009, as coal is still the majority power source for them.

by sfifs 5y ago

gibolt 5y ago

Last I saw, China has 97% of the world's electric buses, and probably a similar figure for taxis. The scale and transition is crazy and rapid. The savings on fuel alone easily made the upfront cost worth it; growing a new industry and cleaning up the air were nice bonuses

sfifs 5y ago
Yes and I've seen the transition happen before my eyes as i have visited China at least couple of times a year ever since the early 2010s till literally the weekend before the Pandemic blew up. I still remember the air pollution of old (which made me decide to NOT take up a role with a promotion offered to me there at one point as my family members are asthmatic) and how one of my direct reports there used to get continuous coughing bouts every winter and hasn't really had them in the last couple of years.
Ekaros 5y ago
I used to work with company part-taking public transport infrastructure and the number of projects that regularly popped up was large. And in places most of us have never heard off. In the end all of this electric transport.
dathinab 5y ago
What is also interesting that a lot of this approaches are pragmatic instead of holistic. I.e. you can pragmatically already use electric vehicles in many places. But transition away from coal power plants will still take quite a while.

Retric 5y ago

China had little to do with the root causes, which largely relate to simple economies of scale and massive R&D investments. You can look at various log plots and the same tends continue for decades. If anything I would suggest Germany as the country that really subsidized early solar to reach the point of economic viability, almost everything after that point was just economics and market fluctuations. That said as of 2020 China does have 32% of global solar capacity installed, which has pushed prices even lower. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics#/media/File:PV_cume_semi_log_chart_2014_estimate.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics#/media... The slight price bump around 2002-2005 relates to them starting to be financially viable with subsides resulting in a shortage, but factories where being spun up worldwide to meet demand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics#/media/File:Solar-pv-prices-vs-cumulative-capacity.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics#/media... While panel costs have continued to drop they stopped being a significant issue for adoption years ago. Prices that used to be incidental such as labor, inverters, and grid connections now make up an increasing share of insulation costs.

qiskit 5y ago
No. It was china. Their productive capacity is what lower solar panel prices. So much so that we blocked chinese solar panels/materials to protect our solar panel industry. On the one hand, cheap chinese solar panels is a good thing for the environment. But it can be terrible for solar panel manufacturers in the US and EU. At the end of the day, industry/jobs always trumps environment.
- Retric 5y ago
  If “it was China” then explain the drop from 100$ -> 4$ that preceded China’s involvement and then what changed. Trump did add a 30% import tax, but that’s almost a rounding error on the price drops we are talking about. Some US and EU manufactures where able to keep up with the price drops and they would have reached similar price drops with or without any involvement from China. Completion and increased investment (Ed: and arguably dumping) did result in a short term drop in prices, but current prices are in line with trends going back to the 1970’s. For example LG Solar, a South Korean company, is manufacturing 500 megawatts of solar panels annually in Huntsville, AL cost competitively. SunPower a US company manufactures some of the highest efficiency mass market solar cells in Malaysia and the Philippines etc. People want to simplify things and say country X did Y, but it’s far more complicated especially when you look into how long it takes to bring new manufacturing methods to market.

rr808 5y ago

Yeah I'm pretty sure with removing Russia as a gas supplier to Europe renewables are going to get pushed even harder there. Other regions too.

dathinab 5y ago
Honestly cutting out Russia as a gas supplier is one of the most interesting considerations. - It would probably be what hurts Russia most - It might have pretty good long-term effects - But it also would hurt the EU a lot, especially eastern EU countries, like the _huge_ majority of heating (both rooms and water) in Germany is done by Gas (through also by house-central gas powered heating units in many cases). Also gas-powered ovens and stoves are still pretty common, too. This is not something which can be easily migrated, even less until next winter. So doing this decision will lead to quite a bit of civil hardship and even death next winter... It might still be the right thing to do. I just don't see it happen tbh.
- rr808 5y ago
  Europe also gets gas from the North Sea countries Norway/UK/Netherlands, also Algeria and Libya. It can also import from US and Middle East via ship. Russia is a critical supplier but it isn't everything.
  - dathinab 5y ago
    Yes, my assessment was based on this knowledge. EDIT: Maybe I should add a bit of context: Even if Gas can be filled in from other sources there are limits and the price will hike quite a bit even if there is enough. Furthermore it's unlikely that Russia will take it lying down, cyber attacks on infrastructure for deviling Gas are to be expected and maybe even physical sabotage. At the same time to safe money many Countries have kept increasingly smaller Gas reserves in recent years.
  - Archelaos 5y ago
    I agree. But cutting imports from Russia quickly will be a major task. Is the US going to support the EU with subsidized energy to help with the transformation? Shares of EU imports as of 2019 from Russia where as follows: Coal: 46.7 % Gas: 41.1 % Crude oil: 26.9 % (Note: These figures are shares of imports, i.e. they do not consider domestic EU production.) Source: Eurostat at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-2c.html https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-2...

Taniwha 5y ago

I flew over western China back around 2015 (Shanghai->Amsterdam) I have never seen so many windmills, hundreds of them, spread around open cast (probably coal) mines and power plants, probably sharing the same power grids

WaxedChewbacca 5y ago

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> IIRC at that time coal power and other industrial production had to be stopped for a couple of months in the surrounding provinces to make the games happen and people (importantly top bureaucrats who lived in Beijing) decided they liked the clean air. I think this undersells the demand for clean air. It's a huge political issue in China, one which animates people on the street even though the people of China are legendarily passive on political questions. If the government saw any way to clean up the air without impoverishing the country, they'd be all over it. You don't need to face reelection to appreciate a free win. A brief experience of clean air in Beijing is a small thing compared to the constant massive demand for cleaner air everywhere.

pfdietz 5y ago
I remember visitors from China about ten years ago asking why the air in the US was so clean. I explained it was lower population density and the Clean Air Act. The latter has been so enormously successful (estimated benefit some 40 times the estimated cost) that not even Republicans object to it.

ravel-bar-foo 5y ago

As a counterpoint to this, a lot of the Chinese air improvement has come by moving factories downwind of the major cities. While Chinese air has gotten better, the air quality in Korea (on days when prevailing winds come from China) has gotten much worse since 2009, as coal is still the majority power source for them.