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It is misleading to talk about solar when there is utility grid solar which provides low cost power and consumer rooftop solar which does not. Rooftop solar wa

• natmaka 4y ago
  The main source for the current China's nuclear-building plan is a Bloomberg article ( https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-climate-goals-hinge-on-440-billion-nuclear-power-plan-to-rival-u-s https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli... ) which states that the boss of Chine General Power corp. announced his plans 200GW for 2035. Admitting that it is an official governmental announcement (it doesn't seem so(?)) and given that China already has 50GW, that's maybe 100GW new (way less than 150 standard reactors). Compare with renewables: 790GW already running (26% of the gridpower), and 1200GW planned for 2030. In 2020 China added 71,6GW windturbine power. Even considering the load factors the picture is pretty clear.
  • opo 4y ago
    >Compare with renewables: 790GW already running (26% of the gridpower), Something to remember here is that the vast majority of that 26% is hydroelectric (maybe 18% or so). Wind and solar provide only a few percent of the power that is produced. The bad news with those numbers is that they won't be able to grow hydroelectric by very much as there aren't many places they haven't built a dam already. The good news is that with such low percentages for solar and wind, there is plenty of growth available before they run into real problems with the intermittent nature of wind and solar. If China can decarbonize its grid with solar/wind and some new grid storage they develop in the future that would be amazing. If China ends up decarbonizing its grid by building hundreds of nuclear power plants along with solar/wind, that would also be amazing. I think we are in agreement that the goal is really to decarbonize the grid.
    • natmaka 4y ago
      > Wind and solar provide only a few percent Indeed, however this is all about heavy industry (producing gridpower), and about recent trends. Hydroelectricity is a way older industry than solar and wind. Photovoltaïcs: from 0MW (2000) to 306560MW (2021) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China#Solar_photovoltaics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China#Solar_pho... Wind: from 2GWh produced in 2005 to 655600GWh in 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_China#Installed_capacity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_China#Installed_... > run into real problems with the intermittent nature of wind and solar. Denmark already produces 55% of its electricity thanks to wind and targets 84% by 2035 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Denmark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Denmark In China the effect of spreading-out production units is well-known since at least 2009: "Liu et al. investigated wind energy complementarity across China, demonstrating that whereas a combination of wind and solar resources over a given area reduces the occurrence of zero-power hours, wind resources alone are sufficient to provide baseline power production, if a large enough area is considered." Paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032109002068 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640... > the goal is really to decarbonize the grid It is a goal, not the (single) goal. There are others criteria: risk, waste, cost, dependency towards uranium, decommission-related uncertainties, ability to export know-how with profit...
      • opo 4y ago
        >...wind resources alone are sufficient to provide baseline power production If I recall, the paper was based on wind data for 1 year. Unclear how much variability there is over time or will be in the future with climate change. The estimate is that over a wide enough area the occurrence of zero power hours is greatly reduced but it doesn't claim that wind is sufficient to provide baseline power production. We will see I guess. >...Denmark already produces 55% of its electricity thanks to wind and targets 84% by 2035 The capacity factor for wind power is still low in Denmark. They are able to rely so much on wind because they still burn fossil fuels and fortunately the neighboring countries don't heavily rely on intermittent energy sources and can buffer Denmark's under and over supply of electricity. This works for Denmark, but not every country will be so lucky to have neighbors with nuclear and hydro capability. For Germany one estimate is that for it to rely only on solar and wind would require about 6,000 pumped storage plants which is literally 183 times their current capacity. https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/144985/1/cesifo1_wp5950.pdf https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/144985/1/cesifo1_wp5... If making more grid storage was cheap and easy, we would have built it decades ago. In order for everyone to only use intermittent energy sources though, it will be necessary. >> the goal is really to decarbonize the grid >It is a goal, not the (single) goal. It is possible there will be some major advances in grid storage that will allow us to stop using fossil fuels to cover for the intermittent nature of wind and solar. In that case - great, problem solved! But... what if that doesn't pan out? The dangers we are facing in the coming decades are immense. If you were forced to choose, would you prefer the world to suffer through catastrophic climate change rather than use nuclear power?