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China are also building more fossil fuel power plants than any other country. Using fossil fuel power plants as reserve energy and renewables as peak/bulk energ

by belorn 3y ago

China are also building more fossil fuel power plants than any other country. Using fossil fuel power plants as reserve energy and renewables as peak/bulk energy has been the most cost effective way to produce energy in the last 50 year and the key strategy for many countries. It is why Germany focused on subsidizing massive amount of wind, solar, and natural gas power plants. It worked great until Russia invaded Ukraine and the pipelines got blown up. The only difference between the German strategy and the Chinese strategy is that China is also building a few token nuclear plants. China is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) customer of Russian natural gas. As long we don't want to pay significant more for energy then this strategy will continue to be the dominant strategy. Any other strategy is obsolete. People will try to argue nuclear, green hydrogen, rust batteries, Tesla batteries and so on but for the long foreseeable future all those will just be a footnotes compared to what get built. More renewables, more natural gas, more coal, more oil power plants. Anything else is seen as too costly because any single other technology is just dwarfed by the capacity and cost savings of combining renewables with fossil fuels.

matthewdgreen 3y ago
China is building a lot of coal as well. But the interesting thing is that they're setting up a scheme in which the government pays the plants not to generate. Capacity is at 50% and falling quickly. This thread indicates that most plants will be getting the majority of their revenue from these payments by the second half of this decade. Related: latest estimates indicate a structural decline in Chinese CO2 emissions starting next year, almost entirely because of renewable buildouts. [1] https://twitter.com/pretentiouswhat/status/1722886066942743017?s=12&t=sPOl9bVNdjREujwiUeFx1g https://twitter.com/pretentiouswhat/status/17228860669427430... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/13/chinas-carbon-emissions-set-for-structural-decline-from-next-year https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/13/chinas-carb...
- belorn 3y ago
  Available capacity is not falling, production output is. This is the purpose of reserve energy. Cheap renewable energy is produced when the weather allows it, and fossil fuels produce energy when demand exceed supply. In order to keep fossil fueled power plants ready to supply energy, the state steps in and provide a paycheck in order to keep them available (this is the program that the twitter post talks about). This is the strategy that Germany has. It is also why getting rid of fossil fuel subsidies is close to impossible. The more fossil fuel power plants a country need to have standing by, the more subsidies are needed to keep them staffed and fueled up. In general it did reduce emissions compared to running exclusively on fossil fuels, while reducing costs at the same time since at peak weather the efficiency of renewables are very high.
  - matthewdgreen 3y ago
    The difference between China and Germany is that China has an entire continent and the capability to rapidly deploy HVDC lines across all of it. This means that their wind/offshore wind may have a capacity factor of 30-49% but the wind will be blowing at different times. Similarly, they can take advantage of solar generation in Western China that continues well into the evening. And finally, China is building out battery and storage capacity at a pace that rivals their investments into renewables. If you’d started in 2011 and predicted the current renewables cost/buildout rate in China, people would have laughed at you. I would not bet against a similar thing happening with storage over the next dozen years. TL;DR: China decarbonizing is very good for the world, even if it isn’t perfect yet. We in the west should stop looking for reasons to repeat our earlier (wildly incorrect) pessimism about renewable capacity, and just start trying to catch up.

by belorn 3y ago

matthewdgreen 3y ago

China is building a lot of coal as well. But the interesting thing is that they're setting up a scheme in which the government pays the plants not to generate. Capacity is at 50% and falling quickly. This thread indicates that most plants will be getting the majority of their revenue from these payments by the second half of this decade. Related: latest estimates indicate a structural decline in Chinese CO2 emissions starting next year, almost entirely because of renewable buildouts. [1] https://twitter.com/pretentiouswhat/status/1722886066942743017?s=12&t=sPOl9bVNdjREujwiUeFx1g https://twitter.com/pretentiouswhat/status/17228860669427430... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/13/chinas-carbon-emissions-set-for-structural-decline-from-next-year https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/13/chinas-carb...

belorn 3y ago
Available capacity is not falling, production output is. This is the purpose of reserve energy. Cheap renewable energy is produced when the weather allows it, and fossil fuels produce energy when demand exceed supply. In order to keep fossil fueled power plants ready to supply energy, the state steps in and provide a paycheck in order to keep them available (this is the program that the twitter post talks about). This is the strategy that Germany has. It is also why getting rid of fossil fuel subsidies is close to impossible. The more fossil fuel power plants a country need to have standing by, the more subsidies are needed to keep them staffed and fueled up. In general it did reduce emissions compared to running exclusively on fossil fuels, while reducing costs at the same time since at peak weather the efficiency of renewables are very high.
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  The difference between China and Germany is that China has an entire continent and the capability to rapidly deploy HVDC lines across all of it. This means that their wind/offshore wind may have a capacity factor of 30-49% but the wind will be blowing at different times. Similarly, they can take advantage of solar generation in Western China that continues well into the evening. And finally, China is building out battery and storage capacity at a pace that rivals their investments into renewables. If you’d started in 2011 and predicted the current renewables cost/buildout rate in China, people would have laughed at you. I would not bet against a similar thing happening with storage over the next dozen years. TL;DR: China decarbonizing is very good for the world, even if it isn’t perfect yet. We in the west should stop looking for reasons to repeat our earlier (wildly incorrect) pessimism about renewable capacity, and just start trying to catch up.