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In China, clean energy is now THE driver of overall economic growth
- tokai 3y agoMy takeaway from this is that China's GDP is being held up by government investments and subsidies.
- alismayilov 3y agoIs not it similar in the west as well? If governments start cutting their budget deficits and subsidies, I assume we are going to have a lot of problems.
- dartos 3y agoTesla and spacex would go under. I think the corn subsidies ended a few years ago, but I’m not in that industry enough to know what the fallout was. Would be interesting to know.
- tokai 3y agoYeah almost all countries would have issues if the state just closed. This is about green energy subsidies.
- foobiekr 3y agoIn a shallow way, and ignoring the degree, yes, they are similar.
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoOR. Are they cleaning up their environment. Like actually doing what we only 'talk' about. Remember a few years ago when Beijing was all smog and smoke. Universally condemned for such bad air quality? Now they do something about it, to be better, and the 'right' is "it's just government subsidies, wish we could still pollute our environment like the good old days".
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoI remember in the early 90s in China. Buildings got deliveries of coal to burn for their boilers. Out during a rainstorm in Beijing I came inside literally dirty with black soot (either the rain had nucleated around the soot particles, or it washed them out of the air).
- synergy20 3y agothere is no magic, the manufacture industry caused lots of environmental damage and they are just fixing it now, the way out probably be nuclear plants, and the new coal plants are said to be much more cleaner(I'm not sure). US in general is much less polluted as far as I can tell.
- retrac 3y agoChina's ongoing industrialization is so immense, that any and all forms of energy are desirable - coal, natural gas, nuclear, solar, wind, hydro - all are being built as fast as they can be. > China leads the world in constructing new solar and new wind, while also building more coal plants than any other country, the report finds. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-six-times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-fin https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-...
- BurningFrog 3y agoThe west cleaned up the environment 50 years ago. China is just about getting started. This is the normal development. As countries lift themselves out of poverty, pollution doesn't become a priority until they reach a certain prosperity level.
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoTo put this in perspective, according to Macrotrends on GDP per capita (not adjusting for purchasing power parity, I assume) China is now at the point that the US was in 1980, and in 2014 was at the place the US was in 1974. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-per-capita https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-... https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/gdp-per-capita https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/gdp-per-capi...
- llampx 3y agoThe US's $34 trillion deficit would like a word. Just take a look at how much debt was added since the debt ceiling was lifted.
- jezzamon 3y agoFor context: The US's debt to GDP ratio was 96% in 2023 China's debt to GDP ratio was 288%
- sudosysgen 3y agoThis is often repeated but is actually completely wrong. China's government debt to GDP is 77%, vs 121% for the US : https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/GG_DEBT_GDP@GDD/CHN/FRA/DEU/ITA/JPN/GBR/USA/FADGDWORLD https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/GG_DEBT_GDP@GDD/CHN/... The numbers you posted are the US's federal government debt to GDP and Chinas total overall debt to GDP (including private debts such as mortgages). The two numbers are obviously not comparable at all.
- hash872 3y agoMy understanding is that analysts frequently include not just the debts of China's central government, but also all of the provinces, which are much much more heavily indebted. Under the argument that the Chinese central government is going to cover their provinces' debts in a pinch. (Not defending the specific numbers quoted by OP, just a general observation)
- sudosysgen 3y agoThe 77% is total government debt, which includes provincial and local government debt - national government debt is only about 10% of GDP. The 280% figure includes corporate and household debt.
- jezzamon 3y agoAh! Thanks for correcting me. I only did a short amount of Google searching
- foobiekr 3y agoThis. Basically this is the new civic projects spending.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoInteresting for a country that is also building more coal power plants than the rest of the world combined and also at the fastest pace in 7 years: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-six-times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-fin https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-...
- synergy20 3y agoit also built more nuclear plants than others, which are probably defined as 'clean energy'
- fsflover 3y agoYes, they are: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26673987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26673987 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464
- Fricken 3y agoWhen US per capita emissions are less than China's, then it's fair to criticize. However, I'm skeptical renewable energy transition will actually be a transition, rather than just piling more on top of what we already use. For the same reasons adding more lanes to a freeway doesn't alleviate traffic congestion, adding renewable energy to the mix assumes a static demand for energy: but the reality is we'll take all we can get, and if more is available, we'll find ways to use it. Induced demand.
- cinntaile 3y agoThe research on that is pretty clear that it does alleviate congestion, the question is for how long. It can definitely take a while before that extra capacity is used up.
- KoolKat23 3y agoEach additional lane alleviates 50% less reduction traffic the last lane achieved. Diminishing returns.
- thelastgallon 3y agoSolar is growing at 33.7% year-on-year and is now at twice the capacity of coal power in China: https://electrek.co/2023/06/26/china-solar-twice-capacity-coal/ https://electrek.co/2023/06/26/china-solar-twice-capacity-co... China could cover its entire residential electricity use from solar and wind: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-renewables-2023 https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-renewables-2... China is now expected to add nearly three times the solar capacity in 2023 than it did just two years ago: https://news.yahoo.com/report-reveals-china-reaching-tipping-113000028.html https://news.yahoo.com/report-reveals-china-reaching-tipping... A terawatt of solar module capacity expected within 16 months: From a 405 GW manufacturing capacity in 2022, a projected 114% increase is expected, reaching 866 GW by the end of 2023. Following that, a subsequent 21% surge in 2024 will bring the total to an impressive 1.043 TW globally. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/09/13/a-terawatt-of-solar-module-capacity-expected-within-16-months/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/09/13/a-terawatt-of-solar-m... China is building nuclear reactors faster than any other country: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38485137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38485137 China overtakes Japan in auto exports with boost from EVs: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/China-overtakes-Japan-in-auto-exports-with-boost-from-EVs https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/China-overtakes...
- htrp 3y agoPolitically, it is also reducing dependence on foreign energy imports.
- Kuinox 3y agoComparing installed capacity between power plants is misleading. Since you can't control solar output, in practice solar will have 3-10x less than the installed capacity.
- Retric 3y agoCapacity factor adjusts for that. Some solar farms are over 31% where nuclear caps at ~92% so it’s more like 2.5 - 3.5 rather than 3-10x. Nuclear goes as low as 67%, and some peaking power plants are under 5%. But that’s due to demand rather than the inability to generate power.
- josefresco 3y agoI don't like the all caps emphasis in the headline. Without the caps it still makes sense, but the emphasis is lost. "In China, clean energy is now the primary driver of overall economic growth." or "In China, clean energy is now the sole driver of overall economic growth."
- MaKey 3y agoChina installed more solar power last year than the US currently has. That's impressive.
- maxglute 3y agoGood for energy security and economic security, and good for redirecting labour away from Real Estate pivot. Note this is why PRC economy still growing at relatively healthy 5% despite RE unwinding that people think would collapse PRC because it's "30%" of GDP. Reality is RE which is ~15% of GDP, the other ~15% of the 30% is construction +construction supply chains that got redirected towards clean energy civic works, unwinding excess 20-30% of 15% RE reduces net total growth 2-3%. Issue is PRC will need to find another infra driver once distributed clean energy gets exhausted. Question is if that's a few years a 10s of years, whether PRC wants to close current energy per capita gap thats' 1/3 US to 2/3 or 3/3 or even exceed. I surmise the latter, lots of strategic uses with excess energy (vs vacant floorspace) / however long it takes construction workforce to age out. Other consideration is large infra programs absorbs all the construction overcapacity - they're make job programs. But at same time PRC (relatively cheap) construction workforce depleting due to demographics, so it's prudent to frontload as much construction as possible while it's cheap. Plus every km of HSR and every watt of renewable = less $$$ towards boeing and imported fossil fuels, and eventually fertilizer. This is still good old infra driven development model, but much more useful for national power and (maybe) less prone to market speculation.