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In 2023 China added more solar and wind power production to its grid than its annual consumption growth. People just see that they are still adding coal but the

In 2023 China added more solar and wind power production to its grid than its annual consumption growth. People just see that they are still adding coal but they are reaching the tipping point where coal for electricity has started being replaced with renewables. With all the battery and solar production being added in the next few years I think they will also rapidly remove coal from their grid.

jillesvangurp 3y ago
The Chinese are not adding coal and nuclear because it is cheap (it isn't, even for them) but because they can't yet produce enough renewables to completely cover their needs. They have a very rational plan for eventually transitioning away from coal. But it's a long term plan. However renewables are covering most of the new generation at this point and certainly much more than they were expecting even a few years ago. What happened there is that price performance improved much more rapidly than expected; so world + dog, the Chinese included, are rolling out wind, solar, and batteries as fast as they can. A second thing that they probably weren't expecting is that they just became the top car manufacturer in the world. And most of that success is based on Chinese battery companies being extremely successful. So, they are churning out a lot of batteries. And of course grid and domestic batteries are also booming. Batteries are important because they help improve the capacity factor of existing solar and wind. So, they are deploying more capacity than planned and it's performing better than expected. At this point things are actually looking pretty good for renewables and we can expect some of the coal to start disappearing from their grid pretty soon. Coal plant pollution is a big issue in China and they'll want to get rid of coal as soon as they can afford to. Coal is at this point a stop gap solution for them a necessary and costly evil. Getting rid of nuclear is less important to them but I would not be surprised to see a few of their planned construction being postponed or cancelled as they might simply not need the capacity and nuclear plants are expensive. A complicating factor is the bursting real estate bubble in China. That's going to impact funding for all sorts of things. Including new electricity generation (renewable and non renewable). But they'll likely focus on reducing the expensive stuff; which would be nuclear plants. And they'll double down on the parts of their economy that actually do work; which would be renewable energy, EVs, etc. Their export market is looking very strong. So, investing in renewables boosts those exports too.
Roark66 3y ago
>With all the battery and solar production being added in the next few years I think they will also rapidly remove coal from their grid. Is this irony? You can't seriously think the Chinese Communist Party will stop using coal until they run out of it. Why would they? They are a terror based dictatorship that harvests organs from "undesirable" people for profit, and perform an actual genocide today as we speak. Do you think they care about man man made climate change? Why would they? The poorer and more desperate people are the easier they are to control. One doesn't have to look far (North Korea) for examples of this. You can't trust a single number that comes out of China, their own foreign affairs guy admitted their numbers are "man made" a couple years ago. Also deindustrialisation of the West is in their great interest so they will pretend they are "ditching coal" while opening new brown(the dirtiest kind) coal fired power plants every week or so. You know when they will stop using coal? When there is another way to generate energy that is predictable, cheaper and relatively easy to build. Neither renewables nor battery storage is that. Especially when you have huge deposits of brown coal just beneath the surface nearby.

jillesvangurp 3y ago

The Chinese are not adding coal and nuclear because it is cheap (it isn't, even for them) but because they can't yet produce enough renewables to completely cover their needs. They have a very rational plan for eventually transitioning away from coal. But it's a long term plan. However renewables are covering most of the new generation at this point and certainly much more than they were expecting even a few years ago. What happened there is that price performance improved much more rapidly than expected; so world + dog, the Chinese included, are rolling out wind, solar, and batteries as fast as they can. A second thing that they probably weren't expecting is that they just became the top car manufacturer in the world. And most of that success is based on Chinese battery companies being extremely successful. So, they are churning out a lot of batteries. And of course grid and domestic batteries are also booming. Batteries are important because they help improve the capacity factor of existing solar and wind. So, they are deploying more capacity than planned and it's performing better than expected. At this point things are actually looking pretty good for renewables and we can expect some of the coal to start disappearing from their grid pretty soon. Coal plant pollution is a big issue in China and they'll want to get rid of coal as soon as they can afford to. Coal is at this point a stop gap solution for them a necessary and costly evil. Getting rid of nuclear is less important to them but I would not be surprised to see a few of their planned construction being postponed or cancelled as they might simply not need the capacity and nuclear plants are expensive. A complicating factor is the bursting real estate bubble in China. That's going to impact funding for all sorts of things. Including new electricity generation (renewable and non renewable). But they'll likely focus on reducing the expensive stuff; which would be nuclear plants. And they'll double down on the parts of their economy that actually do work; which would be renewable energy, EVs, etc. Their export market is looking very strong. So, investing in renewables boosts those exports too.

Roark66 3y ago

>With all the battery and solar production being added in the next few years I think they will also rapidly remove coal from their grid. Is this irony? You can't seriously think the Chinese Communist Party will stop using coal until they run out of it. Why would they? They are a terror based dictatorship that harvests organs from "undesirable" people for profit, and perform an actual genocide today as we speak. Do you think they care about man man made climate change? Why would they? The poorer and more desperate people are the easier they are to control. One doesn't have to look far (North Korea) for examples of this. You can't trust a single number that comes out of China, their own foreign affairs guy admitted their numbers are "man made" a couple years ago. Also deindustrialisation of the West is in their great interest so they will pretend they are "ditching coal" while opening new brown(the dirtiest kind) coal fired power plants every week or so. You know when they will stop using coal? When there is another way to generate energy that is predictable, cheaper and relatively easy to build. Neither renewables nor battery storage is that. Especially when you have huge deposits of brown coal just beneath the surface nearby.