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China is building the more solar capacity than the US[0] and more nuclear capacity[1] than anyone else. Coal as a percentage of their energy mix has been marke

China is building the more solar capacity than the US[0] and more nuclear capacity[1] than anyone else. Coal as a percentage of their energy mix has been markedly decreasing since 2014 [2] [0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-solar?tab=chart&country=CHN~USA~OWID_EUR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-solar?t... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-energy-generation?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL~CHN~OWID_EUR~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-energy-generation... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?country=~CHN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?coun...

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
And their carbon price has played a role in that: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030142152300109X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014... > How carbon emission prices accelerate net zero: Evidence from China's coal-fired power plants
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  This is just trying to write on both sides of the ledger. If you tax carbon but then have other policies that encourage the construction of coal-fired power plants, they might only cancel out and at worst the price is doing less than the counter-incentives. You can try to claim that it would be even worse without it, but the real metric is, are you shutting down the existing coal-fired power plants or are you building more?
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    No, the real metric is carbon, not the number of coal plants. "China is building more coal plants but might burn less coal" https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      Except that makes no sense. You don't build something that expensive if you don't expect to use it, unless you're a fool. Moreover, unless they plan to continue to use all of the the existing coal-fired power plants and the new ones, if they were going to burn less then they could just use the existing ones. You can come up with some hypothetical like that article does where they're using coal as peaker plants (even though it's not very good at that because they take more time than natural gas to get up to temperature), but both the economics and the CO2 of that are pretty bad. You build and maintain all of these coal power plants and then only use them half the time, doubling their cost per unit electricity, and yet you do use them half the time and emit all of that CO2. But the alternative where you build them all for some rare emergency load is crazy. That's the one where they wouldn't be producing a catastrophic amount of CO2, but the economics of that are so bad that assuming that's their intent is assuming they're incompetent. They'd have to recover the cost of building and maintaining all of those power plants while only running them 2% of the time. That makes no sense compared to spending not all that much more to build nuclear plants instead which then generate power all of the time and avoid the need to also build something else (presumably intermittent renewables) to generate that power the other 98% of the time. So either they're incompetent or that theory is wrong and they're building a lot more coal power plants because they intend to burn a lot more coal. > the real metric is carbon https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/carbon-co2-emissions https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/carbon-co2-e... More than triple the CO2 emissions as they had in 2000 and the number continues to go up over time rather than down.
      - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
        > More than triple the CO2 emissions as they had in 2000 and the number continues to go up over time rather than down. Yeah they shot up for a decade after 2000, while the US/Canada reduced theirs and yet they're still 2x higher per capita. The area under the graph is the real contribution to the problem. China is very far from the obvious target for any objective evalution: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> China is building the more solar capacity than the US[0] and more nuclear capacity[1] than anyone else. That's because they're increasing their overall energy use more than the US, which would be fine if it was entirely solar and nuclear, but the point is rather that it isn't. > Coal as a percentage of their energy mix has been markedly decreasing since 2014 Again only because the denominator changed -- the absolute amount of coal went up, and it's still at 60% compared to <20% in the US: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 Meanwhile the solar you're touting for China is still at <5% and so is the nuclear, compared to 18% for the latter in the US. China generates about the same percentage from solar and wind as the US but significantly less from nuclear and dramatically more from coal. Meanwhile the largest generation source in the US is natural gas, which even combined with US generation from coal, only reaches the same percentage as China generates from coal by itself, and natural gas emits less CO2 per unit electricity than coal. Coal is a disaster and there is no excuse for building more of it rather than replacing what already exists.
- h0l0cube 3y ago
  > Again only because the denominator changed > Meanwhile the solar you're touting for China is still at <5% and so is the nuclear, compared to 18% for the latter in the US. I'm not sure if it is ignorance here, or deliberate straw-manning, but clearly you're comparing a developed nation with a developing nation with a massive population. To be fair, it's on it's last phase of catch up with developed nations, with some provinces 'medium' on the HDI vs some that are 'very high'[0], but in comparison the US[1] the HDI is uniformly 'very high'[1]. > Coal is a disaster and there is no excuse for building more of it rather than replacing what already exists. Given my assertion above, this translates into: 'China's people must have a lower quality of life (with the attendant health/educational outcomes etc.), until renewable energy catches up'. If the situation was reversed, how might you feel to be on the receiving end of that argument? Anyway, to counter China could do an Elon Musk and say they is doing more for the environment than any other country by manufacturing so much cheap solar panels (which go to sunny places like North Africa, Australia, US)[2], batteries, and EVs... in spite of burning hydrocarbons en-masse in other endeavors, e.g., "There's no excuse in starting a whole space industry that's increasing emissions via inarguably carbon-positive fuel in this warming climate, even though they kickstarted EV industry" vs "There's no excuse for China making coal fired plants, even though they supply solar panels that generate 100s of GWs (soon TWs) of power in other countries"). And maybe one day, Musk will use carbon capture to make his fuel carbon-neutral, and with China switching to renewables and nuclear at a rapid clip in spite of their large and developing population they will catch up too. Once again, I'm done here, feel free to have the last word. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_administrative_divisions_of_Greater_China_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_administrative_divisio... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index_score https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/44y90h/annual_sunshine_hours_map_of_the_world_2753_1400/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/44y90h/annual_suns...

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

And their carbon price has played a role in that: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030142152300109X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014... > How carbon emission prices accelerate net zero: Evidence from China's coal-fired power plants

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
This is just trying to write on both sides of the ledger. If you tax carbon but then have other policies that encourage the construction of coal-fired power plants, they might only cancel out and at worst the price is doing less than the counter-incentives. You can try to claim that it would be even worse without it, but the real metric is, are you shutting down the existing coal-fired power plants or are you building more?
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  No, the real metric is carbon, not the number of coal plants. "China is building more coal plants but might burn less coal" https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    Except that makes no sense. You don't build something that expensive if you don't expect to use it, unless you're a fool. Moreover, unless they plan to continue to use all of the the existing coal-fired power plants and the new ones, if they were going to burn less then they could just use the existing ones. You can come up with some hypothetical like that article does where they're using coal as peaker plants (even though it's not very good at that because they take more time than natural gas to get up to temperature), but both the economics and the CO2 of that are pretty bad. You build and maintain all of these coal power plants and then only use them half the time, doubling their cost per unit electricity, and yet you do use them half the time and emit all of that CO2. But the alternative where you build them all for some rare emergency load is crazy. That's the one where they wouldn't be producing a catastrophic amount of CO2, but the economics of that are so bad that assuming that's their intent is assuming they're incompetent. They'd have to recover the cost of building and maintaining all of those power plants while only running them 2% of the time. That makes no sense compared to spending not all that much more to build nuclear plants instead which then generate power all of the time and avoid the need to also build something else (presumably intermittent renewables) to generate that power the other 98% of the time. So either they're incompetent or that theory is wrong and they're building a lot more coal power plants because they intend to burn a lot more coal. > the real metric is carbon https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/carbon-co2-emissions https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/carbon-co2-e... More than triple the CO2 emissions as they had in 2000 and the number continues to go up over time rather than down.
    - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      > More than triple the CO2 emissions as they had in 2000 and the number continues to go up over time rather than down. Yeah they shot up for a decade after 2000, while the US/Canada reduced theirs and yet they're still 2x higher per capita. The area under the graph is the real contribution to the problem. China is very far from the obvious target for any objective evalution: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

> China is building the more solar capacity than the US[0] and more nuclear capacity[1] than anyone else. That's because they're increasing their overall energy use more than the US, which would be fine if it was entirely solar and nuclear, but the point is rather that it isn't. > Coal as a percentage of their energy mix has been markedly decreasing since 2014 Again only because the denominator changed -- the absolute amount of coal went up, and it's still at 60% compared to <20% in the US: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 Meanwhile the solar you're touting for China is still at <5% and so is the nuclear, compared to 18% for the latter in the US. China generates about the same percentage from solar and wind as the US but significantly less from nuclear and dramatically more from coal. Meanwhile the largest generation source in the US is natural gas, which even combined with US generation from coal, only reaches the same percentage as China generates from coal by itself, and natural gas emits less CO2 per unit electricity than coal. Coal is a disaster and there is no excuse for building more of it rather than replacing what already exists.

h0l0cube 3y ago
> Again only because the denominator changed > Meanwhile the solar you're touting for China is still at <5% and so is the nuclear, compared to 18% for the latter in the US. I'm not sure if it is ignorance here, or deliberate straw-manning, but clearly you're comparing a developed nation with a developing nation with a massive population. To be fair, it's on it's last phase of catch up with developed nations, with some provinces 'medium' on the HDI vs some that are 'very high'[0], but in comparison the US[1] the HDI is uniformly 'very high'[1]. > Coal is a disaster and there is no excuse for building more of it rather than replacing what already exists. Given my assertion above, this translates into: 'China's people must have a lower quality of life (with the attendant health/educational outcomes etc.), until renewable energy catches up'. If the situation was reversed, how might you feel to be on the receiving end of that argument? Anyway, to counter China could do an Elon Musk and say they is doing more for the environment than any other country by manufacturing so much cheap solar panels (which go to sunny places like North Africa, Australia, US)[2], batteries, and EVs... in spite of burning hydrocarbons en-masse in other endeavors, e.g., "There's no excuse in starting a whole space industry that's increasing emissions via inarguably carbon-positive fuel in this warming climate, even though they kickstarted EV industry" vs "There's no excuse for China making coal fired plants, even though they supply solar panels that generate 100s of GWs (soon TWs) of power in other countries"). And maybe one day, Musk will use carbon capture to make his fuel carbon-neutral, and with China switching to renewables and nuclear at a rapid clip in spite of their large and developing population they will catch up too. Once again, I'm done here, feel free to have the last word. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_administrative_divisions_of_Greater_China_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_administrative_divisio... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index_score https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/44y90h/annual_sunshine_hours_map_of_the_world_2753_1400/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/44y90h/annual_suns...