4 ms·

They installed quite a lot of coal capacity while also installing the most renewables of any country (by far): https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/n

They installed quite a lot of coal capacity while also installing the most renewables of any country (by far): https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/net-solar-pv-electricity-capacity-additions-by-country-or-region-2022-2024 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/net-solar-pv-...

melling 2y ago
Yes, China installed more solar last year than the US did in its entire history. But I need to stop you because we are trying to get to Net Zero by 2050/2060 so we need to stop with the happy feel good shit because it isn’t sufficient Show us a chart for absolute coal power compared to renewables 80% of electricity globally is fossil fuels.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  Renewables are about 30% and Nuclear about 10%, so closer to 60% fossil than your 80% https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?time=latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?time... And it's trending in the right direction for the last couple of decades.
  - melling 2y ago
    2050. 26 years away from Net Zero. Vaclav Smil doesn’t think we’re going to make it https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/25/magazine/vaclav-smil-interview.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/25/magazine/vacl...
    - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
      Well that's good news as he's not great at predictions.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      Having run the numbers myself, at current trends I'd say there's a 50-50 chance we'll reach electrical net-zero by 2032, and add heating and transport to the net-zero bucket by 2038 (and one of the things which may prevent the former by 2032 is the increasing electrification of the latter; I am much more confident that we will reach ~2 TW-years/year of renewable production by 2032 than I am that this will balance electrical demand in 2032). The rest of the emissions are things like "Can we stop cow methane? And get a replacement for cement that don't inherently emit CO2 as part of the chemistry of the stuff itself?", which I have no frame of reference for with regard to the difficulty, and may or may not happen concurrently.
- conradev 2y ago
  It’s not happy feel good shit – China is installing as many renewables as they possibly can, while building more nuclear than anyone else, and it’s still not enough electricity for their growing economy. It illustrates the constraints because they built all of those panels themselves, and they’re the best at making them. A lot of the coal capacity they are building, though, will be used for peaking, just like a lot of our natural gas plants.
  - melling 2y ago
    Coal emits twice as much co2 as natural gas. It also emits mercury, which makes it to the United States. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09080-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09080-6 By the way, Carl Sagan predicted the China coal problem in 1985 https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI?si=_PwDnBnOwwqCRBGX https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI?si=_PwDnBnOwwqCRBGX

melling 2y ago

Yes, China installed more solar last year than the US did in its entire history. But I need to stop you because we are trying to get to Net Zero by 2050/2060 so we need to stop with the happy feel good shit because it isn’t sufficient Show us a chart for absolute coal power compared to renewables 80% of electricity globally is fossil fuels.

ZeroGravitas 2y ago
Renewables are about 30% and Nuclear about 10%, so closer to 60% fossil than your 80% https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?time=latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?time... And it's trending in the right direction for the last couple of decades.
- melling 2y ago
  2050. 26 years away from Net Zero. Vaclav Smil doesn’t think we’re going to make it https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/25/magazine/vaclav-smil-interview.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/25/magazine/vacl...
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    Well that's good news as he's not great at predictions.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Having run the numbers myself, at current trends I'd say there's a 50-50 chance we'll reach electrical net-zero by 2032, and add heating and transport to the net-zero bucket by 2038 (and one of the things which may prevent the former by 2032 is the increasing electrification of the latter; I am much more confident that we will reach ~2 TW-years/year of renewable production by 2032 than I am that this will balance electrical demand in 2032). The rest of the emissions are things like "Can we stop cow methane? And get a replacement for cement that don't inherently emit CO2 as part of the chemistry of the stuff itself?", which I have no frame of reference for with regard to the difficulty, and may or may not happen concurrently.
conradev 2y ago
It’s not happy feel good shit – China is installing as many renewables as they possibly can, while building more nuclear than anyone else, and it’s still not enough electricity for their growing economy. It illustrates the constraints because they built all of those panels themselves, and they’re the best at making them. A lot of the coal capacity they are building, though, will be used for peaking, just like a lot of our natural gas plants.
- melling 2y ago
  Coal emits twice as much co2 as natural gas. It also emits mercury, which makes it to the United States. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09080-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09080-6 By the way, Carl Sagan predicted the China coal problem in 1985 https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI?si=_PwDnBnOwwqCRBGX https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI?si=_PwDnBnOwwqCRBGX