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The US is installing roughly 3 times as much solar at the utility level, each quarter[1]. We aren't building quite as many of these megafarms as China, but the

The US is installing roughly 3 times as much solar at the utility level, each quarter[1]. We aren't building quite as many of these megafarms as China, but the US's solar numbers are actually pretty dramatic[2]. (Or by another metric: China has about twice as much solar production capacity as the US, but a much smaller fraction per-capita[3].) [1]: https://www.seia.org/us-solar-market-insight https://www.seia.org/us-solar-market-insight [2]: https://www.seia.org/sites/default/files/2024-06/SolarCheatSheetQ2_2024.pdf https://www.seia.org/sites/default/files/2024-06/SolarCheatS... [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country#Global_use_figures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country#Global_...

seo-speedwagon 2y ago
I'm not sure what the value of a per-capita measure is, or why it's worth making a distinction at "utility" (I'm assuming this means consumer) level. Wouldn't the most relevant measure, at least as far as emissions go, be the ratio of energy coming from renewables / solar vs. total energy consumption? Or something similar? edit: spelling
- jeffbee 2y ago
  Quite right. This mistake also seems to occur when comparing California and Texas. Texas has a ton of renewable sources, but its extremely energy intensive economy consumes disproportionately more. So it seems to make more sense to normalize by load than by person.
- icehawk 2y ago
  As linked in the GP, solar production as a percentage of total generation capacity China is 4.8%, just like the US.
- szvsw 2y ago
  Yeah there are lots of ways to normalize that might be better, but per capita isn’t uninteresting per se: US uses roughly 2.5-3x the energy per capita compared to china fwiw [1]. The energy use per capita can be influenced by all sorts of things, including climate - for instance, SGP will always be in the top few spots on this sort of list due to the space conditioning needs. Could also be due to lots of heavy industry. Could also be due to lots of inefficient homes or high consumer demand. So it can also be interesting to look at energy use per person plotted against GDP per capita, where as expected higher energy use per capita typically also means higher GDP per capita [2]. US has significantly higher GDP per capita. Anyways, at the end of the day, in this kind of head-to-head energy technology race, the only thing I care about really at the end of the day is decarbonization. The US has been falling each year (not fast enough though, and much of it does not actually come from renewable adoption but instead other changes like natural gas replacing coal over the last decade and changes in mfg capacity etc) while China is still rapidly increasing. Both countries need to be doing more, way more (well really the whole world). [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-person-vs-gdp-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-person-vs-...
MaKey 2y ago
Last year China installed more solar capacity than the U. S. has in total [1]. Let that sink in. [1]: https://www.ecowatch.com/china-new-solar-capacity-2023.html https://www.ecowatch.com/china-new-solar-capacity-2023.html
- akira2501 2y ago
  Last year China added 47.4GW of coal power capacity. Let _that_ sink in. We need to stop looking at "China" or "The US" or "Europe" as homogeneous entities.
- woodruffw 2y ago
  The point wasn't that the US is winning in terms of net solar capacity, but that the US's own growth is independently admirable. China has and will continue to win in terms of absolute capacity, in a large part because they're still urbanizing, industrializing, and increasing their overall demand for power. (By contrast, US electricity use has been almost stagnant for 2 decades[1]. This informs the country's relationship with newer generation techniques.) [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-consumption-since-1975/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-co...

seo-speedwagon 2y ago

I'm not sure what the value of a per-capita measure is, or why it's worth making a distinction at "utility" (I'm assuming this means consumer) level. Wouldn't the most relevant measure, at least as far as emissions go, be the ratio of energy coming from renewables / solar vs. total energy consumption? Or something similar? edit: spelling

jeffbee 2y ago
Quite right. This mistake also seems to occur when comparing California and Texas. Texas has a ton of renewable sources, but its extremely energy intensive economy consumes disproportionately more. So it seems to make more sense to normalize by load than by person.
icehawk 2y ago
As linked in the GP, solar production as a percentage of total generation capacity China is 4.8%, just like the US.
szvsw 2y ago
Yeah there are lots of ways to normalize that might be better, but per capita isn’t uninteresting per se: US uses roughly 2.5-3x the energy per capita compared to china fwiw [1]. The energy use per capita can be influenced by all sorts of things, including climate - for instance, SGP will always be in the top few spots on this sort of list due to the space conditioning needs. Could also be due to lots of heavy industry. Could also be due to lots of inefficient homes or high consumer demand. So it can also be interesting to look at energy use per person plotted against GDP per capita, where as expected higher energy use per capita typically also means higher GDP per capita [2]. US has significantly higher GDP per capita. Anyways, at the end of the day, in this kind of head-to-head energy technology race, the only thing I care about really at the end of the day is decarbonization. The US has been falling each year (not fast enough though, and much of it does not actually come from renewable adoption but instead other changes like natural gas replacing coal over the last decade and changes in mfg capacity etc) while China is still rapidly increasing. Both countries need to be doing more, way more (well really the whole world). [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-person-vs-gdp-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-person-vs-...

MaKey 2y ago

Last year China installed more solar capacity than the U. S. has in total [1]. Let that sink in. [1]: https://www.ecowatch.com/china-new-solar-capacity-2023.html https://www.ecowatch.com/china-new-solar-capacity-2023.html

akira2501 2y ago
Last year China added 47.4GW of coal power capacity. Let _that_ sink in. We need to stop looking at "China" or "The US" or "Europe" as homogeneous entities.
woodruffw 2y ago
The point wasn't that the US is winning in terms of net solar capacity, but that the US's own growth is independently admirable. China has and will continue to win in terms of absolute capacity, in a large part because they're still urbanizing, industrializing, and increasing their overall demand for power. (By contrast, US electricity use has been almost stagnant for 2 decades[1]. This informs the country's relationship with newer generation techniques.) [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-consumption-since-1975/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-co...