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China installing the wind / solar equivalent of 5 nuclear power stations a week

61 points by dotcoma 2y ago

sciencesama 2y ago
When you have surplus power you tend to start to tame it !! Install more servers !!
Harmohit 2y ago
This sounds really good! If the largest population and probably the largest manufacturer in the world goes green, that is going to be really good for climate change. I hope India follows suit.
- WWWMMMWWW 2y ago
  As the major purchaser of Russian oil, this is shift by China will seriously weaken Russia in the long term.
jaimex2 2y ago
I'd give the journalist a C+ if they were in school. Good intent but you're comparing a dictatorship with 1.4 billion people to a mostly conservative, sparsely populated island with 26 million people. Australia's biggest problem is it needs to find a way to deal with its mining lobbies and political revolving doors hamstringing every attempt to move forward. If that ever gets dealt with we would move incredibly quickly.
- presentation 2y ago
  Honestly Australia is a rounding error compared to China in this regard, and the article only seems to mention it because it’s an Australian source. The news here is China’s ramp up.
  - jaimex2 2y ago
    The context of the article is that the opposition party in Australia wants to give up on renewable targets and just build 5 nuclear reactors instead. Australia has no nuclear reactors currently, nor any waste disposal facility... The article is trying to show how easily China can accomplish what will take years here with numerous delays and cost blow outs.
- immibis 2y ago
  People often say it's impossible for the USA to replicate the success of, say, Sweden, because it's easier for smaller countries to be successful. Now you're saying it's impossible for Australia to replicate the success of China because it's easier for bigger countries to be successful. Which is it?
  - pintxo 2y ago
    China is bigger, but the real point seems to be the "dictatorship", no?
    - jaimex2 2y ago
      Both - Australia struggles with direction as lobbies successfully pull in opposite direction of the countries interest for their own. Emissions trading schemes, mining taxes, housing supply are examples where policy has gone through that was not in the best interest of the country and our politicians have landed rewarding jobs for their services. When we do agree to do something, we don't have the skilled man power to do it in under a decade. Our broadband network upgrade for example has taken 15 years and counting to get fibre to everyone. Something as simple as a rail line from the CBD to an airport can take half a century... and counting...
  - jaimex2 2y ago
    I don't think size matters as much as how compromised leaders are. Australia has huge legal corruption issues. We can't see clearly how parties and members are funded. There's nothing illegal in getting a high paying private job after you leave politics even if there were clear conflicts of interest. Our media is easy to gag legally and without question.
roenxi 2y ago
> A report by Sydney-based think tank Climate Energy Finance (CEF) said China was installing renewables so rapidly it would meet its end-of-2030 target by the end of this month — or 6.5 years early. > "They have clear targets and every part of their government is harnessed to deliver the plan," he said. Do they? The fact that this is off-plan and happening very quickly makes me think that we've probably crossed a threshold and people are just building the things because they are cheap. I never understood why these conversations always seem to have the frame that the governments of the world have to be so deeply involved in constructing power plants. It is only really a factor in nuclear power because the west keeps regulating new plants out of the picture. Free markets love renewables, they have low capital costs and are very modular. I'd love to see Australia take up China's strategy of building everything. Harmonising our nuclear policy to mimic China's appears superficially to be an extremely clever idea.
- Teever 2y ago
  This is China we're talking about, how is the government not deeply involved?
- Panzer04 2y ago
  Australia is building loads of renewables, largely as a free market at this point. politics and media love suggesting government involvement, but by and large the problem is solving itself at this point.
- ZoomerCretin 2y ago
  It's easy to see the market producing a lot of cheap renewables now and think the government was never necessary, but without the government's early and heavy investments and mandates, we would have reached this point much further in the future. To give an example, in the late 80s/early 90s, California mandated that 10% of major automakers' car sales be zero or very low emissions. GM started leasing EVs in 1996, and Toyota start selling the first hybrid in 1998.
presentation 2y ago
Given that China produces most of the batteries the world uses as well, it seems like they have a clear path for baseline power supply to augment the renewables as opposed to the coal plants they’re still building (and nuclear for that matter). I guess those batteries fetch a better price on the global market for other use cases than grid energy storage, or the sheer scale is just too big still? I wonder how long until smoggy Chinese cities are a thing of the past.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
  Isn't much or most of the smog from their barely regulated fields of factories?
- novolunt 2y ago
  In most cities, that was ten years ago. How long has it been since you visited that place?
MaxHoppersGhost 2y ago
They’re also building more new coal plants than the rest of the world combined. Hundreds of new plants.
- Retric 2y ago
  True but misleading, the capacity factor keeps falling across their entire fleet of coal power plants. They aren’t installing grid sufficient storage to load follow and don’t have huge natural gas supplies thus load following coal power plants. Total coal use was 82.4 exajules in 2013 and 82.5 exajules in 2019. It’s increased since then, but nothing like the number of power plants they have added. https://www.statista.com/statistics/265491/chinese-coal-consumption-in-oil-equivalent/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/265491/chinese-coal-cons...
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40935688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40935688 ("HN: China's clean energy pushes coal to record-low 53% share of power in May 2024") https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40919052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40919052 ("HN: China's Batteries Are Now Cheap Enough to Power Huge Shifts") https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/05/15/china-switches-on-first-large-scale-sodium-ion-battery/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/05/15/china-switches-on-fir... ("China switches on first large-scale sodium-ion battery") https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-15/top-polluter-china-s-shrinking-emissions-put-carbon-peak-in-play https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-15/top-pollu... | https://archive.today/wioou https://archive.today/wioou ("Top Polluter China’s Shrinking Emissions Put Carbon Peak in Play") Those coal generators will end up as stranded assets (I believe the Chinese term is "tofu dreg"), and China is ramping battery storage deployments to firm renewables.
  - fbdab103 2y ago
    From the sustainability link: High coal prices mean that most coal plants in China are operating at a loss. In 2018, almost 50% had a net financial loss.2 Things have only gotten worse: data from the China Electricity Council suggests that more than half of its large coal firms made a loss in the first half of 2022. ... China is offering ‘capacity payments’ to power plants to keep them online. This provides plants with a source of income even when they’re not being used. Some project that by the end of the decade many coal plants will be making more money from not running than actually producing power. This seems credible if we look at the tumbling capacity factors expected from S&P over the next few decades. If this were America, I would say this is a grift that an enterprising VC was trying to lock in as many government fixed price contracts as possible to secure guaranteed income for a plant that nobody wants to run. Build plant without any intention of running it just to collect the capacity payment checks.
oefrha 2y ago
> "weaponisation of dissent" from community groups over new wind farms and transmission lines. Really baffling for an extremely sparse country with a huge desert in the center that shouldn’t be in anyone’s backyard.
- ggm 2y ago
  Plants are put at the closest point to consumption they can be because transmission losses go to profits. Frankly a decent HVDC system should minimise but thats heinously expensive. So there we are: in electricity markets you want to put the generator close to the consumer. Nobody lives in the desert. So, there's no decent transmission systems. People live in the right hand side of the dividing range, or close to it. So we put energy distribution systems close to the east, and thats where the power stations are, and so thats where the transmission lines are, and they need to be upgraded so a lot of farmers who will see their neighbours lines, but won't get $100,000 line offset money are angry. If you want examples of "make it in the desert" then you're looking at a Queensland project called "CopperString" and at the work Mike Cannon-Brookes "Sun Cable" project in the Northern Territory. Or, the huge investments in solar made by the mostly-deserted-lands mining and minerals sector, replacing super-expensive diesel for their off-grid power needs (mainly in West Australia)
  - ericd 2y ago
    I’m curious, what’s so heinously expensive about HVDC vs normal HV transmission lines? Is it just that they’re less common, so there’s no economies of scale yet, or is it something fundamental to HVDC itself?
    - ggm 2y ago
      Rather than attempt a reply, I suggest https://www.cencepower.com/blog-posts/hvdc-transmission-systems https://www.cencepower.com/blog-posts/hvdc-transmission-syst... as a good read. There's a break-even point. But, that assumes you WANT to transfer electricity over the distance. Given that the desert is more than 600km from most habitation I agree that per-unit-travel it's not more expensive, but the thing is there are viable sites for generation closer to the location of use, which means both transmission cost and losses, and cost-of-construction are below the break even point: If you want to use deserted regions, you have to be prepared to front load the construction cost with higher total costs. The Sun Cable system being planned for the N.T. will be using HVDC to transmit power into Indonesia and Singapore, if it gets off the ground. The Trans-tasman electricity feeder cable is HVDC (for instance) but people continue to argue it is not economically viable, despite Tasmania have huge hydro power resources and arguably being able to do what the Snowy 2.0 Pumped Hydro is meant to do. W.A. is 2000km from the eastern Seaboard. an HVDC would work fine. There is no strong economic drive to make the eastern seaboard transmission network which spans South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, N.S.W. and Queensland a national grid.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Panzer04 2y ago
It's a bit ridiculous to claim Australia is somehow falling behind when our target seems? To be more ambitious than China's is. It's not actually mentioned anywhere what China's 2030 renewables target is. It's apparently 1200GW, but the grid's capacity in 2019 was 3TW - so after accounting for capacity factor (0.25) china was only targeting ~10% renewables by 2030, compared to Australia's 80% grid share. The share will probably be higher than that in China, but it's still ridiculous to not provide a comparable number in the article. It's easy to beat a goal that's set low, surprise! Australia's goal of 80% seems like a solid number to me as well, and given the general trajectory of renewables it would not surprise me if the grid is defacto all renewables shortly after that time anyway. Comparing absolute numbers is obviously stupid too. 1.4B is ~50x the Australian population, so china installing 50x the capacity ("they install in a week what we install in a year") is not at all surprising (and hilarious to compare the numbers directly anywU) The whole article just seems to be a bit of a puff piece giving air to an unambitious target. The ABC has really gone downhill, and it's a bit sad how uncritical they can be nowadays :( (not to detract from china making progress - that's always good - but this seems like a pretty baseline result given their population)
- syrgian 2y ago
  Australia's target is more ambitious, but China has a larger share right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable_electricity_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable... I am also not clear that it is that much more ambitious. You are not comparing the correct numbers. 1200 GW in 2030 is just solar and wind, they are targeting 3.9TW renewables by 2030 and 80% non-fossil by 2060.
  - Panzer04 2y ago
    Where did you see the 3.9TW number? I don't see how they can target 1200GW wind and solar and 3.9TW renewable total - what other resources are there? I found the info from a quick look outside the article, so it could definitely be questionable. I will say, China has a bunch of hydro iirc, and right now a lot of countries with lots of renewables is is likely as not just down to huge hydro shares than anything else (though that is obviously changing quite fast nowadays). Even by the targets (which are, admittedly, just targets, AU is targetting 80% renewable share 2030 vs CN 2060. I do expect us to be better given relative wealth etc, though all that probably matters less and less as renewables become the most competitive. Anyway, mostly I'm frustrated by the article not providing a good analysis of the news, it's just repeating what the think tank said (this os sadly becoming par for the course for the ABC nowadays, I haven't found it to have high quality reporting :()
albertopv 2y ago
I have serious problems believing chinese data are there third party confirmations?
- _trampeltier 2y ago
  https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capacity https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci... https://globalenergymonitor.org/report/china-continues-to-lead-the-world-in-wind-and-solar-with-twice-as-much-capacity-under-construction-as-the-rest-of-the-world-combined/ https://globalenergymonitor.org/report/china-continues-to-le...
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Related: China Building Twice as Much Wind and Solar as Rest of World Combined https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40937714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40937714
kkfx 2y ago
Two small notes: - p.v. modules, inverters, batteries in China have seen falling prices and not cost little enough to be very convenient, oh, the opposite happen in the west where after decades of high prices slowly lowering we even witness some spikes, especially for batteries witch now most understand are key elements to use p.v. and co ensuring power to anything on 24h... So the point is "why" and "who profit, in the short term" and the answer is OUR cleptocracy who talk about free trade only when they are free, not anyone else. Who loose most? Us, the people from the west... - China have already hit various grids limits and start to understand that "the California model" of renewable can't scale, they works very well for SELF CONSUMPTION, meaning a gazillion of small plants for personal (domestic, single SME/local site size) where are a gazillion of individual small smart grid, because we can't have a large smart grid technically and trying to achieve it is such a security threat that no country so far want to try. To resume: our cleptocracy want us "without nothing" in 2030 and they start to understand that the new deal is incompatible with this agenda, so they hit the new deal break hoping to find a way to keep it in their "smart cities", novel Fordlandia doomed to fails as the original and utterly unsustainable. Please try to prove I'm wrong...
Herz 2y ago
I don't understand this renewable vs. nuclear rhetoric, when the comparison should be made with clean vs. fossil sources. But as always humanity manages to get lost in a glass of water.
- defrost 2y ago
  In the context of this Australian source it's political and this particular article is casting shade on nuclear in China for local Australian reasons. China still has plans for some 100 nuclear reactors (IIRC) with 10 or 15 under construction right now (again, ballpark as I recall) and a still standing long term goal of nuclear at 18% maybe 20% of total generation. China already has nuclear reactors, has generations of skilled nuclear reactor technicians and a new generation in the pipeline being trained. It's also a large economy. Australia is a great deal smaller in both population and wealth and utterly lacks any significant skill set in nuclear power generation and engineering, a handful of Australian nuclear scientists aside. Of the two dominant Australian political parties one essentially denies AGW (climate change) is an issue and seek to do as little as possible, to this end they have proposed their "climate solution" as Nuclear!! (but much later than now, and only a few power stations, and we don't really have an actual plan like a blueprint or time table or permissions from proposed site owners, etc). This isn't a nuclear plan, it's a plan to build more coal power station "in the meantime" and hope that one day it'll be economical in Australia to buy some "off the shelf" set and forget SMR magical thinking nuclear tech. As a matter of pragmatic action, in the immediate short term, in an Austraian context, it makes better economic sense to put money now into rapid expansion of renewables and storage - there's even a solid government scientific body report on that. This isn't a "let's hate nuclear" position, more a "what's the most economically feasible solution in Australia as it stands now" position. The downplaying of China's nuclear portion of future planning here is entirely based (by my best guess) on not wanting to be seen to say "Hey, it's working in China" to an Australian readership. It is working in China, but that has no real bearing on nuclear being a good fit in Australia at the present time.
  - Herz 2y ago
    > Australia is a great deal smaller in both population and wealth and utterly lacks any significant skill set in nuclear power generation and engineering, a handful of Australian nuclear scientists aside. And so wouldn't it be better to put a patch on these lacks? China also had no nuclear competence, now it speaks for itself. Same stuff for the automobile market. These shortcomings are not a problem, but an opportunity to build an industry. Otherwise with the same mentality there would be no progress. > This isn't a nuclear plan, it's a plan to build more coal power station "in the meantime" and hope that one day it'll be economical in Australia to buy some "off the shelf" set and forget SMR magical thinking nuclear tech. Which is equivalent to thinking you can install solar, wind and batteries all in one day. Germany has been investing for decades, hoping to remove coal-fired power plants. But so far, it hasn't succeeded. At least, with nuclear power, you know that once you build the plant, you're sure you're going to have that energy, for now it's whishful think the rest. > As a matter of pragmatic action, in the immediate short term, in an Austraian context, it makes better economic sense to put money now into rapid expansion of renewables and storage And why wouldn't it be possible to do both? The most pragmatic solution would be to diversify.

61 points by dotcoma 2y ago

When you have surplus power you tend to start to tame it !! Install more servers !!

This sounds really good! If the largest population and probably the largest manufacturer in the world goes green, that is going to be really good for climate change. I hope India follows suit.

WWWMMMWWW 2y ago
As the major purchaser of Russian oil, this is shift by China will seriously weaken Russia in the long term.

jaimex2 2y ago

I'd give the journalist a C+ if they were in school. Good intent but you're comparing a dictatorship with 1.4 billion people to a mostly conservative, sparsely populated island with 26 million people. Australia's biggest problem is it needs to find a way to deal with its mining lobbies and political revolving doors hamstringing every attempt to move forward. If that ever gets dealt with we would move incredibly quickly.

presentation 2y ago
Honestly Australia is a rounding error compared to China in this regard, and the article only seems to mention it because it’s an Australian source. The news here is China’s ramp up.
- jaimex2 2y ago
  The context of the article is that the opposition party in Australia wants to give up on renewable targets and just build 5 nuclear reactors instead. Australia has no nuclear reactors currently, nor any waste disposal facility... The article is trying to show how easily China can accomplish what will take years here with numerous delays and cost blow outs.
immibis 2y ago
People often say it's impossible for the USA to replicate the success of, say, Sweden, because it's easier for smaller countries to be successful. Now you're saying it's impossible for Australia to replicate the success of China because it's easier for bigger countries to be successful. Which is it?
- pintxo 2y ago
  China is bigger, but the real point seems to be the "dictatorship", no?
  - jaimex2 2y ago
    Both - Australia struggles with direction as lobbies successfully pull in opposite direction of the countries interest for their own. Emissions trading schemes, mining taxes, housing supply are examples where policy has gone through that was not in the best interest of the country and our politicians have landed rewarding jobs for their services. When we do agree to do something, we don't have the skilled man power to do it in under a decade. Our broadband network upgrade for example has taken 15 years and counting to get fibre to everyone. Something as simple as a rail line from the CBD to an airport can take half a century... and counting...
- jaimex2 2y ago
  I don't think size matters as much as how compromised leaders are. Australia has huge legal corruption issues. We can't see clearly how parties and members are funded. There's nothing illegal in getting a high paying private job after you leave politics even if there were clear conflicts of interest. Our media is easy to gag legally and without question.

roenxi 2y ago

> A report by Sydney-based think tank Climate Energy Finance (CEF) said China was installing renewables so rapidly it would meet its end-of-2030 target by the end of this month — or 6.5 years early. > "They have clear targets and every part of their government is harnessed to deliver the plan," he said. Do they? The fact that this is off-plan and happening very quickly makes me think that we've probably crossed a threshold and people are just building the things because they are cheap. I never understood why these conversations always seem to have the frame that the governments of the world have to be so deeply involved in constructing power plants. It is only really a factor in nuclear power because the west keeps regulating new plants out of the picture. Free markets love renewables, they have low capital costs and are very modular. I'd love to see Australia take up China's strategy of building everything. Harmonising our nuclear policy to mimic China's appears superficially to be an extremely clever idea.

Teever 2y ago
This is China we're talking about, how is the government not deeply involved?
Panzer04 2y ago
Australia is building loads of renewables, largely as a free market at this point. politics and media love suggesting government involvement, but by and large the problem is solving itself at this point.
ZoomerCretin 2y ago
It's easy to see the market producing a lot of cheap renewables now and think the government was never necessary, but without the government's early and heavy investments and mandates, we would have reached this point much further in the future. To give an example, in the late 80s/early 90s, California mandated that 10% of major automakers' car sales be zero or very low emissions. GM started leasing EVs in 1996, and Toyota start selling the first hybrid in 1998.

presentation 2y ago

Given that China produces most of the batteries the world uses as well, it seems like they have a clear path for baseline power supply to augment the renewables as opposed to the coal plants they’re still building (and nuclear for that matter). I guess those batteries fetch a better price on the global market for other use cases than grid energy storage, or the sheer scale is just too big still? I wonder how long until smoggy Chinese cities are a thing of the past.

HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
Isn't much or most of the smog from their barely regulated fields of factories?
novolunt 2y ago
In most cities, that was ten years ago. How long has it been since you visited that place?

MaxHoppersGhost 2y ago

They’re also building more new coal plants than the rest of the world combined. Hundreds of new plants.

Retric 2y ago
True but misleading, the capacity factor keeps falling across their entire fleet of coal power plants. They aren’t installing grid sufficient storage to load follow and don’t have huge natural gas supplies thus load following coal power plants. Total coal use was 82.4 exajules in 2013 and 82.5 exajules in 2019. It’s increased since then, but nothing like the number of power plants they have added. https://www.statista.com/statistics/265491/chinese-coal-consumption-in-oil-equivalent/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/265491/chinese-coal-cons...
toomuchtodo 2y ago
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40935688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40935688 ("HN: China's clean energy pushes coal to record-low 53% share of power in May 2024") https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40919052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40919052 ("HN: China's Batteries Are Now Cheap Enough to Power Huge Shifts") https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/05/15/china-switches-on-first-large-scale-sodium-ion-battery/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/05/15/china-switches-on-fir... ("China switches on first large-scale sodium-ion battery") https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-15/top-polluter-china-s-shrinking-emissions-put-carbon-peak-in-play https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-15/top-pollu... | https://archive.today/wioou https://archive.today/wioou ("Top Polluter China’s Shrinking Emissions Put Carbon Peak in Play") Those coal generators will end up as stranded assets (I believe the Chinese term is "tofu dreg"), and China is ramping battery storage deployments to firm renewables.
- fbdab103 2y ago
  From the sustainability link: High coal prices mean that most coal plants in China are operating at a loss. In 2018, almost 50% had a net financial loss.2 Things have only gotten worse: data from the China Electricity Council suggests that more than half of its large coal firms made a loss in the first half of 2022. ... China is offering ‘capacity payments’ to power plants to keep them online. This provides plants with a source of income even when they’re not being used. Some project that by the end of the decade many coal plants will be making more money from not running than actually producing power. This seems credible if we look at the tumbling capacity factors expected from S&P over the next few decades. If this were America, I would say this is a grift that an enterprising VC was trying to lock in as many government fixed price contracts as possible to secure guaranteed income for a plant that nobody wants to run. Build plant without any intention of running it just to collect the capacity payment checks.

oefrha 2y ago

> "weaponisation of dissent" from community groups over new wind farms and transmission lines. Really baffling for an extremely sparse country with a huge desert in the center that shouldn’t be in anyone’s backyard.

ggm 2y ago
Plants are put at the closest point to consumption they can be because transmission losses go to profits. Frankly a decent HVDC system should minimise but thats heinously expensive. So there we are: in electricity markets you want to put the generator close to the consumer. Nobody lives in the desert. So, there's no decent transmission systems. People live in the right hand side of the dividing range, or close to it. So we put energy distribution systems close to the east, and thats where the power stations are, and so thats where the transmission lines are, and they need to be upgraded so a lot of farmers who will see their neighbours lines, but won't get $100,000 line offset money are angry. If you want examples of "make it in the desert" then you're looking at a Queensland project called "CopperString" and at the work Mike Cannon-Brookes "Sun Cable" project in the Northern Territory. Or, the huge investments in solar made by the mostly-deserted-lands mining and minerals sector, replacing super-expensive diesel for their off-grid power needs (mainly in West Australia)
- ericd 2y ago
  I’m curious, what’s so heinously expensive about HVDC vs normal HV transmission lines? Is it just that they’re less common, so there’s no economies of scale yet, or is it something fundamental to HVDC itself?
  - ggm 2y ago
    Rather than attempt a reply, I suggest https://www.cencepower.com/blog-posts/hvdc-transmission-systems https://www.cencepower.com/blog-posts/hvdc-transmission-syst... as a good read. There's a break-even point. But, that assumes you WANT to transfer electricity over the distance. Given that the desert is more than 600km from most habitation I agree that per-unit-travel it's not more expensive, but the thing is there are viable sites for generation closer to the location of use, which means both transmission cost and losses, and cost-of-construction are below the break even point: If you want to use deserted regions, you have to be prepared to front load the construction cost with higher total costs. The Sun Cable system being planned for the N.T. will be using HVDC to transmit power into Indonesia and Singapore, if it gets off the ground. The Trans-tasman electricity feeder cable is HVDC (for instance) but people continue to argue it is not economically viable, despite Tasmania have huge hydro power resources and arguably being able to do what the Snowy 2.0 Pumped Hydro is meant to do. W.A. is 2000km from the eastern Seaboard. an HVDC would work fine. There is no strong economic drive to make the eastern seaboard transmission network which spans South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, N.S.W. and Queensland a national grid.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Panzer04 2y ago

It's a bit ridiculous to claim Australia is somehow falling behind when our target seems? To be more ambitious than China's is. It's not actually mentioned anywhere what China's 2030 renewables target is. It's apparently 1200GW, but the grid's capacity in 2019 was 3TW - so after accounting for capacity factor (0.25) china was only targeting ~10% renewables by 2030, compared to Australia's 80% grid share. The share will probably be higher than that in China, but it's still ridiculous to not provide a comparable number in the article. It's easy to beat a goal that's set low, surprise! Australia's goal of 80% seems like a solid number to me as well, and given the general trajectory of renewables it would not surprise me if the grid is defacto all renewables shortly after that time anyway. Comparing absolute numbers is obviously stupid too. 1.4B is ~50x the Australian population, so china installing 50x the capacity ("they install in a week what we install in a year") is not at all surprising (and hilarious to compare the numbers directly anywU) The whole article just seems to be a bit of a puff piece giving air to an unambitious target. The ABC has really gone downhill, and it's a bit sad how uncritical they can be nowadays :( (not to detract from china making progress - that's always good - but this seems like a pretty baseline result given their population)

syrgian 2y ago
Australia's target is more ambitious, but China has a larger share right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable_electricity_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable... I am also not clear that it is that much more ambitious. You are not comparing the correct numbers. 1200 GW in 2030 is just solar and wind, they are targeting 3.9TW renewables by 2030 and 80% non-fossil by 2060.
- Panzer04 2y ago
  Where did you see the 3.9TW number? I don't see how they can target 1200GW wind and solar and 3.9TW renewable total - what other resources are there? I found the info from a quick look outside the article, so it could definitely be questionable. I will say, China has a bunch of hydro iirc, and right now a lot of countries with lots of renewables is is likely as not just down to huge hydro shares than anything else (though that is obviously changing quite fast nowadays). Even by the targets (which are, admittedly, just targets, AU is targetting 80% renewable share 2030 vs CN 2060. I do expect us to be better given relative wealth etc, though all that probably matters less and less as renewables become the most competitive. Anyway, mostly I'm frustrated by the article not providing a good analysis of the news, it's just repeating what the think tank said (this os sadly becoming par for the course for the ABC nowadays, I haven't found it to have high quality reporting :()

albertopv 2y ago

I have serious problems believing chinese data are there third party confirmations?

_trampeltier 2y ago
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capacity https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci... https://globalenergymonitor.org/report/china-continues-to-lead-the-world-in-wind-and-solar-with-twice-as-much-capacity-under-construction-as-the-rest-of-the-world-combined/ https://globalenergymonitor.org/report/china-continues-to-le...

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Related: China Building Twice as Much Wind and Solar as Rest of World Combined https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40937714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40937714

kkfx 2y ago

Two small notes: - p.v. modules, inverters, batteries in China have seen falling prices and not cost little enough to be very convenient, oh, the opposite happen in the west where after decades of high prices slowly lowering we even witness some spikes, especially for batteries witch now most understand are key elements to use p.v. and co ensuring power to anything on 24h... So the point is "why" and "who profit, in the short term" and the answer is OUR cleptocracy who talk about free trade only when they are free, not anyone else. Who loose most? Us, the people from the west... - China have already hit various grids limits and start to understand that "the California model" of renewable can't scale, they works very well for SELF CONSUMPTION, meaning a gazillion of small plants for personal (domestic, single SME/local site size) where are a gazillion of individual small smart grid, because we can't have a large smart grid technically and trying to achieve it is such a security threat that no country so far want to try. To resume: our cleptocracy want us "without nothing" in 2030 and they start to understand that the new deal is incompatible with this agenda, so they hit the new deal break hoping to find a way to keep it in their "smart cities", novel Fordlandia doomed to fails as the original and utterly unsustainable. Please try to prove I'm wrong...

Herz 2y ago

I don't understand this renewable vs. nuclear rhetoric, when the comparison should be made with clean vs. fossil sources. But as always humanity manages to get lost in a glass of water.

defrost 2y ago
In the context of this Australian source it's political and this particular article is casting shade on nuclear in China for local Australian reasons. China still has plans for some 100 nuclear reactors (IIRC) with 10 or 15 under construction right now (again, ballpark as I recall) and a still standing long term goal of nuclear at 18% maybe 20% of total generation. China already has nuclear reactors, has generations of skilled nuclear reactor technicians and a new generation in the pipeline being trained. It's also a large economy. Australia is a great deal smaller in both population and wealth and utterly lacks any significant skill set in nuclear power generation and engineering, a handful of Australian nuclear scientists aside. Of the two dominant Australian political parties one essentially denies AGW (climate change) is an issue and seek to do as little as possible, to this end they have proposed their "climate solution" as Nuclear!! (but much later than now, and only a few power stations, and we don't really have an actual plan like a blueprint or time table or permissions from proposed site owners, etc). This isn't a nuclear plan, it's a plan to build more coal power station "in the meantime" and hope that one day it'll be economical in Australia to buy some "off the shelf" set and forget SMR magical thinking nuclear tech. As a matter of pragmatic action, in the immediate short term, in an Austraian context, it makes better economic sense to put money now into rapid expansion of renewables and storage - there's even a solid government scientific body report on that. This isn't a "let's hate nuclear" position, more a "what's the most economically feasible solution in Australia as it stands now" position. The downplaying of China's nuclear portion of future planning here is entirely based (by my best guess) on not wanting to be seen to say "Hey, it's working in China" to an Australian readership. It is working in China, but that has no real bearing on nuclear being a good fit in Australia at the present time.
- Herz 2y ago
  > Australia is a great deal smaller in both population and wealth and utterly lacks any significant skill set in nuclear power generation and engineering, a handful of Australian nuclear scientists aside. And so wouldn't it be better to put a patch on these lacks? China also had no nuclear competence, now it speaks for itself. Same stuff for the automobile market. These shortcomings are not a problem, but an opportunity to build an industry. Otherwise with the same mentality there would be no progress. > This isn't a nuclear plan, it's a plan to build more coal power station "in the meantime" and hope that one day it'll be economical in Australia to buy some "off the shelf" set and forget SMR magical thinking nuclear tech. Which is equivalent to thinking you can install solar, wind and batteries all in one day. Germany has been investing for decades, hoping to remove coal-fired power plants. But so far, it hasn't succeeded. At least, with nuclear power, you know that once you build the plant, you're sure you're going to have that energy, for now it's whishful think the rest. > As a matter of pragmatic action, in the immediate short term, in an Austraian context, it makes better economic sense to put money now into rapid expansion of renewables and storage And why wouldn't it be possible to do both? The most pragmatic solution would be to diversify.