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China's total wind and solar capacity outstrips coal
- aquamar2 2y agoChina accounts for close to 60% of global coal-fired electricity generation and coal-fired power emissions In 2023, China's total emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from coal-fired power generation hit 5.56 billion metric tons, an all-time high that was nearly 6% greater than 2022's record. https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/china-may-upend-global-coal-emissions-trends-2024-2024-02-14/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/china-may-upend-...
- pixl97 2y agoYa and they have 1.2 billion people they are bringing out of poverty while becoming the manufacturing hub of the world. They do realize they need massive amounts of power to keep up the growth. They also realize pollution is a huge problem and that they can't continue to burn coal supplies at their current rate forever.
- aquamar2 2y ago[flagged]
- alwa 2y agoBecause rural or urban, once people have access to enough energy to rise out of grinding poverty, they tend not to want to return to a precarious, labor-intensive subsistence lifestyle. Especially when their individual share of the resulting pollution is small compared to the degree to which it’s improved their lives. “Declined” growth of 5% this year still means that things there are 5% bigger than they were last year.
- Aeolun 2y agoAre you suggesting they’re polluting for the hell of it?
- Qwertious 2y ago>and their growth has declined to below 5% this year. So they're still growing, then. And presumably southern China is still tropical and in desperate need of air conditioning in summer. In fact it's getting worse due to climate change.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoThey also need heat in the winter. I’ve never been so cold in my life actually, people really take indoor heating for granted.
- fred_is_fred 2y ago1.2 billion and falling. For not the change in standard of living pushes consumption net positive, but I wonder about in 20 years or 30?
- Dylan16807 2y agoThey're within a tenth of a percent of peak population. It might fall a meaningful amount over time, it might not.
- throawayonthe 2y ago[dead]
- whatever1 2y agoSomeone is lying. Either the coal capacity is flat (as the main article of the thread suggests), or the coal-fired emissions are still rising (aka they are still bringing coal-fired capacity online). It wouldn't be the first communist regime that is lying though.
- maxglute 2y agoOr someone can't read. No where in article does it state Coal capacity is flat, just coal growth has flattened significantly per 14th five-year plan (2021-2025). PRC peak coal is expected this or next year, and phase down / decline starting 15th five-year plan (2026-2030).
- whatever1 2y agoCheck again the graph.
- maxglute 2y agoCoal segment from 2023 to Jun24 is not flat. https://i.imgur.com/Gfm8g2m.png https://i.imgur.com/Gfm8g2m.png It looks flat because that's what adding 8GW to ~1200GW looks like. Adding only 8GW coal is one point article remarks as noteworthy, and the data comports.
- teractiveodular 2y agoWorth highlighting: The research firm projects that by 2026, solar power alone will outstrip coal as China's main energy source, reaching 1.38 TW in cumulative capacity, 150 GW above coal. Last year, China added a record 293 GW of wind and solar, driven by gigawatt-scale renewable hub projects. Coal power additions were about 40 GW in 2023, while the first half of 2024 saw only 8 GW of new coal capacity, according to Rystad Energy’s estimates. After a record 216 GW of solar installations last year, China is expected to exceed 230 GW this year. Wind capacity additions are projected to be 75 GW in 2024. To put those numbers into perspective, the largest nuclear power plant complex in the US (Vogtile) has a capacity of 4.6 GW, while the world's largest power plant at the Three Gorges does 22.5 GW (max).
- asdefghyk 2y agoHow long is the 294 GW produced , For solar is the rated output only produced when sun shining?- which means the quoted OP is only for a few hours a day? The nuclear power plan OP would be constant.
- Chilko 2y agoCapacity factor of solar is generally ~20%
- bryanlarsen 2y agoThese are grid scale installations in a desert with few clouds. It's possible they have a capacity factor over 30%.
- RandomThoughts3 2y agoSolar panels don’t like sands. It flies everywhere and the deposit partially shades the pane. You have to clean them to get back to peak efficiency. That’s why solar panels farm in desert are so complicated to run and why you don’t see more of them.
- dn3500 2y agoSeems like a less than useful comparison, given the very different utilization factors. For solar you'd need five times the capacity to get the same average power.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoNot as much as you'd think. China's coal capacity factor is around 50% and dropping rapidly. Much of their coal is used in peaker plants.
- MichaelNolan 2y agoYeah, for some reason people seem to assume that coal and natural gas all run at 95%+ capacity factors. I don’t have any data for China, but in the US coal’s CF was 42% and gas combined cycle was 58% in 2023. The EIA publishes monthly and yearly capacity factors by generating type. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=table_6_07_a https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- taneq 2y agoDepending on the uptime requirements you probably want more like 10x base load. Solar generation will cap out under good conditions but for year round, you’ve got to handle stints of bad weather and much shorter winter days.
- alwa 2y agoThose quantities are astonishing, no doubt. Does “capacity” here mean “nameplate capacity,” in the sense of the maximum that the installation can produce under peak input conditions? So for solar, the actual energy flowing into the grid would be on the order of 10-20% of that?
- pcchristie 2y agoYes, spot on, but it'd be closer to 25% for a grid-scale solar PV installation.
- asdefghyk 2y agoThe problem is wind and solar are un reliable. Need massive storage needed for them to be 24x7. Then there is the 2nd problem problem that transmission line capacity is needed to get it from its stored location ( maybe hydro or batteries ) to where it's needed.
- hooverd 2y agoThey're also building out crazy amounts of nuclear.
- pfdietz 2y agoTheir nuclear build out is behind plans, while their renewable build out is ahead of plans.
- hooverd 2y agoHas there ever been a nuclear build out ahead of schedule? It certainly seems more prone to that vs renewables that you can plonk down anywhere without too much overhead.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pfdietz 2y agoThere is no reason why many of the batteries can't be colocated with PV. They take up much less area. Properly configured, batteries can take DC from the PV modules and share the same inverter and grid connection. This is especially useful because typically a field will oversize the PV modules relative to the inverter.
- mgfist 2y agoJust another problem to be solved (and which is already in progress)
- lolinder 2y ago
- Narhem 2y ago[flagged]
- xiaodai 2y agoBut cup blah blah blah
- loongloong 2y agoHumans have managed to build out a global network of fiber to enable a global Internet. I wonder if we can do the same for electricity distribution, mitigating the uneven electricity generation of solar (day vs night, summer vs winter, etc.)
- Gare 2y agoAt some point storage or overbuilding capacity becomes more cost effective than long transmission lines.
- dbetteridge 2y agoWhile it's physically possible it's likely not economical to setup a full global network. What is more likely is projects like https://www.energymagazine.com.au/milestone-for-nt-solar-farm/ https://www.energymagazine.com.au/milestone-for-nt-solar-far... Where neighbouring countries share generation and consumption (lots of western European countries already do this)
- loongloong 2y agoIn Bits and Pieces. Isn't that how the Internet grew? Those that have more pressing needs or have more aligned opportunities will invest first, then the cost goes down as the scale and technology improves, and the global network is built. Geopolitics might be a big stumbling block though.
- blackoil 2y agoFor net emission, that investment may be better utilized in upgrading transportation and infrastructure and run peaker gas plants.
- BurningFrog 2y agoA good start would be for the US to legalize building new power lines. https://www.route-fifty.com/infrastructure/2022/10/bidens-permitting-problem/378099/ https://www.route-fifty.com/infrastructure/2022/10/bidens-pe...
- skybrian 2y ago
- ApolloFortyNine 2y agoIt's still a good thing, but isn't this misleading, since solar capacity would only be able to run 1/3 of the day-ish? Not sure about wind but again guessing it's not 100%.
- acdha 2y agoA third of the day is the winter solstice in fairly northerly latitudes. It’s better the rest of the year and the further south you go. The other thing to remember is that production and storage capacity are cheap to expand, so the better question is how often it’s the case that it’s dark at times of peak demand long enough to exhaust the grid storage capacity. Currently, that’ll be the case but I’d bet that a decade from now it’ll be much less common.
- duckmysick 2y agoDepending on the location, it's between 10-25%. The EIA data says it's around 25%. Wind is 35%, nuclear 92%, gas combined 58%, coal 40-50%, hydro 35-40%. As you can see, the capacity factor is not 100% for pretty much everything. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=table_6_07_a https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph... https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=table_6_07_b https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph... Again, it all depends on the location. The US has a pretty high capacity factor for nuclear at over 90%, but the UK has it at 60-80%. Wind farms can go over 50%.
- ApolloFortyNine 2y ago>Capacity factor: The ratio of the electrical energy produced by a generating unit for the period of time considered to the electrical energy that could have been produced at continuous full power operation during the same period. For solar/wind, this can literally never be 100%, or even close to it. For Coal/Nuclear/Gas it just comes down to maintenance duration.
- whatever1 2y agoMax capacity is not equal to actual production volumes. Also some of that capital would be better invested at cleaning up the outputs of the coal plants. Supposedly there are desulfurization units in 90% of their plants. The actual pollution numbers disagree with that.
- ggm 2y agoIf this reflects a goal set in the 13th 5 year plan, I am pleased their intent is both stated publicly, and being achieved. From the plan: > Key objectives of China are to: Increase share of non-fossil energy in total primary energy consumption to 15% by 2020 and to 20% by 2030. Increase installed renewable power capacity to 680 GW by 2020. Increase installed wind capacity to 210 GW. https://policy.asiapacificenergy.org/node/2837 https://policy.asiapacificenergy.org/node/2837