4 ms·

China’s move toward solar and wind seems more prescient than ever.

0wis 7mo ago
EU rollback on reducing gas liability, especially the widely debated rule on « no gas car after 2030 », feels now laughable. Maybe the reason why « technocrats » are good rulers is because they use science and data to do it.
- cyber_kinetist 7mo ago
  The problem with the EU is that now they depend on rare earth minerals / solar panels / etc. for their infrastructure, which means more dependency on China. However, as the war unfolds, I bet the EU will certainly want to cozy up more with China than whatever the hell that is the Middle East and the US (and hell no they don't want to depend on Russia either!)
  - Hikikomori 7mo ago
    China is looking pretty good compared to the alternative.
  - dzink 7mo ago
    Rare earth minerals are often all over the place, they are just very messy to get to and that gets in the way of EU pollution regulations. China is not a sole producer - they are just cheap enough to make mining elsewhere not worth the hassle. That will change fast if they bottleneck the supply.
    - danaris 7mo ago
      And once enough panels start nearing the end of their lifetime, it's likely that we should be able to recover nearly all the rare earth minerals from them with proper recycling. They don't actually get used up the way, say, fossil fuels do.
      - roryirvine 7mo ago
        Solar panels contain negligible amounts of rare earths, compared to the amount used in wind / gas / steam turbines. They're also still used in oil & natural gas refining (though less than in the past). Fossil fuel generators are most reliant on them, wind less so, solar barely at all.
        danaris 7mo ago
        Oh, I completely agree—but they're so frequently used as a gotcha for why the rise of solar is just trading one "foreign master" for another. "Oh no, solar panels rely on rare earth minerals, so that means you have to kowtow to China!!!" And it's true that there is some in them, so it's good to have at least a long-term answer for how we deal with them.
        namibj 7mo ago
        > Oh, I completely agree—but they're so frequently used as a gotcha for why the rise of solar is just trading one "foreign master" for another. "Oh no, solar panels rely on rare earth minerals, so that means you have to kowtow to China!!!" > And it's true that there is some in them, so it's good to have at least a long-term answer for how we deal with them. It's the old saying about a man and fish and giving vs. teaching. Solar panels bought now, at least the quality glass-glass kind, doesn't really go bad in a way that makes them depreciate at-all-quickly. If in locations that are not themselves at a premium, so lower yield only matters if maintenance overhead per yield becomes so bad it's cheaper to replace& upgrade, they can be expected to stay there for 30~50 years depending on how fast they'll mechanically fall apart after their warranty expires (which is expected to be the duration until which most stay alive). I'd guess something like an agricultural east/west fence install would stay more towards 50y and get individual modules replaced when they break, as they're easy to get to unlike roof/wall installs and the like where they're hard to get to and given they are very low complexity in mounting system ("fence panel") there's little engineering complexity in retrofitting a plain new future panel of the same physical size and sufficiently similar voltage/current.
      - Bombthecat 7mo ago
    - magicalhippo 7mo ago
      There's a big find in Norway, largest in Europa according to new estimates[1]. The updated estimate shows that the total rare earth oxide (TREO) content in the mapped resources (Indicated and Inferred) has increased from 8.8 million tonnes in 2024 to 15.9 million tonnes in 2026 – an increase of approximately 80 percent. For the first time, parts of the resource are also classified in the Indicated category, reflecting a higher degree of geological confidence The WSP report further shows that the proportion of neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr) can be increased from approximately 17 to 19 percent of TREO. These REEs are regarded by the European Commission as the most critical raw materials in terms of supply risk and are important in the manufacturing of permanent magnets for EVs, green energy and defence. There's no mine there yet though, and they haven't yet determined if it's economically viable. So yeah. [1]: https://kommunikasjon.ntb.no/pressemelding/18817358/rare-earths-norway-med-oppdatert-ressursestimat-for-fensfeltet-naer-dobling-av-europas-storste-dokumenterte-forekomst-av-sjeldne-jordarter?publisherId=17848716&lang=en https://kommunikasjon.ntb.no/pressemelding/18817358/rare-ear...
  - Balinares 7mo ago
    Rare earth minerals are not consumed in the process of generating solar energy, whereas once you've burned your oil to generate energy, it's gone and you need to buy more. That makes a pretty damn major difference.
  - eigenspace 7mo ago
    While depending on China for Solar panels is of course a liability, it's a very very different liability from relying on fossil fuel imports. A solar panel has an effective lifetime of 20-30 years. A barrel of oil is literally set on fire. If China stopped selling solar panels, there wouldnt be any energy crisis, just an inability to install *new* panels. Same goes for the battery dependencies we have on Chinese imports. Not a perfect situation of course, but there are some clever things the EU is doing about it. For instance, the recycling requirements is creating a local industry of people who intimately know all the components and construction of Chinese panels and batteries, and these people will be vital in kickstarting the domestic industry if China tries something. It also means that we're getting better and better at recovering rare earth minerals from decommissioned products, and we are building domestic reserves.
kortilla 7mo ago
Solar and wind is more of a nat gas and coal substitution. They are still heavily dependent on oil for transportation.
- bryanlarsen 7mo ago
  Not for long. 75% of their rail network is electrified and 50% of the semi tractors sold in 2025 were electric.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - BigGreenJorts 7mo ago
    What is the turn over time of a semi, it could still take a long time before a majority of the fleet is electric.
maxglute 7mo ago
Renewables... and coal. If shit hits fan it's not just hammering EVs (including trucking/freight) but hammering coal to liquid/olefin to make diesel and plastics. This not talked about much, long term strategic hedge / resource autarky looks like electrify everything, and domestic coal+oil for industry/petchem. If Hormuz long term, PRC going to be ramping up coal for industrial feedstock including fuels, even if it's much more polluting or expensive, but expensive is relative, $80 barrel oil = coal + extra processing becomes economical.
carefree-bob 7mo ago
China is using more coal, gas, and oil than ever. They went from using 1.5 billion tons of thermal coal in 2000 to 4.6 Billion tons today and they will reach 4.7 Billion in 2027. They did "pledge" to "limit increases" in coal, but there is a big difference from limiting increases to "moving away from" coal. As for oil, it is a similar story. Oil use doubled from 2005 to 2025, but they pledged to "slow increases" of oil to something less than the 7% annual increases per year that were the last 10 years average (over the business cycle). Natural gas has tripled from 3 to 9.3 billion cubic feet per day from 2014 to 2023. The prescient part was building a pipeline to deliver oil and gas directly from Russia as well as building trade routes through Russia and the central Asian nations that give them a direct route to their energy suppliers (Including Iran, which can supply China without ever going through the straight of Hormuz). Energy security is very important, and China has invested heavily to build pipelines and trade agreements that keep the oil and gas flowing, and they have moved away from buying Australian coal to increasing their own domestic coal production, reaching 4.8 Billion tons mined and on track to hit 5 Billion tons in the next few years.
- jasomill 7mo ago
  I have to laugh as progressively higher time derivatives are invoked to claim improvements. "The rate of increase in the deficit slowed this month" and the like.
  - carefree-bob 7mo ago
    Yes! I see this everywhere.
- tpm 7mo ago
  > China is using more coal, gas, and oil than ever. Well, no. Coal peaked at 4.9 billion tonnes in 2024. https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-2024/executive-summary https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-2024/executive-summary https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-china-and-india-for-first-time-in-52-years-after-clean-energy-records/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi... > Oil use doubled from 2005 to 2025 yes, and gasoline production is trending down too: https://www.mysteel.net/news/5109188-china-2025-gasoline-production-cut-outpaces-gasoil https://www.mysteel.net/news/5109188-china-2025-gasoline-pro...

0wis 7mo ago

EU rollback on reducing gas liability, especially the widely debated rule on « no gas car after 2030 », feels now laughable. Maybe the reason why « technocrats » are good rulers is because they use science and data to do it.

cyber_kinetist 7mo ago
The problem with the EU is that now they depend on rare earth minerals / solar panels / etc. for their infrastructure, which means more dependency on China. However, as the war unfolds, I bet the EU will certainly want to cozy up more with China than whatever the hell that is the Middle East and the US (and hell no they don't want to depend on Russia either!)
- Hikikomori 7mo ago
  China is looking pretty good compared to the alternative.
- dzink 7mo ago
  Rare earth minerals are often all over the place, they are just very messy to get to and that gets in the way of EU pollution regulations. China is not a sole producer - they are just cheap enough to make mining elsewhere not worth the hassle. That will change fast if they bottleneck the supply.
  - danaris 7mo ago
    And once enough panels start nearing the end of their lifetime, it's likely that we should be able to recover nearly all the rare earth minerals from them with proper recycling. They don't actually get used up the way, say, fossil fuels do.
    - roryirvine 7mo ago
      Solar panels contain negligible amounts of rare earths, compared to the amount used in wind / gas / steam turbines. They're also still used in oil & natural gas refining (though less than in the past). Fossil fuel generators are most reliant on them, wind less so, solar barely at all.
      - danaris 7mo ago
        Oh, I completely agree—but they're so frequently used as a gotcha for why the rise of solar is just trading one "foreign master" for another. "Oh no, solar panels rely on rare earth minerals, so that means you have to kowtow to China!!!" And it's true that there is some in them, so it's good to have at least a long-term answer for how we deal with them.
        namibj 7mo ago
        > Oh, I completely agree—but they're so frequently used as a gotcha for why the rise of solar is just trading one "foreign master" for another. "Oh no, solar panels rely on rare earth minerals, so that means you have to kowtow to China!!!" > And it's true that there is some in them, so it's good to have at least a long-term answer for how we deal with them. It's the old saying about a man and fish and giving vs. teaching. Solar panels bought now, at least the quality glass-glass kind, doesn't really go bad in a way that makes them depreciate at-all-quickly. If in locations that are not themselves at a premium, so lower yield only matters if maintenance overhead per yield becomes so bad it's cheaper to replace& upgrade, they can be expected to stay there for 30~50 years depending on how fast they'll mechanically fall apart after their warranty expires (which is expected to be the duration until which most stay alive). I'd guess something like an agricultural east/west fence install would stay more towards 50y and get individual modules replaced when they break, as they're easy to get to unlike roof/wall installs and the like where they're hard to get to and given they are very low complexity in mounting system ("fence panel") there's little engineering complexity in retrofitting a plain new future panel of the same physical size and sufficiently similar voltage/current.
    - Bombthecat 7mo ago
  - magicalhippo 7mo ago
    There's a big find in Norway, largest in Europa according to new estimates[1]. The updated estimate shows that the total rare earth oxide (TREO) content in the mapped resources (Indicated and Inferred) has increased from 8.8 million tonnes in 2024 to 15.9 million tonnes in 2026 – an increase of approximately 80 percent. For the first time, parts of the resource are also classified in the Indicated category, reflecting a higher degree of geological confidence The WSP report further shows that the proportion of neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr) can be increased from approximately 17 to 19 percent of TREO. These REEs are regarded by the European Commission as the most critical raw materials in terms of supply risk and are important in the manufacturing of permanent magnets for EVs, green energy and defence. There's no mine there yet though, and they haven't yet determined if it's economically viable. So yeah. [1]: https://kommunikasjon.ntb.no/pressemelding/18817358/rare-earths-norway-med-oppdatert-ressursestimat-for-fensfeltet-naer-dobling-av-europas-storste-dokumenterte-forekomst-av-sjeldne-jordarter?publisherId=17848716&lang=en https://kommunikasjon.ntb.no/pressemelding/18817358/rare-ear...
- Balinares 7mo ago
  Rare earth minerals are not consumed in the process of generating solar energy, whereas once you've burned your oil to generate energy, it's gone and you need to buy more. That makes a pretty damn major difference.
- eigenspace 7mo ago
  While depending on China for Solar panels is of course a liability, it's a very very different liability from relying on fossil fuel imports. A solar panel has an effective lifetime of 20-30 years. A barrel of oil is literally set on fire. If China stopped selling solar panels, there wouldnt be any energy crisis, just an inability to install *new* panels. Same goes for the battery dependencies we have on Chinese imports. Not a perfect situation of course, but there are some clever things the EU is doing about it. For instance, the recycling requirements is creating a local industry of people who intimately know all the components and construction of Chinese panels and batteries, and these people will be vital in kickstarting the domestic industry if China tries something. It also means that we're getting better and better at recovering rare earth minerals from decommissioned products, and we are building domestic reserves.

kortilla 7mo ago

Solar and wind is more of a nat gas and coal substitution. They are still heavily dependent on oil for transportation.

bryanlarsen 7mo ago
Not for long. 75% of their rail network is electrified and 50% of the semi tractors sold in 2025 were electric.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- BigGreenJorts 7mo ago
  What is the turn over time of a semi, it could still take a long time before a majority of the fleet is electric.

maxglute 7mo ago

Renewables... and coal. If shit hits fan it's not just hammering EVs (including trucking/freight) but hammering coal to liquid/olefin to make diesel and plastics. This not talked about much, long term strategic hedge / resource autarky looks like electrify everything, and domestic coal+oil for industry/petchem. If Hormuz long term, PRC going to be ramping up coal for industrial feedstock including fuels, even if it's much more polluting or expensive, but expensive is relative, $80 barrel oil = coal + extra processing becomes economical.

carefree-bob 7mo ago

China is using more coal, gas, and oil than ever. They went from using 1.5 billion tons of thermal coal in 2000 to 4.6 Billion tons today and they will reach 4.7 Billion in 2027. They did "pledge" to "limit increases" in coal, but there is a big difference from limiting increases to "moving away from" coal. As for oil, it is a similar story. Oil use doubled from 2005 to 2025, but they pledged to "slow increases" of oil to something less than the 7% annual increases per year that were the last 10 years average (over the business cycle). Natural gas has tripled from 3 to 9.3 billion cubic feet per day from 2014 to 2023. The prescient part was building a pipeline to deliver oil and gas directly from Russia as well as building trade routes through Russia and the central Asian nations that give them a direct route to their energy suppliers (Including Iran, which can supply China without ever going through the straight of Hormuz). Energy security is very important, and China has invested heavily to build pipelines and trade agreements that keep the oil and gas flowing, and they have moved away from buying Australian coal to increasing their own domestic coal production, reaching 4.8 Billion tons mined and on track to hit 5 Billion tons in the next few years.

jasomill 7mo ago
I have to laugh as progressively higher time derivatives are invoked to claim improvements. "The rate of increase in the deficit slowed this month" and the like.
- carefree-bob 7mo ago
  Yes! I see this everywhere.
tpm 7mo ago
> China is using more coal, gas, and oil than ever. Well, no. Coal peaked at 4.9 billion tonnes in 2024. https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-2024/executive-summary https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-2024/executive-summary https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-china-and-india-for-first-time-in-52-years-after-clean-energy-records/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi... > Oil use doubled from 2005 to 2025 yes, and gasoline production is trending down too: https://www.mysteel.net/news/5109188-china-2025-gasoline-production-cut-outpaces-gasoil https://www.mysteel.net/news/5109188-china-2025-gasoline-pro...