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Last year, China generated 834 terawatt-hours of solar power.
Which is more than the G7 countries generated, and more than the US and EU combined. In fact the only country group that generates more solar power than China is the OECD, all 38 countries of it.
Data: @ember-energy.org
Source: https://bsky.app/profile/nathanielbullard.com/post/3lsbbsg6ohk2j
This has been going on for years and will continue.
China really really really needs a robust and diverse energy infrastructure. Industry needs huge amounts of energy. AI needs huge amounts of energy. The military needs huge amounts of energy.
Coal is unreliable and dirty. Oil can be blocked at the Straight of Malacca and a few pipelines.
China is also the world’s factory. They own the entire logistics chain for producing renewable generators; from raw materials to final assembly. They have all the infrastructure to not only build solar panels and wind turbines at scale, they’ve scaled up building the machines that build them.
How? I would've said coal is very reliable, it worked for over a hundred years.
Unreliable may have been a poor choice of words.
You can’t move coal around with pipes or wires. Someone needs to drive trucks full of coal to a power plant.
The pollution from coal tends to have a lot of externalities that drag on the economy. Lost work days, faster equipment degradation, etc.
They use coal but they have practical reasons to want to reduce reliance on coal.
Trucks? If you move coal for a power plant using trucks you're going to need a lot of trucks, you use trains or ships instead, or just build the power plant next to the mine and use conveyor belts.
Trains and ships are part of the logistics chain but trucks are definitely part of it. They have a big advantage of not needing train stations or ports, as long as you have a decent road. Some of the larger strip mining operations fill a truck per minute.
China use absurd amounts of coal and they're not slowing down. They're the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal. They're increasing use of all power generation types - coal, solar, nuclear.
Yes. And go check the percentage of coal use over time. Coal is going up. Renewables are going up much faster.