In China, clean energy is now THE driver of overall economic growth
adamtooze.substack.com
adamtooze.substack.com
China could cover its entire residential electricity use from solar and wind: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-renewables-2...
China is now expected to add nearly three times the solar capacity in 2023 than it did just two years ago: https://news.yahoo.com/report-reveals-china-reaching-tipping...
A terawatt of solar module capacity expected within 16 months: From a 405 GW manufacturing capacity in 2022, a projected 114% increase is expected, reaching 866 GW by the end of 2023. Following that, a subsequent 21% surge in 2024 will bring the total to an impressive 1.043 TW globally. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/09/13/a-terawatt-of-solar-m...
China is building nuclear reactors faster than any other country: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38485137
China overtakes Japan in auto exports with boost from EVs: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/China-overtakes...
Nuclear goes as low as 67%, and some peaking power plants are under 5%. But that’s due to demand rather than the inability to generate power.
Which is why most countries that under 30% of total electricity, but renewables are likely to push this even lower even if you prioritize nuclear over renewables simply due to differences in cost.
In 2012, nuclear was a fairly consistent... eyeballing it at 10% of the load.
With 2020 there's no nuclear and pumped storage becomes the flexible load while solar has a much larger portion of the total load.
If 2020 had the base load generation from nuclear, that sunny Sunday would have caused some problems.
And an old article about wind and hydro and managing that energy balance on the Columbia River - https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonbruner/2011/10/20/the-high-s...
> The enormous supply of hydroelectricity during spring runoff can push electricity prices to zero—the BPA gives away electricity to local utilities for free when it’s forced to produce more than it wants to. Since wind producers enjoy production subsidies, they can push rates below zero, effectively paying other utilities to switch off their generators. Last winter, the BPA told wind producers under its balancing authority that it wouldn’t pay negative rates to them during high-water events.
(In this example, they could put more water over the spillway to reduce the power generation so that wind wouldn't have to idle... but that would have meant mixing more air in the water and that can suffocate the fish and impact the salmon fishery in Oregon - https://www.oregon.gov/deq/wq/tmdls/pages/tmdls-columbia-riv... and https://apps.ecology.wa.gov/publications/documents/0203004.p... pages 13-15)
> According to the current version of the European Utility Requirements (EUR) the NPP must be capable of a minimum daily load cycling operation between 50% and 100% P r, with a rate of change of electric output of 3-5% P r /minute.
https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-news-29-2-lo...
> France in particular has a long history of utilizing aggressive load following with their PWRs [...] These reactors have the capability to regularly vary their output between 30–100% of rated power
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load-following_power_plant#Nuc...
So you still need to pay just as much for for salaries, maintenance, construction, decommissioning etc when output is 10% or 100%. But you also need a more complex design with higher inherent costs.
Also, when given the option your better off reducing nuclear as it does have fuel costs.
> The net capacity factor is the unitless ratio of actual electrical energy output over a given period of time to the theoretical maximum electrical energy output over that period.
For the US for the data from 2018 (what's in Wikipedia)
Nuclear 92%
Conv. Hydro 42%
Wind 37%
Solar PV 26%
Solar CSP 23%
Landfill Gas 73%
Other biomass 49%
Geothermal 77%
Coal 54%
Nat Gas CC 57%
Nat Gas CT 11%
Nat Gas ST 13%
Petrol ST 13%
Petrol CT 2%I didn't get that from the sources I could find [1][2]. Solar made up only a few percent of China's energy mix while coal makes up the vast majority. Can you clarify?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_policy_of_China [2] https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-chinas-ene...
However, I'm skeptical renewable energy transition will actually be a transition, rather than just piling more on top of what we already use. For the same reasons adding more lanes to a freeway doesn't alleviate traffic congestion, adding renewable energy to the mix assumes a static demand for energy: but the reality is we'll take all we can get, and if more is available, we'll find ways to use it. Induced demand.
What I said was that it will temporarily decrease congestion, but that the effect will disappear over time.
It's certainly not a rule that "adding lanes never helps traffic", that's insane.
Now it would be much better if your city built great transit so people didn't have to drive their car.
Adding lanes to random places where cars stop due to congestion achieves nothing, and adding lanes to non-congested places that feed the bottlenecks increases congestion.
You can find real examples of those tree kinds.
As long as Electricity is metered and billed, it will not have the same problem.
And you do pay to use Freeway lanes, through vehicle registration fees and gas taxes.
They're completely irrelevant for this discussion.
it was mainly a side point though that it's not free, every legal driver has prepaid via vehicle registration AND pays on usage basis via a gas tax.
my main refute was toll roads get just as congested.
For demand to match supply, it's not enough to charge any non zero price.
If cell phones cost nothing, they will always be sold out. If they cost $1, they will also always be sold out. This does not disprove microeconomic theory!
With some experimentation you can find the "equilibrium price", where supply meets demand, and you can always find a phone to buy.
For road pricing, it's true that the driver pays a bit extra for gas in rush hour traffic. But if it's just going from 1% to 2% of the equilibrium price, there will still be gridlock.
Toll roads are a better cause for you, but even if thery try to set equilibrium prices, that is pretty hard, since conditions vary every 10 minutes. If prices are set politically, it's bad for reelection to set the prices high enough.
If you do succeed in setting equilibrium road prices - and to be fair, I'm not aware of anywhere that has been done, which weakens my point - we would see freeways that today crawl at 15 mph go at full speed 65 mph traffic 24/7, which - and this is the huge payoff - means vastly more cars could travel on them, and they'd be much more useful than today.
~160 years ago, Jevons noted that the market for coal had the inverse effect. Adding cheaper and more efficient production capabilities just increased consumption.
If you only have a single driver in a normally five seated car, that's additional inefficiency on top.
Meanwhile, a human walking barely take up any space compared to a car.
Strange to compare two completely different modes of transportation isolating one variable.
You also have the problem of stocking. You still need roads for trucks to supply stores.
Then there's the need of roads to connect cities and towns.
I can walk end to end in my town, but I still need to be able to drive to a specific spot incase of an emergency or logistical errand like moving or vacationing.
Even simple things like buying kitty litter would be a hassle without a car.
I'd go with a horse then if no car, which I occasionally see actually. Then a bike with a wagon or something. Slowly regressing in mobility, freedom, and tech.
The urban planning no cars thing really makes no sense once you realize your bubble is supported by the vast road network the US has.
Not to mention that metering and billing someone's driving would be a gargantuan incursion on a human being's freedom of movement -- something so incredibly inherent in who we are.
Let me guess: you think EVs will save the planet -- all the while ignoring most of the electricity that powers them is not cleanly generated.
My goodness...
Freedom of movement does not requires using cars for everything.
Let me guess: you think EVs will save the planet -- all the while ignoring most of the electricity that powers them is not cleanly generated.
My goodness...
They are probably cleaner anyway even when the source is from a coal power plant.
However, they're only really one solution in our arsenal. We would be better off in using more public transit.
China builds more coal than the rest of the world combined exactly because the rest of the world combined is building almost none of it, because coal is not competitive anymore unless you have some crazy levels of unmet demand that will absorb all the renewables you can build.
Oil is next on the line. And while it looks like it will take a while for natural gas to follow, is oils stops being competitive and cars get electrified, the cross subside it does to natural gas stops, and gas starts to get really expensive.
Top comment: But what about coal?
The key tho is moving to clean renewable energy as the primary source of energy production growth makes the increased demand a shrug worthy event. The issue isn’t consumption of energy is morally wrong for some reason, it’s that production of energy is destructive. Making marginal increases in energy production not destructive is the goal.
Efficiency is its own goal, and is definitely necessary if marginal increases in energy production are destructive.
Finally I think attributing it to per capita or GDP is the wrong way to attribute energy consumption and side effects to causes. Much energy use of China is in service of production consumed elsewhere. Final point of end good consumption is where the energy production and its adverse externalities should be attributed (which makes the US look even worse frankly).
Since the population has grown over that same period, per capita energy consumption has been falling from its peak in 2000: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1042928/primary-energy-u...
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/19/business/us-production-oil-re...
Reality is RE which is ~15% of GDP, the other ~15% of the 30% is construction +construction supply chains that got redirected towards clean energy civic works, unwinding excess 20-30% of 15% RE reduces net total growth 2-3%. Issue is PRC will need to find another infra driver once distributed clean energy gets exhausted. Question is if that's a few years a 10s of years, whether PRC wants to close current energy per capita gap thats' 1/3 US to 2/3 or 3/3 or even exceed.
I surmise the latter, lots of strategic uses with excess energy (vs vacant floorspace) / however long it takes construction workforce to age out. Other consideration is large infra programs absorbs all the construction overcapacity - they're make job programs. But at same time PRC (relatively cheap) construction workforce depleting due to demographics, so it's prudent to frontload as much construction as possible while it's cheap. Plus every km of HSR and every watt of renewable = less $$$ towards boeing and imported fossil fuels, and eventually fertilizer. This is still good old infra driven development model, but much more useful for national power and (maybe) less prone to market speculation.
"In China, clean energy is now the primary driver of overall economic growth."
or
"In China, clean energy is now the sole driver of overall economic growth."
I think the corn subsidies ended a few years ago, but I’m not in that industry enough to know what the fallout was.
Would be interesting to know.
Are they cleaning up their environment. Like actually doing what we only 'talk' about.
Remember a few years ago when Beijing was all smog and smoke. Universally condemned for such bad air quality?
Now they do something about it, to be better, and the 'right' is "it's just government subsidies, wish we could still pollute our environment like the good old days".
> China leads the world in constructing new solar and new wind, while also building more coal plants than any other country, the report finds.
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-...
China is just about getting started.
This is the normal development. As countries lift themselves out of poverty, pollution doesn't become a priority until they reach a certain prosperity level.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-...
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/gdp-per-capi...
Just take a look at how much debt was added since the debt ceiling was lifted.
China's debt to GDP ratio was 288%
China's government debt to GDP is 77%, vs 121% for the US : https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/GG_DEBT_GDP@GDD/CHN/...
The numbers you posted are the US's federal government debt to GDP and Chinas total overall debt to GDP (including private debts such as mortgages). The two numbers are obviously not comparable at all.
US aggregate debt to GDP is 730%.