China's clean energy pushes coal to record-low 53% share of power in May 2024 | Hacker News Reader

China's clean energy pushes coal to record-low 53% share of power in May 2024

carbonbrief.org

33 pointsdoener22 comments

This is amazing to see play out, once cheap storage is solved and managed demand is widespread - is can only accelerate further.

"China building two-thirds of world’s wind and solar projects"

> Country on track reach 1,200GW of installed wind and solar capacity by end of 2024 – six years ahead of Beijing’s target

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/11/china-...

Final paragraph:

> China’s renewable energy pipeline is two times larger than the rest of the world,” Li said. “But the question we should increasingly ask ourselves is, how come the rest of the world is so slow?”

That quote from Li is a bit of a nothing burger. Over half of Chinese energy production is still coal, the US and EU have got it down to around 15%. It's great that there is a huge volume of clean energy deployments going on in China now but they are unquestionably the laggards and their energy production is still very dirty overall.

China deployed more solar last year than the US has in its entire history. The US and the EU are still phasing out fossil generation slower than they could, they choose to be laggards.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39142199

France at the time of posting: https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energ...

Nuclear 65%, Solar 18%, Hydro 13%, Wind 2%, Bioenergies 1%, Gas 1%, Oil 0%, Coal 0%. Exporting 13% of production. I think we're good.

Now do Germany

"Germany reports ‘record’ generation of renewable power in first half of 2024"

"At 140 terawatt hours, more renewable electricity was generated in Germany in the first half of 2024 than ever before, accounting for 65% of net public electricity generation. Generation from fossil fuels continues to decline as do the electricity prices on the exchange." [1] [2]

If you want to complain about anyone, complain about Poland [3], who needs ~40GW-60GW of solar and wind to offset the ~10GW of coal they're constantly running (assuming worst case capacity factor for those clean energy sources mentioned). They are the dirtiest grid in Europe as it currently stands.

(Spain's last coal fired generator As Pontes closes in August, and the UK's Ratcliffe-on-Soar closes in September; both have received their last shipments of coal and are operating off of local reserves to burn through them until closure; France is closing its last two coal generators by end of year [6]; France generates so much clean energy, their grid is having a hard time finding places for it to go [7], and there is an understanding they need more capacity to move power eastward towards Germany)

[1] https://optics.org/news/15/7/15 ("Germany reports ‘record’ generation of renewable power in first half of 2024")

[2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE?wind=false&solar=fal... ("ElectricityMaps: DE German Zone")

[3] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/PL?wind=false&solar=fal... ("ElectricityMaps: PL Poland Zone")

[4] https://www.sustainabilityenvironment.com/2023/08/29/coal-fi... ("Coal-fired power plant in As Pontes, Spain towards total phase-out 5 years in advance")

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/21/end-times-f... ("Powering down: end times for the UK’s final coal-fired station")

[6] https://www.euractiv.com/section/coal/news/france-extends-li... ("France will allow the functioning of its remaining coal-fired power stations until the end of 2024 to get through the winter safely, according to a decree recently penned by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne and Energy Transition Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher.")

[7] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40681466 ("French Power Slumps as Surging Renewables Push Out Atomic Plants")

China & India have the largest fossil fuel footprint by far, so calling US laggards in that context is misdirection.

As someone else has said [1], look where the puck is going. China's renewables and storage deployment trajectory is going vertical [2] [3] [4] [5], and will strand a lot of their coal assets [6]. India is, admittedly, going to need some pressure to encourage the desired outcome (along with the Philippines and Indonesia [7]).

> so calling US laggards in that context is misdirection.

Not at all. The US is doing fuck all compared to China, except for California who is driving clean energy and storage aggressively. The US could absolutely drive out fossil generation more rapidly, based on China's efforts in plain sight. Politics, laziness, and lack of will.

Edit: China is also forcing steelmaking to electric arc furnaces vs coal [8].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40937008

[2] https://globalenergymonitor.org/report/china-continues-to-le... ("China continues to lead the world in wind and solar, with twice as much capacity under construction as the rest of the world combined")

[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-04-12/china-... | https://archive.today/8Dy4D ("China Already Makes as Many Batteries as the Entire World Wants")

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40919052 ("HN: China's Batteries Are Now Cheap Enough to Power Huge Shifts")

[5] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/06/next-step-for-china-s... ("The next step for China’s clean energy transition: industrial and commercial storage deployment")

[6] https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants ("China is building more coal plants but might burn less coal")

[7] https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Countries-Inc... ("The Countries Increasing Their Coal Dependency Despite Climate Pledges")

[8] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-11/china-for... | https://archive.today/pKy4K ("China didn’t permit any coal-based steelmaking projects in the first half of the year for the first time since announcing its major climate neutrality goals in 2020, according to a report released Thursday. All 7.1 million tons a year of steelmaking capacity permitted by provincial governments in the first half used electric arc furnaces, a cleaner process that runs on recycled scrap and electricity, said the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air in its report on Thursday.")

The correct metric is per capita emissions from fossil fuels, which for India is 13% of the US permissions. Even if you use per country instead of the correct per capita India comes out way ahead of the US with total emissions 55% of the US emissions.

China's per capita emissions are 61% of the US.

More importantly China has a long term plan to get to carbon neutrality and they have the political structure to give them a good chance of achieving that.

The US on the other hand has a decent chance of electing a President in a few months who thinks climate change is a scam and wind turbines cause cancer and whose party wants to get rid of most government programs that promote non-fossil fuel energy and boost promotion of fossil fuels.

If we're going about this from pure physics, climate change isn't about "per capita" nor political scaremongering and demagoguery, it's about absolute carbon emitted.

You have to account on a per capita basis, or else your comparisons will make no sense at all.

Would you consider it reasonable to compare total emissions by Monaco and India? How about total emissions between your household and the entire continent of Europe? Of course you wouldn't.

you're looking at where the puck is not where the puck is going

If you count gas as about half as bad as coal, then the US is still about 40% coal-equivalent, Europe about 25%.

Factor in greater electrification and efficiency and China may well be ahead of the USA already and moving faster.

But anyway, the US and EU aren't the entirety of the rest of the world.

> But anyway, the US and EU aren't the entirety of the rest of the world.

China & the US alone are almost half of the world's electricity production.

China is outpacing the rest of the world (combined) in renewables deployment, and you're here doing whataboutism re: coal?

We can talk about percentages but China uses more power than all of Europe or the USA by far.

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