China Building Twice as Much Wind and Solar as Rest of World Combined | Hacker News Reader

China Building Twice as Much Wind and Solar as Rest of World Combined

e360.yale.edu

46 pointsBrajeshwar20 comments

This is very forward thinking. Over the medium and long term burning fossil fuels is expensive. It is an enormous economic driver to have cheap energy.

It drives me crazy that the Western response is to just increase tariffs on renewable projects.

Tariffs on energy production are pretty self-destructive too. The cheaper our energy is, the more we can do with it.

It’s terrifying really. We are at economic war and it seems like we are getting outmaneuvered in every way. And we can’t have an adult conversation about it that’s any deeper than talking points. Hell, even getting politicians to talk about serious political issues (as opposed to red meat culture war stuff) is rare at this point.

India and China will determine the future emissions and hence both these nations moving to renewables would be in our interest.

USA is being left behind while regressives try to move us back to a time when cheap oil could be easily exploited from the ground.

Only quibble I have with your comment is that the oil was never cheap. It’s just that the costs were placed on other people, such as poorer communities in the area with significantly higher disease rates, lowered IQs, etc, and the general U.S. taxpayer because building a society dependent on all that oil plays a huge role in the military and geopolitical costs the U.S. endures.

And that’s before we even discuss the costs placed on future generations through climate change, loss of biodiversity, etc.

I think that is fine too. USA operates on the cutting edge of everything so every penny spent on cheap energy makes progress for the whole world.

Don't worry, Trump is an economic genius so we'll be fine.

Oil dependence is a risk. Chinas capacity to remove it makes them a more resilient. I wish the US would act accordingly.

In the US's defence they are a net producer of Oil. So they are already resilient in a sense.

edit: my opinion is that they should still transition away for other ecological reasons

It’s better than being a net importer but we are still completely exposed to global oil prices which are manipulated by a cartel of not super friendly countries.

Innovator’s dilemma for US. Although they are a producer, the oil industry lobbies hard, they fund elections. They are deep.

US is too addicted to cheap oil, that we hamper ourselves away from cheap solar/wind energy.

Arizona, Florida, California … southern states of US ought to be having the cheapest electricity but we have one of the most expensive.

China spends a fortune importing oil and coal. If they can get cheap energy, which they likely will, they leap frog ahead.

China is playing the long game, while the boomer governed US is only thinking for their lifetimes.

RE China building 2x as much Solar as Rest of the World Combined. Just Observing the cost of the Solar Cells would be much cheaper than countries they exported too. Having another source of energy is good idea , in case they can not obtain coal ( from overseas ) for whatever reason. China is also rapidly increasing nuclear power stations . China has 50 nuclear power stations and are currently building another 23. The problem with Solar and wind is storing it for the inevitable combined solar and wind droughts that occur every several years. Their is also the possible "transmission problem" in such a (no solar/wind for several days) situation. Their needs to be the transmission capacity to get the electricity from where its stored (in batteries OR hydro storage ) to where the solar/wind drought is happening.

That’s good, they are also consuming as much. Hopefully India soon catch up.

China is doing a huge portion of the world’s manufacturing. Making the stuff we buy.

Per capita the US is leading. The numbers are even worse when you consider China is the "workbench of the West".

India could catch up faster if the US would share technological advancements, or better yet, help secure the capital necessary to build out renewable infra.

The developing world is being asked to hamstring their own growth by the countries that are responsible for the bulk of historical emissions. The US, UK, and western Europe in general used cheap fossil fuels to industrialize, mortgaging our global future for quick growth. It would only be equitable (and in everyone's best interest) for us to help mitigate further harms. We need net zero. In reality we need negative emissions, but that's unproven at scale.

The party claims in state owned media?

No, the article provides its source:

https://globalenergymonitor.org/report/china-continues-to-le...

The source mentions that some numbers could actually be a low estimate.

Plus, when you look at the economics it just makes sense that they are installing so much solar. Raw panel costs are so low that you can make a lot of money if you can install them cheaply and compete against relatively expensive fossil fuel plants. China is currently enjoying the feedback loop where they're installing huge amounts of solar, which means they need to make insane numbers of panels which drives down the per-unit cost, which increases demand, which means more new production needs to come online, which reduces cost, and so on.

Western countries basically gave away the solar market because it was going to undercut some billionaires businesses. Classic failure to recognize or try to stop a market disruption. It rarely ends well for the legacy companies.

you mean countries cause when your energy is uncompetitive every thing else is too.

Completely agree, lobbying seems to be bad for US. They invest trillions of dollars in petrol and not a fraction of it on new energy sources. Energy cost is only going up for no reason other than making some people rich

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