That said, from a "we're doing things to be 100% renewable and/or zero ghg" China has been making some strides that the rest of the world would do well to emulate or match.
China's total wind and solar capacity outstrips coal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41220098 - Aug 2024
China is on track to reach its 2030 clean energy targets already - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41026542 - July 2024
China installing the wind / solar equivalent of 5 nuclear power stations a week - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40982276 - July 2024
China building two-thirds of world's wind and solar projects - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40940950 - July 2024
China's clean energy pushes coal to record-low 53% share of power in May 2024 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40935688 - July 2024
China's Batteries Are Now Cheap Enough to Power Huge Shifts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40919052 - July 2024
China is building more coal plants but might burn less coal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39440374 - Feb 2024
Look at trajectories, think in systems. They are rapidly building a nation state clean energy electrical system, and when they're done domestically, these products will be exported globally.
The graphs on the below page might be helpful.
https://globalenergymonitor.org/report/china-continues-to-le...
The actual generation trajectory seems more useful: https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis/country/CHN
"Primary energy production (percentage)" says 15% in Table 1 at the top, but I'm not sure how that's calculated - the whole table is as it seems to contradict the rest of the page:
- Generation by renewable sources has grown from 25% -> 40% from 2013 -> 2022 (Figure 5)
- 32 new nuclear power plants under construction in 2023 (Table 5)
- 49% of installed capacity in 2022 was renewables (Figure 6)
Primary energy production includes things like domestic coal production. Primary energy consumption includes things like gas consumption by cars, imports and distribution losses.
Germany has an installed solar capacity of 100 GW, 72 GW wind and some hydro and bio mass.
Yet there are 109 coal plants and 267 natural gas plants in Germany.
Comparing wind and solar with conventional power plants is completely pointless.
One of the massive benefits of wind and solar is that it can be scaled down to a size even a consumer can deploy. This makes it relatively resilient to regulatory whims compared to massive undertakings like nuclear. I'm not a nuclear engineer, but I suspect the recent emphasis on smaller nuclear plants has more to do with navigating regulatory hurdles and uncertainty than efficiency.
All that to say I am quite jealous of countries with mature bureaucratic regimes that can efficiently manage nuclear!
Yes, but also (theoretically-real) economies of scale.
https://www.fengning.gov.cn/art/2014/6/23/art_3204_165228.ht...
That is hardly the only or a key reason for slow adoption of green technologies in Europe or US.
There has to political will to do large changes that is weak everywhere else outside China.
Even if any project has heavy ecological impact locally, that doesn’t compare with far bigger problem of climate change.
Rich countries lack of action is basically a slap in the face of the global south, saying that they care more about few fish and birds, over the all poor people in the world who will suffer from the greenhouse gases bulk of which they emitted .
I would characterize that as just modern colonial wealth extraction with class and racial overtones.
Remember climate change impacts poor communities far more than the rich, that is true even in rich countries. It shouldn’t be so easy a moral decision to say environmental impact mitigation is more important than people .
Bureaucracy and red tape in the name of safeguards are weak excuses, when tens of if not hundreds of millions will die as direct or indirect consequence of climate change this century .
Of course the Chinese are not uninterested in protecting their environmental values. You seem to be under the impression that environmental impact studies exist to obstruct progress. They exist to prevent external costs carried by the local population and future generations
That's actually 38.8GWh so close enough.