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Comment by noosphr | Hacker News Reader

I've worked in energy and ran the numbers. Renewables only make sense for a pre industrial or deindustrializing society. When you need power to make shit they are useless. Which is why the industrial revolution moved from water to coal in the first place.

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Oh you ran the numbers!? If only you had led with that.

Even China has seen a stark reduction in the percentage of electricity generated from coal plants over the past decade. Are they deindustrializing?

Everyone knows coal is a dead end. Maybe you should run the numbers again.

https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china#what-sources...

That's a funny statistic to focus on when the actual use of coal for electricity has increased by 50% over the same period.

It's almost like they are using it to cover baseload or something.

You realize that link shows the exact opposite of what you're saying it shows, right?

It shows that the percentage share of electricity generated from coal in China peaked at ~80% in 2007 and was at ~54% last year.

You do realize that Chinese electricity production quadrupled in that time?

Yes - what's your point? It seems like coal wasn't the golden ticket you're making it out to be so they built alternatives.

Do you understand what baseload means?

Yep and China is leading the world in recent and active construction of traditional hydro (dams) and pumped hydro storage to reduce their reliance on coal for baseload. I'm done with your bad-faith arguments.

Their 30 year plan is to move to nuclear for base load, and they are on track to manage it. The only people who think China is moving to a pre 2020 like western grid are people who don't know the first thing about China.

The above listed Washington, Idaho, Vermont, and Oregon are all industrialized societies.

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