The article is still biased as hell and couched in the usual "China had" scare language, but here's a few good quotes.
China’s carbon emissions have either peaked already or will do this winter, seven years ahead of schedule. They may plateau for a year or two but will then go into exponential decline for mechanical and unstoppable reasons.
The country’s target of net zero by 2060 is likely to be achieved a decade earlier than previously assumed, and perhaps earlier than in Europe.
Lauri Myllyvirta, co-founder of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, says China has reached a structural tipping point where the roll-out of renewables is outpacing the rise in electricity demand.
“A drop in power-sector emissions in 2024 is essentially locked in. We’re likely to see a fall in total CO2 emitted in the first half of next year,” he said.
At the risk of overtaxing the reader’s appetite for figures, it is worth spelling out the enormity of what China is doing. The China Electricity Council says the country will add 210 GW of solar this year, twice the entire solar capacity installed in the US to date.
It is not going to stop there. Carbon Brief says China’s output of solar panels was 310 GW in 2022; it will be 500 GW in 2023; and 1000 GW in 2025 – four times the total installation of new solar worldwide last year.
Regarding the scare point of new Chinese coal plants:
The regime is approving two new coal plants a week. It does not mean what many in the West think it means. China is adding one GW of coal power on average as back-up for every six GW of new renewable power. The two go hand in hand.
“The more renewable energy used, the more the need for coal peaking capacity. A large number of coal power units will be idle,” says Chinese coal expert Li Ting.
Obligatory Westoid nonsense about how Xi is evil and he just wants to take over the world with his sinister measures to protect the environment.
Xi seeks global supremacy. He was never going to let climate worries alone hold back China’s rise. But today the two are in perfect alignment. Clean-tech has become the spearhead of China’s global economic conquest, and this changes the thrust of Beijing’s climate diplomacy.
It is no longer possible for foot-draggers to hide behind China. As Chinese emissions roll over and go into free-fall, Xi will become an even bigger problem for them than Western preachers.
Excuse me sweety, but if the Free Market wanted us to actually try, it would've have made trying result in more treats.
You will have clean energy.
You will have efficient public transport.
You will prevent millions from dying of pandemic.
You will like it.
but have you thought about the billionaire's investment in climate change bunkers?
I need china to get on the true fuck cars train and enforce that on us, for all their amazing public transit they're still so car brained too
Tried nothing would be a better reality. Germany listened to the radlibs and closed their nuclear power plants. They are now building brand new coal plants to meet power demands.
Even better, the coal those plants burn contains trace amounts of uranium, and when burned in large quantities those trace amounts turn into significant quantities of radioactive fucking dust. Germans are fucking stupid.
All coal has trace amounts of radionuclides. In fact, coal power plants are emitting more radioactivity per mWt than nuclear power plants.
Yeah, most of them use lignite, which holds a dubious honor of being the most dirty fuel imaginable.
It's so sad because nuclear has plenty of issues but also is the only power source that would viably be able to provide enough clean power to provide for the west's high demands. However, nuclear needs to be public to be worth the risks. Capitalism will pretty much always result in nuclear accidents. Sad that their anti-capitalist feeling are redirected towards something that's so promising. That's not even touching on Thorium reactors, which are much safer and hold even more promise but haven't really had enough resources to develop into usability under capitalism.
Yeah the future of humanity is going to hinge on China creating an artificial sun isn't it?
I think Germany should be annexed to its neighbors and permanently decimated as a nation-state. The world is simply not properly equipped to deal with them.
We shall turn Prussia into a homeland for the displaced Palestinian people.
BEEN KNOWN
COMMON CHINA W
ONLY COUNTRY TO ACTUALLY MEET THEIR CLIMATE AGREEMENT AND DECADES AHEAD
and they manage to do this despite producing ~15-20% of the USA's imports lately
I hope that percent grows. The only way the US is going to seriously reduce emissions is by all its junk being made in a country that takes the climate seriously.
nah, if that happens, dems will start rolling coal en-masse out of spite, and eat even more beef.
That reminds me,
if any of you non-yanks want to hear something cursed, in my seventh grade science class, we discussed climate change and some of its implications, but one of the "challenges" to actually fixing it would be "do we have to say goodbye to our American way of life?"
Even as a kid, I laughed at how anyone would think that American "culture" was worth an ugly, polluted planet.
Might have been a reference to Bush Sr.'s "The American way of life is not up for debate" remark at Kyoto?
Well then, it seems the only solution is a PLA ground invasion and mass executions
Liberate USA from tyrannical capitalist overlords.
a perma-burning coal pit on every street corner, with a truck route dumping additional fuel
Right but what about their oil barons and coal tycoons? Without their capital and funding, Xi is sure to not get re-elected and everyone knows getting re-elected is more important than doing good things.
Wait nevermind I'm just learning the PRC discarded liberal democracy because it's a fucking scam.
Can you imagine a system that allows policy to be ghost written by the industries that profit the most from said policy?
Imagine that, pharmaceutical companies deciding on healthcare regulations and costs, arms companies dictating foreign policy and direct/indirect military intervention, fossil fuel barons choosing what climate measures to adopt/reject, etc.
And the people are so indoctrinated they believe this is simply a good system with some minor flaws and it should be imposed on every nation in the world, otherwise they're not """free"""?
Scary thought.
The regime is approving two new coal plants a week. It does not mean what many in the West think it means. China is adding one GW of coal power on average as back-up for every six GW of new renewable power. The two go hand in hand.
For those who don't understand this part in particular. How power grids work is that there's an expected amount of power that needs to be generated at a given time period, but there are times where spikes in use happen. During those times "dirty" energy is used to help level out the spikes as they have the ability to generate energy at a shorter time period faster than green energy, as you do NOT want a power grid to break down (which causes a lot of societal problems, far worse than the emissions that would arise from it.(common result is death in vital buildings that need power))
While coal isn't ideal for the burning of dirty energy (natural gas burns relatively speaking, cleaner), coal is chosen because coal factories are significantly cheaper, and the scale that china wants to build energy requires the buildings now rather than later, so (hopefully) the coal plants are just temporary for them to rapidly expand their grid, and slowly transition the coal plants down the line to slightly more clean energy.
Thanks for the explanation comrade. The article also talks about how coal was chosen because natural gas must be imported and is thus vulnerable to supply shocks. China is apparently also taking measures to implement carbon capture and re-use technologies with newer plants (which will mostly run below capacity most of the time).
Yeah China's coal plants are way more advanced than America's at this point. 90% of China's 100 most efficient coal plants are ultra-supercritical, while it's only 1% for America.
The U.S doesn't upgrade them because of the dirty energy sources, coal is only a third. the other 2/3 is natural gas (and the fact that the existing coal plants are primarily used in the south, which is not so positive on climate change)
Yes, it probably does not make sense for the US to upgrade them at this point. This is good to know when American reactionaries point at Chinese dirt coal, however. The truth is China's is actually less dirty than America's.
Also worth noting that power plants only used as backups in times of grid instability can at some point in the future switch over to using biomass/biochar or some other carbon neutral combustible fuel. When something is a last line backup, a whole bunch of options open up for using combustion in a carbon neutral way that isn't realistically feasible when a powerplant is being used for baseload or normal peaker operations. Ideally in a few decades all the grids of the world will be solar/wind/nuclear combined with grid scale energy storage replacing normal coal/gas peaker plants, and emergency backups being biofuel/efuel burning generators.
Same applies to the massive diesel generators built underneath critical facilities like data centers and hospitals. Because it's a last resort emergency backup only meant to be used rarely, it becomes feasible to use either e-diesel or bio-deisel.
It would be good to switch to biofuels, but we should remember they aren't a good solution either. Biofuel isn't carbon neutral, it only appears that way due to spread sheet magic, and even then the numbers are fudged
Spike usage is also about the only time I can see a viable use for electrofuels, as they are among the only "renewable" fuels that can be stored. E-fuels are still fucking stupid tho, the problem they solve shouldn't be an issue of such magnitude it requires such an investment. The problem is a symptom of larger issues.
Between this and the fusion power news earlier this year I am fully willing to believe that China is going to end energy scarcity in this century and leave the US in the stone age.
I can also foresee the stupidest of all possible futures where China is offering free fusion tech to the US but America refuses to implement it because
power companies can't profit off of abundant energyChina is genociding the hydrogen atoms.https://asiatimes.com/2023/11/chinas-jiangxi-to-build-a-fusion-fission-reactor/
https://asiatimes.com/2023/05/east-reactor-puts-china-on-fusions-leading-edge/
I remember this, haven't seen much else. Am also curious.
A lot of this new capacity is rural and mountainous too, perfect for where it's hard to build infrastructure, it doubles as poverty alleviation
Not being a fucking moron while America let's somebody who thinks global warming is a communist hoax to have disproportionate influence on political decisions.
The old onion article about how AL queda realized they could just sit back and let America destroy itself continues to be 100% true.
RIP to the talking point of 'why should we reduce our emissions if China's are so high?'
Hello to the talking point "China is lying about reducing their emissions".
No, worse.
then: "If China's doing nothing, let's do nothing too!" now: "Get off my case, let us consoom in peace! China will clean up after us anyways!"
This is incredible. I don't think there is any shot that the US and EU hit their targets. Imagine being on track or even ahead.
I can legit imagine the U.S just failing to meet standards and just offsetting it with China's falling emissions.
Paying China billions to claim we met our standards and China didn't while Americans talk about china's culture of political dishonesty.
The US is that kid in college that did Jack shit on a group project but still got credit.
They literally immediatly started making excuses of why it was unreasonable to expect them too instead of actually trying.
And most of those xcuses were "China isn't going to do it so why should we"
China continuing to lap America in pretty much every aspect.
Getting repeatedly dunked on in a game you started thinking you'd win and then saying "well it it never mattered anyway, I'm giving up" or "they cheated anyway"
Carbon emissions have fallen
Billions must be invested into Green Energy
