They‘ll keep building more coal power plants in the global south and export coal. There‘s a lot of money to be made.

They are going to keep those coal plants as back up but the amount they use then is decreasing.

At the same time they are rapidly moving transport into electricity and they are growing their electrical demand.

This year should be the tipping point where coal and oil usage drops. Capacity and number of coal is meaningless.

It's not about regulation. China has almost the complete photovoltaic production of the world. Essentially all panels installed in the rest of the world are also Chinese. It's about a smart government knowing which technologies to pursue, instead of things like the Spanish "sun tax" of the 2010s that killed whatever solar industry there might have been in the sunniest country in Europe.

The dictatorship is fast is a lure, it's actually not useful, as they run in the direction of the dictator but usually doesn't adjust or stop in time. Sometimes you see something good coming out if it, but you shouldn't forget all the bad things they do too.

That said, I hope we'll have enough solar for everyone in a decade or so!

This is legit true IDK why you're getting downvoted. Just because it doesn't show on US energy usage, every time you buy stupid shit you don't need like an automatic corn dog maker or a taco holder shaped like a sombrero that holds a shot glass in the middle, that has a real cost in terms of CO2 and that is done in China.

It's a bit hard to believe, but the vast majority of China's manufacturing is consumed in China. They're actually not that export oriented compared to other countries like Germany or Japan, it's just the scale that makes them such an export juggernaut. The flip side of this is that most of the energy use is also actually China's own energy use.

And China's energy use is increasing simply because its people are getting richer and consuming more. Based on this, I don't think China is the main concern. There are lots more developing countries that will likewise use more energy as they develop. China's green transition seems to be going full tilt, but I'm not sure those other countries can transition as quickly.

So you're saying we should stop trading with China?

Last year China installed more solar than the rest of the world combined, but they have less than 1/5th of the worldpopulation 🤷

There are lot's of things you can criticize China about, their commitment to renewable energy isn't one of them.

I'm guessing a lot of that coal is being used to feed westerners urge to buy more crap we don't need.

You sound like all the right-wing politicians the world over who don't want to implement zero carbon solutions because "China still burn coal".

We're on a sinking ship and you're complaining that you don't like the colour of the life raft.

If China was the only country in the world that burned coal, but they exclusively burned coal, and everybody else was on solar panels the world would still be an infinitely better place and it is right now. Not doing something just because other people also aren't doing it just ensures that nobody does anything.

Yes, their energy requirements have also skyrocketed in the last 20 years. However if you look at their energy mix, in 2010 their energy mix was around 70% from coal, and today it's around 50% of their totally energy mix.

Coal is unreliable

How? I would've said coal is very reliable, it worked for over a hundred years.

Solar panels don't work as well with greysky.

Yeah I think by "source" they just mean they're just giving credit to the bsky post they got the graph from, the data seems to be from a green energy transition thinktank. No idea if you'd put more stock in ember-energy.org/, so make of that what you will 🤷‍♂️

From the website:

Data into action

Open data and intelligent policy analysis to unlock a clean, electrified energy future

It's great that they are creating that much. They have the largest incentive too, the U.S. second. The G7 they refer to (U.S. U.K. Japan Germany France Italy Canada) used a total of ~7 PWh of electricity in 2023. China used ~9 PWh.

Hopefully the G7 starts catching up. Chinas form of government puts their long term expendetures into play when figuring out where to invest as they have a monetary stake in how much it costs to produce the electricity.

In countries like the U.S. we see companies who have large investments in oil, coal, and such trying to manipulate the transition because they didn't have the investments already in place with alternative energy sources. The U.S. government has no money "invested" per say, so long term they don't care that it costs more during the transition as those profits are made by the companies. The old oil tycoons will milk every penny under the attitude "I got mine.". Then they'll die, and we will hope some companies have transitions in place that bring low cost efficient renewable systems long term

🤔 it was made into fancy graphs by the guy on Bluesky but the data was from ember-energy.org who are well known for supplying renewable stats