China is Building 74% of All Current Solar and Wind Projects (ft.com) 68
Almost three-quarters of all solar and wind power projects being built globally are in China, says a new report that highlights the country's rapid expansion of renewable energy sources. From a report: China is building 510 gigawatts of utility-scale solar and wind projects, according to data from the Global Energy Monitor, a non-governmental organisation based in San Francisco. That compares with about 689GW under construction globally, GEM said.
A rough rule of thumb is that a gigawatt can potentially supply electricity for about 1mn homes. "China is [...] leading the world in global renewable energy build-out," the report said. "It continues to add solar and wind power at a record pace." China's expansion of clean energy sources is important for efforts to fight climate change, given the country's dominant role in global manufacturing.
A rough rule of thumb is that a gigawatt can potentially supply electricity for about 1mn homes. "China is [...] leading the world in global renewable energy build-out," the report said. "It continues to add solar and wind power at a record pace." China's expansion of clean energy sources is important for efforts to fight climate change, given the country's dominant role in global manufacturing.
I prefer solar (Score:2)
2. The sun shine is more dependable than wind
3.???
4. Profit!!!
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Re:I prefer solar (Score:5, Insightful)
Most human populations dont live so far from the equator. A solution that works for 95% of humanity is a pretty good one.
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I lived for a while in Fairbanks, AK. Battery storage doesn't last long enough when the sun don't shine for months.
quoting from a page about the local climate
it sounds like you could be golden.
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i can't think of any particularly unsolved challenges. We have multi-grade oils that will work in transmissions just fine well below those levels. And electric machines generally prefer the cold anyway (lower electrical resistance, less overheating and melting).
Between existing tech for airplanes, arctic construction, and oil drilling it covers all the bases.
Some effort would have to be put in to make sure on site batteries used for bootstrapping and control don't freeze, but that also seems reasonably we
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So we should discount the solution because it doesn't work where 99% of the population doesn't live?
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If only there were means of storing electricity...
Batteries work reasonably well for dealing with "night".
Batteries don't work as well for dealing with "winter".
It is best to have a mix of energy sources. The sun is weaker in winter, but winds are generally stronger in winter.
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But they don't work at night.
That's what flashlights are for - duh. :-)
Re:I prefer solar (Score:4, Interesting)
The combination tends to work well.
True as long as you have good grid connectivity so you can ship wind power in from a distance, which China is also building. Dealing with these variable sources is getting better and better. Storage over 24 hour periods and possibly even weeks also seems to be moving towards being a solved problem with new technologies coming online. Find a mineshaft or a hill, lift a weight from the bottom to the top, then store it nearby. Lower it down when you need energy back. Alternatively, pump water out of an underwater concrete dome or pump water up a hill and so on. It's also possible to convert iron oxide into iron powder that can later be burned for energy. That's all before you start talking about more expensive but convenient solutions like batteries.
China will now have a vast amount of energy that they can start testing those solutions on as well as finding industrial processes that can run intermittently when there's super cheap energy available. That converts this from a tactical gain into a strategic one. Once those industrial processes are mostly based in China they can keep learning to optimize them at scale in a way nobody else will be able to.
When we look back in 30 years time at what caused America to fall, energy prices, spending too much on nuclear, and failure to compete in renewable energy is my best guess.
Re:I prefer solar (Score:4, Insightful)
When we look back in 30 years time at what caused America to fall, energy prices, spending too much on nuclear, and failure to compete in renewable energy is my best guess.
"Being run by Inbred Klan Fuckwit Republicans" will be pretty high on the list too.
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When we look back in 30 years time at what caused America to fall, energy prices, spending too much on nuclear, and failure to compete in renewable energy is my best guess.
America could fail for spending too much on nuclear? Do you know how much China is spending on nuclear right now?
If America fails then it will be because they did not spend enough on nuclear power. Consider that any nation considered a military "superpower" they must have nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines. That list is very short.
Why would a nation seeking to be a military superpower not spend gobs of money on nuclear power? If it works so well for ships at sea then why not for factories,
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You do know that the use cases, and designs of naval reactors are wildly different than commercial pressurized water reactors, yeah?
For fucks sake.
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Probably barely aware of what enriched uranium is and would have difficulty working out why you can use more highly enriched uranium in subs than civilian reactors.
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Result? Overproduction of electricity on sunny days. To the extent that you have to pay to put energy on the grid.
Between Bitcoin and AI, "too much electricity" shouldn't be an insurmountable problem for anyone. Either of things will happily consume as much electricity as you can throw at it, and want more. Of course, if you think those things are a waste of power, you could start using excess power to synthesize fuel to sell.
Buuuut INDIA! (Score:2)
It's India now right? The new evil that we can use as an excuse to do nothing? God damn India ruining the planet! How dare they. Why would I do anything when we have Chin... err India!
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That sounds like you think the problem is solved already. Compare the increase in coal production to increase in solar production:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Buuuut INDIA! (Score:4, Insightful)
1,21 (Score:1)
Why aren't we doing that? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's like a no-brainer to double down on solar. The government should just offer all unemployed people a job making solar (panels, batteries, installation etc). Then there's no excuse for being able-bodied and unemployed. You know how the United States built tens of thousands of airplanes, tanks, big ass submarines and entire fucking ships during WW2. Why the F can't we do that for solar? The USA .. your grandpa .. built 2700 Liberty ships .. within 3 years. 100,000 military aircraft anually.
We could easily do this solar shit if we tried.
Re:Why aren't we doing that? (Score:4, Insightful)
We could easily do this solar shit if we tried.
China's government doesn't need to care very much about the political appeal of it's choices. It doesn't matter if the citizens like or dislike solar/wind/renewables. The US Government does need to care (at least to some extent, since they don't want to get voted out [putting to the side any current claims about this point one way or the other]); so lots of energy gets spent on convincing the electorate that solar/wind/renewables are woke shit, which results in candidates who say that solar/wind/renewables are woke shit, which feeds back into reassuring the electorate that solar/wind/renewables are in fact woke shit. It doesn't matter if the chicken or the egg came first, the feedback loop is currently impenetrable.
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China's government doesn't need to care very much about the political appeal of it's choices.
I don't think that is really true. But are you really arguing the reason China is making more progress on alternative energy is that it has a better system of government?
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It's like a no-brainer to double down on solar. The government should just offer all unemployed people a job making solar (panels, batteries, installation etc). Then there's no excuse for being able-bodied and unemployed. You know how the United States built tens of thousands of airplanes, tanks, big ass submarines and entire fucking ships during WW2. Why the F can't we do that for solar? The USA .. your grandpa .. built 2700 Liberty ships .. within 3 years. 100,000 military aircraft anually.
We could easily do this solar shit if we tried.
It was nearly trivial to turn automobile factories into making aircraft and tanks. Getting people trained in welding ships together from common steel is also fairly trivial. We can't just shift the unemployed into making solar PV panels because this process starts with mining for high purity silicon. Then that silicon needs to be processed into solar cells. Then we might get into the parts where it is a matter of quickly trained bodies doing the construction, installation, and such of getting those PV p
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Say what? Silicon comes from quartzite or sand that's found just about everywhere. Sure, you have to purify it, but that's not a super hard problem.
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Assuming purifying silicon isn't a difficult process then there's still the problems of constructing the facilities to do this processing, and the matter that any high purity silicon produced would likely be wanted for making electronics than PV panels.
The USA doesn't produce much silicon, and the bulk of the silicon produced in the USA is "metallurgical grade", as in suited only for making steel or other alloys. If making solar PV panels then they'd want to start with highly pure sand so as to make the pu
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Because solar is woke and gay.
MAGA! (Score:3)
Making Asia Great Again.
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Lost cost energy policy -- ie Coal First (Score:2, Informative)
Making Asia Great Again.
Not really. China is also building tons of coal plants. Renewables are NOT displacing coal, the most polluting fossil fuel. China is displacing the more expensive fossil fuels first. They are pursing a lowest cost of power policy, ignoring pollution.
"[Jul 26, 2023 } It was a bad week for anyone who thought China would cooperate on emissions reduction. President Xi Jinping reiterated that his country would set its own path on the issue and not be influenced by outside factors, according to the Washington
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What is China going to do with all those millions of panels after 20 years?
Recycle them.
Lots of toxic chemicals in those panels.
As opposed to the toxic-chemical-free form of energy production which is...
we need nuclear power which can run 24/7
Doh.
How about we quit pretending that this is a "one or the other" thing?
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How about we quit pretending that this is a "one or the other" thing?
Why is every mention of nuclear power treated as if it is a "one or the other" thing?
What I'm seeing is a call that nuclear fission be allowed to compete with renewable energy on a level playing field. Do that and I'd expect some contraction in solar PV because without competition, and so much in laws that favor it, there's been solar PV being put in many marginal places that drive up costs. Level the playing field and I'd expect every region to find what works best for their climate, geography, and so fo
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Why is every mention of nuclear power treated as if it is a "one or the other" thing?
Every mention isn't. But I don't know how to interpret the comment I was replying to in any other way. I interpret their comment as "Solar is stupid, here are the reasons. We should be doing nuclear instead."
This isn't a "one or the other" thing. This is calling for the world to stop ignoring a very vital source of energy. We can do "all the above", and we should do all the above.
Agreed. Again, that's not what the comment I was replying to said. (Or at least not how I read it.)
What we have is "all the above, but we won't do that!"
That sentiment certainly exists, but that's not my opinion. I'm pro-nuclear, where it makes sense.
Re:Not enough (Score:4, Informative)
Lots of toxic chemicals in those panels.
No, there isn't.
Solar panels are made of silicon, oxygen, aluminum, copper, boron, and phosphorus.
None of those are toxic.
Some old panels used cadmium telluride, but that is not what China is installing.
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Luckily, posphorus is quite reactive (that's why it was used as an agent in matchsticks), oxidizes fast, and will form phosphoric acid when exposed to air, which indeed is not toxic. It is similar for copper, albeit some copper oxides are themselves toxic.
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Phosphorus, especially in its modification called White Phosphorus, is one of the most toxic substances known to Man.
Your body contains about a kilogram of phosphorus. Your bones, teeth, and DNA are made of phosphorus.
Also, copper is pretty poisonous.
Copper is necessary for human life.
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Your body contains about a kilogram of phosphorus. Your bones, teeth, and DNA are made of phosphorus.
And still, White Phosphorus is deadly in doses of less than 1 ppm. Enumerating elements is completely meaningless when talking about toxicity. What matters is the substance which contains the elements. And two chemically closely related substances can be harmless and absolutely toxic. Botulinum toxin, often called Botox for short, is deadly in doses above 2 ppt (or about 150 nanograms for a grown adult), and all it contains are the very same amino acids, which make up about 15% of your body weight.
Copper is necessary for human life.
Same sill
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White phosphorus is used for incendiary munitions, not for solar panels.
Billions of people somehow manage to survive with copper wires in their walls.
Oxygen is toxic! Don't expose yourself to it! (Score:2)
Phosphorus, especially in its modification called White Phosphorus, is one of the most toxic substances known to Man.
That's like saying that oxygen is one of the most toxic substances known to man, in its modification known as ozone. Phosphorus is not toxic; it is in fact one of the essential elements for life. The backbone of DNA molecules are phosphates; no phosphorus, no life.
And the amount of phosphorus in solar panels is absolutely trivial-- it's a dopant, about 100 ppm in the emitter of the cell, a layer roughly a micron thick. It is not "white phosphorus".
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What is China going to do with all those millions of panels after 20 years? Lots of toxic chemicals in those panels. Alsp with AI and EV demand we need nuclear power which can run 24/7
China is overtaking the USA on nuclear fission power production.
https://interestingengineering... [interestin...eering.com]
During the night, when EVs are parked for a recharge and the sun is absent, there will be a need for nuclear fission to provide power. Those that believe batteries can be used are ignoring that grid storage batteries would then be competing for EV storage batteries. Charging EV batteries from grid batteries is doubling the amount of batteries that need to be produced versus a power source that is reliable. Sw
Not toxic [Re:Not enough] (Score:2)
What is China going to do with all those millions of panels after 20 years? Lots of toxic chemicals in those panels.
That's a myth promulgated by the fossil-fuel industry.
The major components of solar panels, are, by mass: glass, aluminum (frames), silicon. All of these are recycleable; none of these are toxic. After that you have the polymer attaching the glass to the cells, and the wiring.
Compared to the amount of landfill that industrialized nations produce -- 2.13 billion metric tons annually, in 2020-- solar panels are trivial.
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King Taco says China doesn't have wind farms, so it must be true right?
LoL yeah. He also thinks they cause cancer. [factcheck.org]
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Of course, what he also thinks is that he lost a legal battle to prevent them being put up near a property of his in Scotland, and that he gets money from fossil fuel interests. And that combination of butthurt and greed combines with the stupidity you pointed out to drive his policy-making.
While approving (Score:1)
while approving 2 coal power plants a week.
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How US lost solar to China (Score:2)
The thing that gets me... (Score:1)
Is that with all this solar, wind, etc.... China *still* must build more coal plants even tho we are finding out their population is smaller than we thought.
In time, it will destroy demand for coal but for now, the projections are still for more coal plant by 2045.
I'm hoping they are wrong and solar/wind comes online faster. It's cheaper than coal but they simply can't produce and build it out fast enough globally.
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Coal is their backup, so even when coal consumption goes down they might still be building more plants.
Ya know what this means, dontcha? (Score:1)
More Tariffs!