cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/971805

Sources for all claims in link.

I wrote in December that to call China the “world leader in renewable energy” was a colossal understatement.

Even the Western press considers the PRC’s climate target to be all-important to preventing complete global disaster. It was estimated to reduce projected temperature by 0.3 degrees Celsius, the largest drop ever calculated by climate models.

Anyone doubting that the PRC is willing and capable of not just fulfilling, but exceeding, its goals is not paying attention.

Each year from 2020 to 2022, China installed about 140GW of new renewable electricity capacity, more than the US, the EU, and India put together. (A gigawatt is enough to power 750,000 homes.)

In December, ground was broken on the world’s largest desert renewable energy project in Inner Mongolia.

The IEA estimated China would add 80GW of new solar capacity in 2023; in February, the China Photovoltaic Industry Association said between 95 and 120

Both are already wrong. In the first four months of 2023, nearly THREE TIMES as much new solar capacity had been installed than in the same period in 2022. China’s NEW solar capacity installed this year will exceed the entire TOTAL in the US.

In May, the chairman of Tongwei Solar predicted that new installations might fall between 200 and 300 gigawatts in 2024—almost TWICE the current US total.

It’s not just solar energy that China does well. In 2021, China installed more offshore wind capacity in one year than the rest of the world combined had in the past five. As of January 2022, China operated half of all the world’s offshore wind turbines.

According a report by Global Energy Monitor in June, China is currently on track to DOUBLE its entire renewable energy capacity by 2025—five years earlier than the government’s original target date of 2030.

China’s “nuclear pipeline” or the total capacity of all its new reactors under development, is also as big as the rest of the world’s combined, at ~250 GW. In 2021, 19 new reactors were under construction, 43 awaiting permits, and another 166 were planned.

In April 2022, plans for another 6 new reactors were announced. China also has the most advanced and efficient reactors in the world, with no need for water cooling; in 2022, for example, the first “fourth-generation” reactor came online in Shandong.

… In fact, proportional to their share, the US contribution was 0.05% of China’s in 2021.

Energy is only one aspect of the climate solution, though; China is ALSO far and away the world leader in EVERY OTHER aspect.

Since 1980, China doubled its forest coverage, planting more new trees than the rest of the world combined.

Per the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, between 2010 and 2020 China had an average annual net gain in forest area of almost 2 million hectares, over 4 times as much as Australia’s (2nd-largest) and nearly 20 times as much as the United States’.

In 2021, the government set a new target rate of afforestation of 36,000 square kilometers per year—or 3.6 million hectares, nearly double its previous rate, or enough new trees to cover the land area of Belgium.

China’s shift to a green economy isn’t just happening fast—it’s still accelerating.

From 2016-2018, EV sales in China jumped from 1% to 5%. They reached 20% in 2022—three years ahead of schedule. (The US finally reached 5% in 2022.)

As of 2022, 98% of all electric buses in the world were deployed in Chinese cities.

China’s electric high-speed rail network is longer than every other country’s combined, and continues to expand. In 2007 China had virtually no HSR; today, if they had been placed in one line, China’s high-speed railways could wrap around the circumference of the Earth.

According to the Paulson Institute in Chicago, when accounting for not just revenue but passenger time and airline trips saved, China’s HSR had generated a net surplus of nearly $400 billion as of 2022.

No other country is forcing China to lead the world in the conversion to a sustainable economy—in fact, the United States government has been trying to STOP it, for example by placing sanctions on China’s photovoltaic manufacturing.

China’s goal was peak emissions before 2030 and carbon-neutrality by 2060. Given how much Chinese renewables have overperformed recently, the peak will likely come sooner rather than later—maybe within the next two years. It may even already be passed.

China’s emissions are mainly from coal. But Chinese coal-fired power plants are much different from Western plants.

Chinese coal plants have set the world record for efficiency, approaching 50%, compared with a typical Australian plant’s 30% efficiency.

The PRC’s clean air policies not only cut air pollution almost in half between 2013 and 2020, but also drove a global decline in air pollution. (I.e. if China’s contribution were tallied separately, the overall rate would have increased, not decreased.)

Violating China’s environmental policies can lead to real punishment. In March 2021, four major steel mills in Hebei were caught falsifying records to evade carbon emission limits; the next year, dozens of executives responsible were sentenced to prison.

In contrast, though the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe killed several workers and was the largest marine oil spill in history, no one from BP spent even a day in jail.

As of this tweet, Norfolk Southern faces no criminal charges for the East Palestine train disaster in February.

Last summer, after weeks of struggle, the wildfires besieging Chongqing were driven back and extinguished; not just by water, sand, chemicals, or controlled burns, but by community.

Twenty thousand civil servants and volunteers climbed or biked up and down the mountain in the sweltering heat to deliver supplies and construct fire barriers; through their collective action, the cities were saved.

The solutions to the climate apocalypse are collective and mundane—economic planning, technological development, and the redistribution of resources—but the freedom to pursue those solutions is very rare and very dear.

Presently, China alone seems to have this freedom.

Also in China is the largest economic engine in history controlled by a Communist Party and a workers’ state, that is not required by class interest to seek profit above all else.

Probably just a coincidence or something, idk.

  • Eat_Yo_Vegetables69@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Obligatory.

    The western world by far consumes the most per capita but it still demands reducing consumption and pushing the blame onto the 2.7 billion people that produces all their stuff.

    “We need you to continue building our goods and toys, but you need to consume less, you’re polluting our beautiful garden!”.

    Colonial mentality

    • bunbun@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      There’s roughly a billion people living in the imperial core, enjoying the privilege built off of exploiting the resources and moving the industries to the periphery. Then they call the other seven billion the problem, and tell them to cut their (much lower) standards of living to make up for it. Definitely makes sense, yep.

  • bandarawan@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    I wait for the day anti green politicians in Germany stop pointing at the alleged biggest polluter in the world (China) saying: “whY shOuLd wE do soMEThInG agAinSt clImatE cHaNGe, if TheY donT foLlOw”?

    • redtea@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      I hope you eat well and breathe in the meantime. We could be waiting for a while 😞

    • AmarkuntheGatherer@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Come now friend, I’m sure the people shutting down nuclear plants while ~80% of the country’s power comes from petrol, coal and natural gas are well-intentioned. Whyever would anyone think otherwise.

      • bandarawan@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Not sure what your point is. But the exit of the 1% nuclear we had left was not a green decision.

        But it sure was used to bash green actions, yes.

        • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          I believe the German greens did support it though? Even if they didn’t make the decision, they did approve of it.

          Or maybe I’m projecting my own country’s green party attitude towards nuclear, and got mistaken.

  • addie
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    1 year ago

    Yeah - China might be pulling ahead in renewables, but they’re still building more new coal plants than the rest of the world combined.

    https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-six-times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-fin

    A lot of that added carbon is to power more air conditioning in reaction to the heat rises caused by increasing carbon emissions - a vicious cycle.

    But yeah, this article is one-sided bullshit that ignores the massive elephant in the room. We’ve one atmosphere and we’re ruining it, and it’s going to affect everyone. More renewables are great, but it has to be part of the big picture, which means a sustainable perpetual decrease in emissions worldwide. Start with the major polluting companies and industries, and then continue all the way to the bottom.

    • redtea@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      Yeah - China might be pulling ahead in renewables, but they’re still building more new coal plants than the rest of the world combined.

      New coal is disappointing but it doesn’t detract from the other advances. It’s not the same in the west, where new fossil infrastructure is still being signed off but with no real attempt to start building for an alternative. From the thread:

      According to calculations by economist Sean Starrs, the PRC controls an estimated 6% share of the world’s most valuable capital. Yet it has spent more on the energy transition than any other country since 2012.

      Do you mean the thread that I posted or the npr article when you say:

      But yeah, this article is one-sided bullshit that ignores the massive elephant in the room.

      ‘China (Coal)’ is shown at the top of the list of top emitters (14.32% of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions), e.g. here. The problem is that the stats only date from 1988–2015, beginning shortly after China opened up. Taking in the full historical picture:

      the United States is single-handedly responsible for 40 percent of excess global CO2 emissions. The European Union and the United Kingdom are together responsible for 29 percent. And along with the rest of Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Japan, the Global North as a group is collectively responsible for no less than 92 percent.

      Meanwhile, the Global South – the entire continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America – are responsible for only 8 percent of excess emissions. And that’s from only a handful of countries, such as around the Gulf. The majority of countries in the Global South still remain within their fair shares of the planetary boundary, including large nations like India, Indonesia and Nigeria. Even China was within its fair share as of 2015, the final year of data in this study, although it has since overshot the limit.

      The final sentence of the second paragraph suggests China is still a problem. Partly, that’s true. But one of the author’s has since concluded that China still hasn’t reached it’s ‘fair share’ of contributions to 1.5C warming:

      Not only have [Global North] countries overshot their fair-share of the safe planetary boundary… but the 1.5C and 2C budgets too. By a long way. And the consequences fall hardest on the global South. The injustice is staggering. …

      Using carbon prices from IPCC scenarios that limit warming to 1.5C, we calculate that over-emitting countries would owe a total of $192 trillion to the rest of the world by 2050 to compensate for this appropriation. Most is owed by the US, UK and EU.

      Three other factors are also relevant (i) China is doing something about its emissions (ii) China is causing so many emissions to feed the insatiable west and (iii) it is operating in a world dominated by Anglo-European imperialists. Unless the west starts to think about rapid and radical changes, new Chinese coal plants are by-the-by. More by Jason Hickel, et al, here.

      • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, but have you considered…CHYNA BAD?!?!

        There we go. Global warming solved. No need to thank me, or actually do anything about it, we can just say Chinabad and it magically fixes itself.

        • redtea@lemmygrad.mlOP
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          1 year ago

          Damnit. This is like getting to the end of the jigsaw and realise you’re missing a piece.

    • Blinky_katt@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Do you believe that third world countries in general who have a desperate need to develop and not be poor anymore should be prevented from access to cheap energy because that’s all they can afford? If so, do you believe already-developed countries should pay subsidies so these countries can use the far more expensive green energy and build the infrastructure to access it?

      Do you know that as the world’s factory, how much of the carbon China produces should be counted under the tabs of all the countries that put in orders for it to produce? What do you feel about those western countries which are the world’s highest carbon emitter per capita and yet refuse to sign onto climate accords or take big actions?

      Do you only expect perfection in a black or white way and everything that doesn’t meet that standard is completely pointless, instantly to be dismissed, or are you able to celebrate some progress where they exist? If not, because you believe the climate issue is an urgent one that must contain no compromise, what policies do you believe is practically implementable and quickly effective and what steps to you think we can take to get there?

    • mesapls@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      So a lot (or rather, I believe all) of China’s new coal plants are supercritical or ultra-supercritical (not a made up term) coal plants specifically constructed with the intention to replace older plants that pollute far more, and are being forcefully closed.

      https://www.americanprogress.org/article/everything-think-know-coal-china-wrong/

      This article discusses it in more detail, and that was 6 years ago. China is a developing country with an enormous amount of growth in energy needs, so to plug the holes with coal with new efficient plants, while closing old ones, seems reasonable when faced with their predicament.