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Why China is Winning the Clean Energy Race (axios.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: U.S. politicians have been warning for years that America couldn't let China win the clean energy race. That's exactly what has happened, with the trends most stark in electric cars, solar and nuclear energy. Why it matters: Building for the last decade, these trends have accelerated in the last couple of years. Politicians and business leaders said America's dominance in this space would bring jobs to the U.S. and security to our clean-energy resources, and now both of those goals are at risk. Why China is doing this: It needs to literally energize its 1.4 billion people, both how they travel and how they power their homes. Its leadership feels compelled to do it in a cleaner way than the U.S. did. Air pollution is at dangerously high levels across many of China's cities. People are seeing and feeling health repercussions of China's dependence on fossil fuel-fired cars and power plants in an acute way. Traditional air pollution, not climate change, is a big driver.
China's ruling political party has no competition, so they never felt the need to directly contradict progressive ideas. They have admitted the existence of global warming (sorry GOP, I will not use the term you invented "climate change") and are actively fighting against it.
The USA's ruling party is currently the GOP, it holds the Presidency and a majority in Supreme Court, the House of Representatives, and the Senate.
But the GOP got there in part by fighting against the Democrat party, which had put itself on the side of Progress. That includes the progressive idea of global warming.
So the GOP denied global warming and put pro pollution people in charge. They refuse to put funding into clean energy and that explains it.
Read the article before commenting.
Traditional air pollution, not climate change, is the main driver behind their desire to improve.
People are more motivated to address a threat they can see and experience (their current air quality) than something that may impact them 10-20-30 years in the future.
How are absolute deployment numbers evidence that a country with a population of 1.4 billion is "winning the race" over a country with a population a quarter that size?
Don't the charts in the article really say that the U.S. has nearly double the deployment of electric vehicles and solar on a per-capita basis?
As for nuclear, it's hard to even call that a "race" when we've hobbled ourselves.
China is NOT worried about CAGW dolt. CAGW is simply another foreign money maker for them and strategically exploits the US. Urban particulates for black lungs, NOx, SOx are their immediate problems.
GOP invented the term "climate change"?
Time to put down that crack pipe, son.
First and foremost, where does China's electricity come from? 80+% is from COAL. Worse yet, the gov requires companies to put Emission.Controls on the plants ( due to treaty with Japan ), but actually discourages companies from using them, since Japan forgot to require that part.
Secondly, how much their electricity comes from clean sources? All the rest. IOW, less than 20% of their current 1.4 TW of electricity comes from clean energy. But to put matters into prospective, 100% of available clean energy is currently used. So by adding more EVs which will increase demand, where will the electricity come from? From coal. Right now, coal is at 60-65% utilization and can be quickly ramped up. Clean energy can not.
Third, how much new clean energy vs coal does China add yearly ? Each year, they add about 30 GW of solar, wind and hydro COMBINED. Of course, with their lack of good winds combined with pollution blocking solar, these run at less than 25%. So that 30 gw of 'clean energy' generates less than 7.5 GW. Now how much NEW coal plants ( not just replacements ) does China add yearly? 35-50 GW. China's plan is to CONTINUE adding new coal plants until 2030 at which point, they will be around 1.75 TW of coal. Then they will be adding their own nuclear power plants. But the coal will continue to run until 2060 or so. That is more coal than Europe, north America, central America, South America, and Africa COMBINED TODAY.
Lastly, why will China continue to add more coal plants while switching to EVs? 2 reasons. The first is their hope to destroy all foreign car makers. The second is that they HAVE hit peak oil and they either have to import which they are opposed to, OR go to war with phillipines, Viet nam, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, and possibly Russia and Australia to get all of the oceans that they have now declared to be theirs.
Sadly, idiots who do not understand science on AGW OR strategy, are helping China out by declaring them as winners in clean energy race, which is going to lead to WW3.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Depends. "winning" often involves perfecting the manufacturing environment as well. Including the supply chain, support businesses, logistics and most importantly, the workforce.
That's something that builds upon itself and can't be moved overnight. It's why the US has historically been such an economic powerhouse: it's industrial production strength.
Losing the next wave of manufacturing advanced energy products can be a pretty big loss. Both in terms of economic growth, employment and even more importantly, negotiating power during trade agreements.
We already lost the electronics manufacturing economy. Missing out on the renewable energy economy would seem to be a blow we can't take.
China is building 700 coal plants, with 80% of the energy generation capacity within China. And that's just in the next few years. I guess when China deploys an order of magnitude more power generation as coal rather than wind or solar it's considered a "clean energy win"?
But they're still a part of the Paris Agreement, so they have that going for them. ;)
but not much. Our electoral college means that a handful of swing states decides who the president will be (because they're the only ones that aren't locked into one party). In three of them a handful of well organized coal miners decided our last election. Yeah, they're trying to stop progress, but they're doing that because corporatist Democrats abandoned them.
If the Dems want to win again they need to stop abandoning large swaths of the working class and become an actual populist left party again. That means $15 minimum wage, Medicare for All, College for All, end the wars and a "New" New deal (e.g. infrastructure spending). Otherwise folks are going to keep voting GOP because, well, what have you got to lose?
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China's pollution output is only increasing. The US' is decreasing. By all meaningful measures China is badly losing and the US is winning.
It's like a child claiming they have more money because he has ten pennies and you have a checkbook.
Talk about idiocy of propaganda.
Nope, he called the Democratic Party of the US progressive. He also said, the Chinese single Party has no competition, so it could embrace the progressive idea of man-made climate change and it actively fights against it. Partly, because their smog-ridden great cities suffered more than present day US cities. Having no progressive competition left them acting freely for the greater good of their people (in this issue).
Contrary to you, realizing that pollution/climate change is a problem and that developing green energies will also create jobs, it is indeed progressive. Much more than the Orange Clown's dumb denial. I bet, China will open factories in the US where the White Trash can build wind turbines and solar panels instead of cars AND Trump will PAY FOR IT.
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China is NOT worried about CAGW dolt. CAGW is simply another foreign money maker for them and strategically exploits the US.
Urban particulates for black lungs, NOx, SOx are their immediate problems.
And yet the US Repubs think it is about denying CAGW, so the US is losing the renewable race. The idiot-in-chief thinks revitalizing coal is so much more important.
Depends. "winning" often involves perfecting the manufacturing environment as well. Including the supply chain, support businesses, logistics and most importantly, the workforce.
That's something that builds upon itself and can't be moved overnight. It's why the US has historically been such an economic powerhouse: it's industrial production strength.
Losing the next wave of manufacturing advanced energy products can be a pretty big loss. Both in terms of economic growth, employment and even more importantly, negotiating power during trade agreements.
We already lost the electronics manufacturing economy. Missing out on the renewable energy economy would seem to be a blow we can't take.
If only we could vote against the party that supports outsourcing everything to China. Oh wait, they both support that. Economic Nationalism really needs to find a good home. It resonates strongly enough that it allowed even a generally unelectable person like Trump to get elected. If a decent candidate got behind it they would certainly win.
This isn't a race you win by being first but by being last. First to finish does it at the highest economic cost. Last to finish benefits from the economies of scale that the early adopters create that drives down the cost of technology.