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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.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
That must be it.
No, TFA at axios, with the help of published data, did. Go strawman somewhere else.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
It's building massive infrustructure now after we have learned al lthe lesons and develop new cleaner tech.
They had very little, 3rd world country type stuff, they jumped the gun with really dirty stuff for cheap, and continue to build out cleaner stuff.
They could also afford local labor.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
While it is true that China is winning by leapfrogging from old tech like dirty coal and replacing it with more efficient (2x) cogeneration scrubbed coal (to reduce emissions) and by installing cheaper and more efficient solar and wind, it is also true that many US states are doing the same. These states (like the 13 that joined California in implementing higher renewable and clean air standards) are competing very well, and since we have more than 50 percent of the US economy, it's a fair battle.
But, yes, the other states are being left in the dust. Or the floods and storms. Whatever.
Adapt or die.
Many US corporations are requiring all their facilities do the same, because more efficient and cheaper energy gives them a competitive advantage over the buggy whip old industries that don't adapt. Even WalMart, which had to do this to get business in China.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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 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"?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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China is leading in all energy production due to growth, but it is investing substantially more in clean generation technologies than the US is, and even more than the EU as a whole. Making some coal plants temporarily while scaling up production of solar, etc. is an effective solution to surging electricity demands in the meantime. Like in India where coal plants were built for decades but are now being scaled back. Growing productive populations need energy by all means, and that is a distinct phenomena from their investment in renewable generation to make it cheaper and to cap off and destroy the need to import any coal.
The people who are going to lose, will know they are going to lose and fight very hard. People who will gain, don't know whether they will gain, at what time or by hoe much. So they discount the future and do not support the changes that might benefit them.
In this specific example the fossil fuel industry is well entrenched and they know how to fight and they fight hard.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
China dominates the market for rare earths, which are necessary for the high strength magnets that windmills need, and for the interesting material high efficiency solar panels need.
Why doesn't the U.S. have a stronger edge in rare earths? Because you can't dig them up without also digging up lots of thorium, which we classify as a nuclear source material - and so impose a lot of requirements on how it's handled. And then we don't use it, even though we've known how to use it as a clean energy source for decades. Mostly because environmentalist groups scare people with the "N" word.
China is also constructing Thorium reactors, btw.
Just wait when their joint Russia/China wide body aircraft engine is completed.
I am worried American dominance won't last that long.
Plans of China & Russia "ditching" the dollar will simply make things worse.
The only clean energy is to use less energy.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
America is winning the race on anti-science rhetoric! I'd post a link to the numbers but we all know numbers are FAKE NEWS. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
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.
All of these "green" things require two important things:
(1) Cheap energy for affordable manufacturing (which the USA used to have and China currently has)
(2) Rare Earth minerals, like neodymium which is used in the magnets in the windmill generators, and the motors of electric cars (and even consumer drones)
American environmentalists pushed the regulations that drove up Amrican energy costs while China burns enormous quantities of very cheap coal, and they have pushed a combination of regulations and federal land grabs to eliminate mining in the US. The USA has plentiful rare Earth mineral resources, but they have nearly all been placed off-limits as presidents Clinton and Obma created huge new national monuments and wildlife refuges on those lands using those presidential authorities as a way to do what congress would not have allowed. No new rare Earth minals mines have opened in the USA for decades - everytime prospectors find a good place for one, it gets quickly declared as wildlife refuge or monument.
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. ;)
Ya but while you are leading, you reap the rewards. It's good the be the king (while it lasts).
You could say the same about Apple, Google, MSFT (in its day) or hell, Exxon, Walmart or post-WW2 US. Ya, you have to expend effort innovating and improving; but being first and best means you can sell to the world and be the richest in the world.
this shows China way ahead of Europe and America on nuclear power. However, in 2020, China will have 58 GW of nuclear power by 2021.
America has over 100 GW of nuclear power, but sadly, the same idiots from groups like this, continue to drive up our costs.
Europe has over 163 GW of nuclear power, and yet, this article claims that China is winning that?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I find it amusing that you think your first sentence and your second one have any causal link whatsoever.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Everything and everyone is about winning, from Charlie Sheen to Donald or Hillary. It is never, ever about the common good, because that's so socialist. Can't let Russia reach the moon first, not because of science but because of political reasons. Can't let China 'win' the clean energy race, but not because we care about the environment. We won't take care of the poor while we spend more $ on bomb and military bases. I look forward to the day when the world most powerful country is not one that is so egotistical and self-centered, it will actually be a small step for humankind.
Sounds people are still living in the cold war.
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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Someone builds the equipment. While doing that, they learn a great deal of expertise on how to build the equipment. That information can not be easily moved between (intelligent) countries. So the dominant player has a massive edge in retaining their dominance.
That's the race - to be the country that builds the stuff for "clean energy" projects. And the US lost that race.
Your story was out of date and wrong even when it was printed. See here and check the end, also note the dates are written differently such that while your article was written later it was also wrong when published.
It is popular to refer to way China does things all centralized as a better way these days, at least by those with a psychological tendency towards centralization, and ultimately the state, as the driving force in society that can Fix Things. Thomas Friedman, a very influential columnist at NY Times, comes to mind as CCCP fanboy that way.
Worth noting this same kind of clique were all agog over Japan's industrial might in the 80's, and were fixated on MITI's heavy hand as the reason the Japanese were so much 'better' at pick-the-subject-at-hand than silly USA stumbling along without Guidance from the sovereign. Same shtick, different country and decade.
False dichotomy: Just because China is building coal plants doesn't mean they are also building solar plants.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
So is it big oil trolls or Trump trolls modding this down?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
China is also constructing Thorium reactors, btw.
No they're not. They're building lots of classic PWRs and BWRs, upgraded and improved from the Westinghouse design of the 1970s but still the same enriched-uranium steam kettle technology at heart. They're completing five of them this year and starting to build another eight or so with a lot more planned. Thorium reactors, none today, none yesterday and none tomorrow.
They're looking at all sorts of newer reactor concepts, building some first-off units like a pebble-bed reactor (the HTR-PM) as well as a sodium-cooled breeder but thorium reactors, nope. There are some academic paper exercises on the subject but uranium reactor tech is well-proven and they need the electricity more than they need to spend time, effort and money on developing thorium as a reactor fuel.
Actually "global warming" and "climate change" are equally accurate, but at different spatial scales. The global waming causes changes to regional climates.
Some regions of the planet get net colder (e.g. as Europe will if it loses the gulf stream ocean current, a possible GW effect),
some warmer (desert zones will shift north in northern hemisphere and south in southern hemisphere due to the growth in energy and size of atmospheric convective cycles, poles will become warmer faster than average elsewhere),
Some wetter (overall level of water vapur in atmosphere has already increased about 5% due to recent global warming and is continuing to increase at around 1% per decade.),
and some drier (see desert-shift comment above.)
All of these regional changes are driven by the underlying warming of global oceans and atmosphere.
Politically, "climate change" can be used to hoodwink people into thinking all is as usual (not true.)
Whereas "global warming" tells it as it is and is the more fundamental, underlying physical change going on, that causes the smaller-scale changes. On average, places will definitely be warming.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
On top of that, China has been through 4 straight year on year reductions in the amount of coal consumed while their energy generation has increased year on year. Even if they are still playing with coal, they are most definitely trending correctly.
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.
You can dream that China is all eco-hippies. Truth is, they're doing their best to avoid dependence on foreign resources and foreign technology or at the very least control it through direct ownership.If they had Saudi-Arabia's oil reserves they wouldn't give a shit to find alternatives.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
China is coal powered and the coal use is not declining. Until it does, there is nothing clean about them. I imagine they will try to clean up the cities before they choke to death on the killer smog, but even that is going to take many years.
and I shouldn't feed the trolls, but we actually missed out on Medicare for All in the 1930s largely because white voters didn't want black people to have medical care.
Also, don't you feel shame writing that? I mean, if you work for Vlad Putin riling us up I guess not. Seriously, are you Russian or just mean spirited?
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An wonderfully concise way I've heard it described is that Global Warming is the cause, and Climate Change is the effect. Nice details though.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
So does that mean Europe lost as well?
just only on social issues. They don't want to oppress Gays or Blacks or ban abortion and they'd like to see some gun control and legal drugs. But they're hard right economically.
What makes the Right so strong is they're a coalition of hard right economics and hard right social voters (racists and evangelicals) but whereas the left fights within itself over economic issues the "values voters" don't give a crap about economics as long as they can be racists or force their religious beliefs on others. That makes them strong because they just plain disagree on less.
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China has been through 4 straight year on year reductions in the amount of coal consumed while their energy generation has increased year on year.
I don't know where you're getting your numbers, but the real world strongly suggests they're wrong.
Yes, because China has much lower labor costs and much less regulation.
And air pollution is quite low in most US cities, which is another reason why switching away from fossil fuels isn't as urgent for the US transportation sector.
They probably have people in government that's not as stupid as Trump... not exactly hard to accomplish.
Here's the thing, this isn't only about China and reducing polution there. Clean energy is quite clearly a skyrocketing global trend, whatever the reason you might believe in. It should be clear for everyone, even climate change deniers and people that believes in some big conspiracy about BIG RENEWABLE or whatever, that whoever dominates technology and production of clean energy resources will have a whole ton of money as countries in the entire world starts investing in it.
US companies will keep pursuing it, sure, because they are not stupid, and countries announcing lofty goals only serves to put more fuel *cough* into the trend. Trump getting out of the Paris agreement just shows how much of a doofus he is. Of course it won't stop american companies to pursuit what will become an extremely profitable business, but it definitely doesn't help.
And yes, this is a very cynical outlook on the whole thing, but I highly doubt any of the big corporations or governments care about stuff like our health or cleaning up the mess. China's extremely strict dictatorship doesn't give two shits about their citizens dying of lung related disease or having to swim through smog during certain periods of the year.
They'd let half the population die while living in an air filtered bubble. If they really cared they wouldn't be in the state they are.
But this is about money and power. While Trump is wasting time trying to repeal everything Obama did, and try to do every ignorant thing he promised in his campaign because he's a sociopath that can never admit he's wrong, the chinese government will be investing full force on renewables because they want the country to serve as a role model, as a souce of technology, and as an industrial source of solutions for renewables in general.
The balance has already been shifting towards China for a while now, renewables might be the thing that will tip the scale on their side over. Which I personally don't see as a great thing overall, but it's happening.
Primary industry numbers from the producers and fossil fuels industry themselves. Nothing is more reliable than numbers from an industry which stands to gain something by having them go in the opposite direction.
Incidentally if they were wrong then I'm sure the biggest exporters of Coal to China would be celebrating. But they aren't, they like the countries which don't export the stuff are seeing their industry go out of business.
Remember the saying in the economic world, "When the USA sneezes the world catches a cold? It's that way in China with primary industries. Except in some parts of world it's not a cold but rather malignant melanoma.
I find it amusing that you have no recollection of Communist countries trumpeting their superiority by citing fake accomplishments.
Maybe you weren't alive then.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Meanwhile the US is winning the coal race so bigly your head will spin.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
Since China is the major polluter and producer of green house gases, surely this is a good thing! Anything that benefits the planet also benefits all of us.
I find it amusing that you have no recollection of Communist countries trumpeting their superiority by citing fake accomplishments.
That has nothing to do with what's hilariously wrong with what you said. Try again.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Check the dates of the articles. Yours are from May 2017. Mine is from July 2017. Oh, and mine mentions the earlier cut that you reference. Yes, China cut the number they're building - and they're STILL building 700 more coal plants.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Well, everyone's buying from China now.....
The Chinese bought licences to use Westinghouse technology for their PWRs but they've been working to develop their own home-grown PWR design(s) which have no licence encumbrances and they're building the first of those, the Hualong-1 models which have no intellectual property limitations for resale outside China. One consortium is looking at the Hualong-1 as a possible candidate reactor design for building in Britain.