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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.
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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!
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.
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.
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. ;)
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.
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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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.
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.
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
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.