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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.
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.
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.
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.
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