this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
162 points (93.5% liked)
Green Energy
2468 readers
28 users here now
Everything about energy production and storage.
Related communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
LoL. “OP doesn’t support communism.”
I’m sure capitalists will put the needs of the people first any day now. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence the communists are blowing past everyone else in renewables, and general quality of life.
No data point is a match for rabid Sinophobia.
They have alot of renewables, don’t ask them about coal though.
Yeah, they’ve had to use a lot of coal. They’re moving away from it. Did you not see the post you’re commenting on?
Their coal production is still rising. More renewables isn’t gonna help if they burn even more coal
Wrong. More renewables is exactly what’s going to help.
They’re also building a massive dam in Tibet, a space-based solar collection array, and multiple clean energy facilities in Africa. Name one country investing this much in clean energy.
They also have the most successful fusion reactor so far. Very good chance they’ll get there before the rest of us.
Moving away from coal would mean China is shutting down coal power plants. Instead they are building even more of them. They started construction on 94.5GW. The USA has 196.2GW of coal power plants total. You do not build them, if you do not plan to use them. So China is going to burn more coal in the coming years increasing their emissions.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-2024-coal-power-construction-hits-10-year-high-researchers-say-2025-02-13/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/530569/installed-capacity-of-coal-power-plants-in-selected-countries/
What do you suggest? Deindustrialization?
Stop burning more fossil fuels as quickly as possible. The most important start is to stop adding more fossil fuel infrastructure like coal power plants.
So China should just eat the sacrifice entirely, or is the rest of the world going to join in? Because looking at this chart, it seems China is the only country actually attempting to address it.
In 2023 global emissions only grew due to China. They would have fallen by 54million tonnes of CO2, if you exclude China.
Yes, because global manufacturing increased, and many countries outsource their manufacturing to China. That doesn’t mean they get to outsource their part in the blame.
Would you like China to shut down outsourced manufacturing facilities? Is that the expectation?
The EU actually has a pretty good plan to deal with that. It is called CBAM, a carbon tariff for high energy goods imported by the EU. The tariff is as high as the carbon price, which would be paid in the EU minus the carbon price in the country exporting. So smart policy as it insentivises other countries to create their own carbon price.
Last COP China made it their prime objective to destroy the idea of such systems.
Also in general it is best to blaim the entity, which has the easiest time to fix it. Countries pass their own laws and then enforce them. That is why we mainly look at production based emissions. In other words, if China can not produce its exports cleanly, then I expect them to shut down those factories.
Carbon credits are a hoax created by the oil lobby. If markets could solve climate change, they would’ve already done so.
Europe and US CO2 emissions are dropping. The charts are in the comments here. China's are skyrocketing, as are India's.
Only because the US & Europe consider their militaries to be exempt. The US military is one of the worst mass polluters in the planet.
You're saying china woul also be going down if you also exempted their military?
Errrr, no!
I wasn’t implying the inverse. But no, China does not have the same massive military as the US, nor is it as spread across the globe.
In the next year or two China will take second place for total historic CO2 emissions, taking that place over from Europe. It's emissions per capital overtook Europe several years ago and it has 6x the people. If the rest of the world hits zero tomorrow, Chinas emissions are still too high.
https://globalcarbonbudget.org/download/1479/?tmstv=1732802221
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2023/12/12/elephant-in-the-room-the-us-militarys-devastating-carbon-footprint
This is the important graph from the Carbon budget presentation. The difference between USA and China is about 1.5 Billion tons of CO2.
That news story on the US military cites a report with this graph in it. The total emission of the whole DoD is 60 million tons of CO2.
It doesn't make a dent.
I'd like a source on that, not because I don't believe you, but because that genuinely sounds like a cool and interesting thing to read about
https://sustainabilitymag.com/articles/chinas-1km-solar-array-the-manhattan-project-of-energy
Thanks!
Did you read what I said? Renewables increasing isn’t going to help when their fossil fuel usage is increasing more than renewables. The fusion reactor is a good thing, but their coal usage shouldn’t be ignored.
I read it. You’re wrong. Increased renewables production is the only thing that will help. And their renewables increase is far outpacing their increased demand for energy.
Are other countries expected to de-industrialize for climate change, or just China?
I never said deindustrialise or anything. Any country increasing their fossil fuel production isn’t good, but it is well known that China is the one with the highest amount. I don’t see how increasing renewables will somehow decrease the amount of greenhouse gases when both are increasing.
It produces so much because so many countries outsource their manufacturing to China. To lay that solely at the feet of China, and not the countries outsourcing, is a completely dishonest take.
They are both at blame. The country for outsourcing and China for taking up the request
He said authoritarian communism, the problems with authoritarian communism aren't economic, they're related to having a surveillance/police state
I’m pretty sure they edited that “authoritarian” in later. I also do not support China’s police state.