Managed to talk about china's energy buildout _without_ mention of renewables? I think this pivot is 100% designed to get government money: - natrual gas turbine - china is scary - something something it's a race - china energy is good because no regulations, totally not because they are lapping the world on renewable buildout

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dzonga 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

China alone this year has added 221GW of Solar Energy, which is about 2x the rest of the world combined.

it's a nice pivot though - turbines are just turbines.

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pfdietz 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Turbines are useful even in a 100% renewable powered world.

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gridspy 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Perhaps not in a 100% world, though I'll give you the point that they are useful now.

In a 100% renewable world we would not be extracting or refining oil. Natural gas (used by these turbines) is a byproduct of oil drilling. Were we not burning the oil, the natural gas might be too expensive alone.

Also, in a 100% renewable world we would (by definition) have enough generation all the time - (covered by batteries and good baseload sources) that turbine power was no longer required to cover peak loads.

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rgmerk 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's not clear (yet) what a 100% clean energy powered world would use to cover the last couple of percent of demand when loads peak and/or variable generation troughs for extended periods.

It'll be some combination of demand management (which isn't nearly as horrifying as people make it out to be), pumped hydro, long-duration batteries like iron-air, but also possibly burning hydrogen or hydrogen-derived synthetic fuels (produced by electrolysis when hydrogen is abundant) and/or biofuels in turbines.

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fpoling 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Somebody calculated that a home in UK needs 1 Megawatt-Hour battery to backup solar energy during the winter. I suspect in 10 years that may cost below 25K, a small fraction of the property cost.

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mannykannot 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There is a time- honored, straightforward way to deal with the last two percent problem, which is to overbuild by a couple of percent or so.

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rgmerk 7 hours ago | parent [-]

That’s not how the maths works unfortunately.

Basically, you end up having to overbuild to crazy levels, or build insane amounts of battery storage, which only gets used a few days a year.

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mannykannot 7 hours ago | parent [-]

That is right (if rather exaggerated, and I will note that it was you who originally picked the figure of two percent), and in practice, we accept a certain risk that we will not always have all the capacity we want, even though (or because) we cannot precisely predict how big or often these events will be. There is no particular reason to think this specific case is any different.

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plantain 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Why can't we predict how big or how often those events would be? We have clear understandings of the distribution of probabilities for all kinds of weather scenarios - see for example 1-50/100/1000 year flood/droughts.

	▲	rgmerk 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		We can and do, and there are detailed plans based on those weather scenarios (eg for the Australian east coast grid; there is AEMO’s Integrated System Plan). Things in the US are a bit more of a mixed bag, for better or worse, but there have been studies done that suggest that you can get very high renewables levels cost effectively, but not to 100% without new technology (eg “clean firm” power like geothermal, new nuclear being something other than a clusterfumble, long-term storage like iron-air batteries, etc etc etc).

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mannykannot 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Particularly with the development of fracking, natural gas production is no longer a just a byproduct of oil production, and can be (and is) pursued independently. Nevertheless, I agree that we developing renewables should be our priority.

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marze 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If China had "no regulations" and was building out 100% coal, no one would be worrying that China industry would have an advantage due to low electricity cost vs rest of world.

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AuthAuth 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

China's energy buildout is still mostly coal. Go look at the last 20 years how much energy they've added for coal vs solar. Dont fall for the "solar has increased by 500%" trap.

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nandomrumber 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You’re absolutely correct.

China didn’t start adding much in the way of solar prior to about 2020, whereas they added lots of coal generation in the past 20 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China

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seanmcdirmid 11 hours ago | parent [-]

They are replacing old coal plants with more efficient cleaner designers. National security wise they still have lots of coal to work with, while most renewable energy is generated in the west where ongoing grid upgrades are needed to use it where people live (in the east).

	▲	fpoling 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The newer plants not only more efficient going from 30-35% of peak efficiency to something like 45%, they can also operate efficiently over wider range of power output and are faster to turn on/off. This is very helpful to deal with variability with renewable output.

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pfdietz 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Coal consumption has peaked there. Solar is growing explosively.

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AuthAuth 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Dont you think its a bit naive to be saying something peaked when it hasnt even been a year?

	▲	rgmerk 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The economics are pretty strikingly in favour of renewables and batteries, and one thing China does not have is cheap natural gas.

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specialist 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes and:

Recent Volts episode has great overview of China's electro-tech build out, world is at or near peak fossil fuel across all sectors and countries (with 1 notable exception), etc.

Clean electrification is inevitable - A conversation with Kingsmill Bond of Ember Energy. [2025/11/21]

https://www.volts.wtf/p/clean-electrification-is-inevitable