| ▲ | teach 17 hours ago |
| Normally I try to go with the most charitable interpretation, but this article makes it difficult. > Meanwhile China is adding power capacity at a wartime pace—coal, gas, nuclear, everything.... China is adding solar. Mostly solar. The word "solar" does not appear even once in this press release, and that seems disingenuous. I _do_ think there's a place for more efficient use of the fossil fuels we do have. People are going to continue to burn natural gas for a while, so we might as well do it better I guess. But America isn't going to make up the energy deficit with fossil fuels, no matter how "clever" we are. |
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| ▲ | PunchyHamster 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > China is adding solar. Mostly solar. The word "solar" does not appear even once in this press release, and that seems disingenuous. They are adding everything. They know baseload is important so they build nuclear. They know they can't fill the hole fast enough, so they are still building some coal. |
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| ▲ | 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | delichon 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > China is adding solar. Mostly solar. The word "solar" does not appear even once in this press release, and that seems disingenuous. On the contrary, check out this graph: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou... Solar is a tiny portion of new energy capacity in China compared to coal, oil, and gas. But it is similar to nuclear as of 2024. New coal production swamps everything else combined. |
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| ▲ | VoidWhisperer 16 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They already have well over double the US solar output (US solar output is about 750 Twh according to this source, while China's is a bit over 2000 Twh) and their YoY solar increase is about 4x the US (600 Twh increase in China vs 150 Twh increase in the US) They are also increasing coal usage, you are correct, however in the past 2 years, their solar output has increased significantly, to the point where it increased more than their coal output in 2024. My point is that the comment you are quoting is actually technically correct, if you compare 2023 and 2024 in that graph for example, solar was the largest increase in output. | | |
| ▲ | delichon 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | It may be huge someday, but now it is niche, and a tiny fraction of new capacity. Coal is king and not about to be dethroned. |
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| ▲ | ZeroGravitas 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In the last year of that graph 2023-2024, the increase in solar was greater than any other source, including coal, it's 15x greater than nuclear. And unless people are shoveling coal directly into the data centres this electricity generating gas turbine is intended to be used for the electricity generation mix is more appropriate to conapre: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by... | | |
| ▲ | AuthAuth 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | why are you fixating on 1 single year? Look at the past 10 years or past 5 years and its the complete opposite. | | |
| ▲ | Tadpole9181 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Why are they looking at the most recent year when discussing the changing trend of exponential differential growth to point out it has now surpassed others, instead of the prior years where that differential was slower and the other was still growing faster? I mean... Seems obvious, no? | | |
| ▲ | AuthAuth 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | No because they are highlighting a single year where solar was exceptionally high and when you look at a 5 year period it tells a completely different story. If you look at future investment there is still 60 trillion being spent on new coal and while thats smaller than the future investment in solar you need to account for the fact that there current power is already 60% coal. Even if we give China the most charity and take their 2025 results at face vault(even though they NEED to be independently verified) China is at best average when it comes % of gridpower that is renewable. Off the top of my head I think they are like 27-30% renewable. But its actually worse because they are the biggest polluter by a mile. Bigger the next 6 biggest polluters combined. | | |
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| ▲ | pfdietz 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Solar is a tiny portion of new energy capacity in China compared to coal, oil, and gas. That graph shows production, not capacity, nor installed capacity in each year. | | |
| ▲ | nandomrumber 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | Well good, those are the correct numbers focus on because: Solar capacity and say nuclear / coal / gas / hydro / fuel oil capacity Are different beasts. When solar advocates bang on about adding X gigawatts of capacity, they’re being dishonest. What they really mean is they added X/4, because, obviously, it’s sunny only about 25% of the time throughout a year. Adding batteries doesn’t change that. Still have to over build. So let’s focus on the numbers that reflect actual production, so we can have an honest conversation. Nuclear / coal / gas / hydro / fuel oil, even biomass have capacity factors typically about 80%, often about 90%. Wind and solar are never going up ro those capacity factors, even with batteries (including pumped hydro). |
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| ▲ | throawayonthe 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | are we looking at the same graph? if you look at the past decade or so, the "solar" slice is clearly widening the fastest | | |
| ▲ | delichon 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | In the graph I'm looking at, with no extrapolating, solar energy is a tiny sliver of coal. If I extrapolate, crossing of the lines looks like something in the far future. | | |
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| ▲ | MengerSponge 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| This is designed for "fast" and "high power", but not for efficiency: it's not a combined cycle plant. |
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| ▲ | m4rtink 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, its totally inefficient - according to Wikipedia a simple cycle gas turbine can be up to 43% efficient - with a combined cycle (you boil water with the first stage jet engine exhaust and then run a steam turbine off that) it can get up to 64%. So like this there is possibly about 20% of (a lot of) energy/fuel just wasted. You can get even better, running something like a city wide district heating off the waste heat from the steam turbine - potentially reaching 100% in the sense that people get heating, warm running water or possibly also process heat for industrial use. Or you can do none of that and power a datacenter of questionable utility with it at about 40% efficiency. :P |
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