The US has done well historically, roughly on par with China on per capita renewable rollout, slightly ahead of China between 2019-2023 but probably falling behind now.

China being so big and populous makes it hard to make simple comparisons.

edit: looked it up, US is still ahead of China as of 2024:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/renewable-electricity-per...

Bear in mind that pre 2000 is likely hydro, in the early years of solar and wind that confused matters if lumped in together but I think it's now obvious when the new tech kicks in.

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raincole 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Not only that, but Chian actually also built quite a lot of coal capacity in the past five years [0]: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/chinas... while the US has been retiring coal.

But no one talks about it because it doesn't provoke the only important narrative: "It's a shame that the US isn't doing that!"

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ben_w 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> no one talks about it

People regularly talk about how much new coal capacity China has been building.

Quite often this is followed by "capacity, sure; they're not using all that capacity, those plants exist and are mostly not running", or some variation thereof. I've never bothered fact-checking the responses, but this conversation happens is most of the Chinese renewables discussions I've seen in the last few years.

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hnmullany 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Coal generation production in China did decline in 2025 vs 2024 - but that was the first year for it to happen.

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balops 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Nuclear on the other hand is outpacing any renewable in China. With many plants being built or plans to be built between now and 2050.

	▲	dalyons 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You are wrong by a factor of at least 10x
	▲	triceratops 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Got any sources for this?
	▲	pfdietz 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That's utterly wrong. Renewable installs in China are vastly outpacing nuclear installs.