They still mostly rely on coal. Slightly more than half of electricity is generated by burning coal, whereas in the US, it's only 15%. The renewable energy share in generation is roughly the same in the US and China, but not for capacity.

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energy123 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can look at current levels, or look at trends. China has stopped increasing coal. They're building a small number of new coal plants, but this is outstripped by the coal plants being underutilized or decommissioned

China is really only building new renewables, almost 100x as much net renewable capacity per year compared to nuclear.

	▲	cobbaut an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Plus they are building coal plants as backups for when other sources fail.

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myrmidon 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is misleading, because China has no gas, and they use coal power as dispatchable source with lower capacity factor (similar to gas elsewhere).

Coal+gas electricity is basically the same fraction in China than in the US.

But countries like Germany or Spain are significantly ahead in this regard, with much higher fraction of electrical energy coming from solar/wind.

See: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s...

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skybrian 37 minutes ago | parent [-]

Burning natural gas instead of coal should result in about half as much carbon emissions theoretically, although methane leaks will narrow the advantage.

	▲	myrmidon 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Absolutely. Gas is a lot less problematic than coal. But my point is that it fills (in China) a very similar role for the electric grid and countries don't get to choose what fossils are in their soil. The US using relatively more gas than coal is not any kind of laudable achievement, it's simply whats cheaply available. Norway does not get any credit in my book for being full renewable either (because they have "free" hydro power literally everywhere).

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MSFT_Edging 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

China is also ~4x the population of the US and accounts for 30% of the worlds manufacturing and energy production.

The scale is so crazy that these numbers rarely make sense on their own.

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contingencies 2 hours ago | parent [-]

ie. China is the future, US is the past.

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arcbyte an hour ago | parent [-]

Well, China is already "the past". They're past the Lewis turning point. We'll have to look somewhere else for "the future".

	▲	CuriouslyC an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If China is declining more slowly than the rest of the world, that's still relative progress.
	▲	Fricken 19 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		German Climate scientists are claiming with 98% statistical certainty that warming has accelerated significantly since 2015, and believe we are looking at 3°C of warming by 2050, 5°C by the end of the century. That does not bode well for the future of anything. https://www.dpg-physik.de/veroeffentlichungen/publikationen/...

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remus 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The direction of travel is clear though. China is making massive investments in renewable energy (and dominating sectors like solar in the process) while the US seems hell bent on going the other way.

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ZeroGravitas 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Slightly less than half now as of the most recent figures.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-generates-less...

> That [coal] share was well down from 65.5% in 2016, previous NEA figures showed.

> Renewable energy's share grew to 41.2% — topping 40% for the first time — and of that wind and solar accounted for 24.6%, Xing added. Wind and solar's share was up from 9.7% in 2020.

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kccqzy 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

GP was talking about energy independence. They use domestic coal not imported coal, so the goal of energy independence is still achieved.

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arrrg 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Things are changing. Look at starting points and direction, not just things as they currently are.

That said, renewable sources are so cheap and consequently economically appealing that not even the incredibly dumb Trump admin can stop them.

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raverbashing 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Slightly more than half of electricity is generated by burning coal,

So this means, slightly less than half is other sources (hydro, solar, etc)

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cloudie78 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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