China has built and deployed nearly 1.25TW of renewable energy in five years, and they're deploying on an exponential. If you're trying to convince me this isn't impressive or relevant to our future "because they still get half their energy from coal" then you're not going to convince me of much. This is HN, not Reddit.

Yes, China is a big country that has deployed 1.25TW capacity of renewable energy, which will deliver approximately 40% of that actual energy, while using 5.6 TW from burning coal. FYI the reason you get 40% of capacity delivered rather than the usual 15% or so for solar and wind, is because most of China's renewable capacity is biofuels -- e.g. poor villagers burning wood, charcoal, etc, in small stoves. That biofuel number is an order of magnitude larger than China's solar deployment and is reliable, in terms of capacity turning into actual energy, as it does not depend on the weather.

So just step back and think about this again, now that you are better informed:

   5.6 TW from coal - actually delivered

   1.25 TW *capacity* from renewables