Comment by Workaccount2
6 months ago
China is doing this for energy independence. Their fossil fuel supply chain is critically vulnerable. They don't care about the climate, but will happily play the optics.
6 months ago
China is doing this for energy independence. Their fossil fuel supply chain is critically vulnerable. They don't care about the climate, but will happily play the optics.
Fossil fuels aren't just bad for global climate, air pollution (which is mostly local) kills 7-8 million people per year.
There's an interesting study that arises from a natural experiment based on coal subsidies in China[0]. It found that life expectancy in otherwise similar locations is 3 years lower where the subsidy is paid, and thus more coal is burned.
0: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1300018110
> They don't care about the climate
I don't think it's that simple.
China is a signatory to Kyoto and Paris.
They do care about reducing pollution, and have managed to do so quite significantly in many cities.
China also has quite a bit to lose: many large cities on the coasts, and worsening water shortage problems.
National security probably plays a large role, and I reckon they would prioritize economy over climate, but the evidence implies that they do also care.
Regarding Paris it’s probably a matter of convenience too. Why not sign on to all this stuff if you’re going to build solar anyway to reduce your commodity dependency exposure as you prep for Taiwan?
You can think about this as if China had access to the same oil reserves or oil markets as the US does, would they behave differently? Absolutely.
Separately I think eliminating pollution is more along the lines of their country just doing good things for their people. Climate change stances and whatnot I don’t think are the same, nor are the intentions.
Water shortage has nothing to do with global warming, just overpopulation in specific regions. The world if anything is getting more precipitous than in the past.
Climate change has local effects. More flooding in some areas can coexist with more drought in others.
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> Water shortage has nothing to do with global warming
I mean, on a global basis, sure, not really. But if you currently get your water supply for your megacities from rivers A, B, C and D, then yeah, that's vulnerable, and that river E on the other side of the country with no infra has increased in flow will be little consolation.
Oversimplification to single causes is sign of poor thinking.
Solar is also economically better for China.
Secondly, I would strongly guess China ramped up production thinking that there would be more overseas demand. It isn't just low demand from the US; for example my "green" New Zealand is also not buying utility scale solar (oversimplified reason from horse's mouth: it is due to our major electricity generators colluding - the actual blocking reasons are more capitalistically complex).
There are very few situations in the world where cause and effect are clear: facile explanations of cause and effect are usually wrong in important ways.
The comment is succinct, the reasoning in long.
China actually has quite a bit of public debate and discontent around air quality at a minimum. They definitely care in that they don’t want to piss off the populace.
I’m not sure it’s absolutely knowable. These are all just opinions. But I feel that China is far more likely to actually care about the climate than America is.
One of the benefits of being a pseudodemocratic centralized government is that you can kind of decide something is important without worrying how to get reelected in a few years. All it takes is a leadership that decides this is their vanity project to be remembered by, or perhaps to actually care about China in 100 years (the Americans obviously can’t think or see this far anymore). This is possibly helped by having a population with a culture of collectivism. For better or worse you don’t have to actually solve the “what’s in it for me?” question that seems to completely screw climate plans when the plan is, “it’ll suck for you but your grandkids will appreciate it.”
> They don't care about the climate, but will happily play the optics
It is not just optics or energy independence. There is a genuine effort to reduce pollution. People forget in 00s media used to bash the smog in China. It was an unlivable air. They truly wanted to transform it - it just so happens that renewables solve a lot of problems simultaneously.
> They don't care about the climate
Like all the crypto climate deniers and True Bird Lovers* are fond of saying, the climate doesn't care about per capita emissions, only total emissions. And now China's total emissions have reduced.
* they oppose wind power
I'm pretty sure they care. They can afford to think long term.
I'd say they care quite a bit about the climate; China goes in for long-term planning, and their water supply in particular is _already_ precarious. They're likely quite vulnerable to climate change.
Neither the US cares about the climate amd doesn't care about the optics either.
This is capitalism in action: solar is cheaper than anything else per kwh. The obsession with fossil in the West is due to the fossil fuel lobbies, not because of the rational market forces. China doesn't have that.
Has there ever been a polity where your "rational market forces" prevailed over "lobbies" created by market forces?
Not in the history so far. I'm just trying to balance the extreme negative view on Chinese subsidies. They are of similar nature, and scale (as percentage of the total economy). In the EU we have this view of Chinese EVs because they get subsidies from the state, whereas we are doing the same for European car manufacturers (especially Germany amd France). We can at least be rational in our analysis.
I mean, yes. The coal industry put huge amounts of effort into trying to halt oil and later gas, and it didn't really work in the end.
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China continues to get the bulk of their energy from fossil fuels. 56% from coal. China has double the emissions of the USA and new construction for coal plants reached a 10 year high in 2024:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/chinas-construction-of-new-coal-...
The entire world gets the bulk of their energy from fossil. One country is leading the pack in defossiling their economy relatively rapidly, and that's China. Double emissions of the US translates to half-emissions on a per-capita basis. Much less if you include historical emissions. And China's emissions dropped in the previous period, the US increased.
The coal plants are known to be built to support economic growth for one (simple truth), and as baseload for renewable sources (you simply can't go renewable without this, at the moment). Coal plant utilisation rates have been dropping for two decades and are expected to keep dropping. [0]
[0] https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DJUu!,w_1456,c_limit...
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A case study in lying by omission. They build coal plants but they don't use them. In 2024 more than 80% of their energy growth came from solar and wind. As of 2023 solar was already cheaper than coal in China.
What do you gain from lying like this?
https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/china/#:~:tex...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China
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Yup, China added the most capacity in the world of solar, coal and nuclear at the same time.
However, the new coal plants are largely replacing old, inefficient, heavily polluting ones, so they're still a net positive.
I'm as big of a proponent on solar as anyone, but to avoid confusion, understand that those cheap solar figures come from using state subsidized Chinese panels on near worthless land in the cloudless remote southwest.
If you are trying to use American made panels near population centers in the Northeast or the Midwest, the economics become much more challenging.
California obtains almost 80% of their daily needs from solar, and is the world’s fourth largest economy. Almost the entire US could run off of solar and batteries based on current utility scale costs of both technologies (but will likely continue to use a mix of nuclear, renewables, batteries, transmission, demand response, and fossil gas for filling in the gaps as learning curves continue to deliver cheaper low carbon energy).
It's simply a matter of will (or in the case of the US, lack thereof).
https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-beats-the-heat/
https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/
https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35097.pdf
https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us...
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31072025/inside-clean-ene...
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e...
https://electrek.co/2025/06/20/batteries-are-so-cheap-now-so...
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/26/there-is-one-clear-winn...
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And China's biggest solar and wind farms are in Gansu and Xinjiang. Which is even more remote.
China developed and built many UHVDC transmission lines to deal with it.
True. But as usual there is more to it. US is running on cheap fossil fuels to most part, though the renewables aren't negligible too. The fossil fuels are actually subsidized, and they are cheap because they are results of exploitation of cheap land. On top of that there are subsidies like tax breaks on the drilling costs etc.. To be fair this is also the case for hydroelectric etc.
So, similar dynamic. If the oil fields, coal mines etc would be sitting on prime land, you wouldn't have it this cheap. If there weren't subsidies, they wouldn't have been this cheap. It's very hard to compare different energy sources because of this. But solar being cheap isn't only a Chiblnese phenomenon. India, Spain etc all prove this. It's cheap when you have a lot of empty land and sunshine.
Ridiculously cheap power is what turns near worthless land into valuable land.
The US administration currently almost seems like it does care, and that it is _pro_ climate change. Some really bizarre pronouncements on the topic from ol' mini-hands.
I resent them saving the planet in this way.
How is this different from the US?
US Fossil Fuel chain right now is not very vulnerable. Vast majority of oil/gas production is internal or from nearby states that foreign powers would have hard time cutting off and our relations are ok with, recent administration aside.
China gets its oil from Russia and Middle East. Russia is unstable partner and Middle East can get cut off by US Naval power for now.
It's not.
The reply was just explaining the calculus that China, and other nations, are using with respect to renewable energy.
The US is an energy exporter (and its energy imports are mostly hydro and oil from Canada which is a pretty safe trade route). China is a massive importer and they import from countries they aren't especially friendly with
The US also apparently seeks energy independence, but seems unwilling to give up "farmland" (or, you know, household roofs or awnings over parking lots) to do it.
The US farms 60 million acres for corn and soybean biofuels currently. Lots of suboptimal ag land available for more efficient energy production (besides rooftops, irrigation canals, parking lots, etc; California has 4k miles of irrigation canals they can cover with solar PV, and is actively working towards this goal). As _aavaa_ mentions, agrivoltaics are very favorably for solar PV and ag production synergies.
(average age of farmers is ~58 years old, and with the decline in labor for ag, now is an optimal time to lease and lock up this land for renewables for the next 25-30 years [at which point generators can be repowered or the land returned to its previous condition])
There Is One Clear Winner In The Corn Vs. Solar Battle - https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/26/there-is-one-clear-winn... - April 28th, 2025
Ecologically informed solar enables a sustainable energy transition in US croplands - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2501605122 | https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2501605122
New study compares growing corn for energy to solar production. It’s no contest. - https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2025/04/new-study-compa... - April 25th, 2025
Impacts of agrisolar co-location on the food–energy–water nexus and economic security - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-025-01546-4 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01546-4
HN Search: agrivoltaics (sorted by date) - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Happy to give up farmland if you can install a pump jack.
Pumpjacks take up the size of a shed. Fwiw, farmland in west Texas frequently has pumpjacks and windmills installed on them right alongside cow postures and corn fields.
Pump jacks use an order of magnitude less space.
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Household solar installations are still too expensive to be a reasonable option for many consumers in the United States. The amount of solar generation is also very dependent on where you live. Not to mention, it is becoming increasingly difficult to become a homeowner with people achieving this milestone later than ever. If you rent, it’s not really an option at all.
> On average, it takes between nine and 12 years for solar panels to pay for themselves.
https://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/spending/art...
This is all factually accurate. If you're a renter, see if your utility offers a community solar option. This enables you to get economic savings and exposure to solar without installing a system yourself. If you're a homeowner, in many cases, the return on investment (depending on installation cost) is under 10 years (after which your power is free for the life of the system, which will exceed 25 years). It should be compared to a bond return/investment (assuming cash purchase vs financing or a lease).
https://seia.org/initiatives/community-solar/
us is very close to net energy independence, if anything the nondesire to retool petrochemical plants for ultrasweet fracked fuel is the blocker for true energy independence.