Comment by maxglute
4 hours ago
>and only slightly ranks below the US and Russia
By slightly ranks below you mean ~50-60% per capital.
>China somehow puts less pressure on the environment
PRC renewables at staggering scale.
Last year PRC brrrted out enough solar panels whose lifetime output is equivalent to MORE than annual global consumption of oil. AKA world uses about >40billion barrels of oil per year, PRC's annual solar production will sink about 40billion barrels of oil of emissions in their life times. That's fucking obscene amount of carbon sink, and frankly at full productionm annual PRC solar + wind can on paper displace 100% of oil, 100% of lng, and good % of coal (again annual utilization) once storage figured out.
This BTW functionally makes PRC emission negative, by massive margin, arguably the only country who is.
It's only retarded emission accounting rules that says PRC should be penalized for manufacturing renewables, but buyers credited AND fossil producers like US not penalized for extraction, which US has only increased.
Also, unlike US and Russia, China has green transition as an official policy. There are additional savings from total electrification. (I think they also care more about longterm and being closer to the equator and the sea, they better understand the consequences of global warming.)
And they have little to no sources of fossil fuels within their borders (not enough to support their demand, in any case).
It's a great policy, but it also makes sense for geo-strategic reasons (even ignoring the climate issue).