Last year, China generated 834 terawatt-hours of solar power.
Which is more than the G7 countries generated, and more than the US and EU combined. In fact the only country group that generates more solar power than China is the OECD, all 38 countries of it.
Data: @ember-energy.org
Source: https://bsky.app/profile/nathanielbullard.com/post/3lsbbsg6ohk2j
Good for China on that!
To add some perspective, China is about 2 and a quarter times as large as the EU nations, and according to currentresults.com seems to get a bit more sunshine than the EU does. So the difference isn’t quite as stark as this post makes it seem.
But still, it’s good that China is taking solar power seriously. I didn’t realize they were doing that well.
China are the worlds biggest coal producer and consumer, started building like 100GW of coal power plants last year alone, and are increasing their use of coal every single year.
People getting excited about china’s massive solar power generation are hilarious. Basically unless china stop using coal, the rest of the world being completely net-zero is irrelevant.
How much coal has China cumulatively used in its history compared to the US or Europe? Spoiler alert: much less. Almost as if countries in the process of developing used coal for a reason…
Not so sure about that. China overtook the EU in 1987 in coal consumption, but today it is at 25,000TWh or so. In 1965 the current EU countries were at 4,500TWh. It certainly is not much less, if China has not overtaken the EU by cumulative coal consumption.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-by-country-terawatt-hours-twh?tab=chart&country=CHN~OWID_EU27
If you “aren’t sure” about that, then why the hell are you trying to discuss it making guesses instead of informing yourself?
China, a country with 4-5 times the US population, has half the cumulative historic emissions. And yet you have the fucking nerve to blame china for coal. The US and the EU get to pollute the fucking Earth for 2 centuries, and China does a renewable revolution in its 40 years since industrializing and you cry about how they still have plans for coal.
Just, seriously, stop arguing from ignorance. If you do not know about cumulative emissions, don’t make “Oh I’m not so sure about that because look at the trends for the past 60 years”, as if the US and EU hadn’t been emitting fossil CO2 since the fucking late 18th century.
Maybe that is because I have the elementary school education necessary to understand that burning coal and gas also causes emissions. So when I am looking at cummulative coal consumption, I have the very basic common sense to not look at CO2.
EDIT: Btw 2/3 of EU emissions happened in the last 60 years. So this very likely shows most of the EU coal consumption. Also if you happen to have actual coal numbers and want to share them, I am happy to have a look at them. But please no CO2 = coal bs.