Deregulated energy markets accelerate solar adoption

Some data:

China's share of of electricity production from coal is at 60% as of 2023[1] compared to 16% for the US[2]. That's down from 80% in 2005. It currently generates 35% of its electricity from renewable sources as of 2023 compared to 41% in the US. The US has been replacing coal with gas - gas was 19% in 2005 and 42% in 2023.

China first exceeded the US's annual carbon emissions in 2006 with both outputting about 6 billion tons. Since then the US has declined to a bit under 5 billion tons in 2023 while China has doubled to a bit under 12 billion tons[3] making it by far the largest emitter in notional terms per year.

While the Western world's carbon emissions have been in decline for years (with the US still the highest ex-China), China and India's emissions continue to climb at significant rates. It's true that China is building enormous amounts of renewable energy, but that can be further generalized to China is building enormous amounts of energy production across all sources, dirty and clean.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?coun... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?coun... [3] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...

> China's share of of electricity production from coal is at 60% as of 2023[1] compared to 16% for the US[2]. That's down from 80% in 2005.

Yeah, but they're kind of leapfrogging from coal to clean energy. In 10 years, they are expected to be at 60% renewables.

> from coal to clean energy

The reason I'm skeptical of that framing is it implies coal production is being replaced by clean energy, rather than total energy production being increased.

Coal production continues to climb[1] and construction of new coal plants hit a 10 year high in 2024[2]. China accounted for 95% of the world’s new coal power construction activity in 2023[3].

Lots of countries announce decarbonization goals, but I will remain skeptical until the data show progress.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-production-by-countr...

[2] https://www.carbonbrief.org/chinas-construction-of-new-coal-...

[3] https://www.carbonbrief.org/china-responsible-for-95-of-new-...

And they don't have access to cheap natural gas so the financial incentive to switch to renewables is even stronger. Even more so given the inability of coal to flexibly produce power throughout the day, so cheaper renewables just completely kill the economic feasibility of coal.

I think you have that flexibility backwards. Coal can be ramped up relatively quickly and operates in nearly all weather conditions, but wind and solar are at the whim nature. Unless you're only talking hydropower and nuclear power which China is also building, but those like coal have significant upfront capital investments and minimum scale.

Either way, the idea that coal is economically infeasible is contradicted by the fact that China is building huge amounts of it[1]. For China energy production is an "and" question, not an "or" question.

[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/chinas-construction-of-new-coal-...

> Coal can be ramped up relatively quickly

That's exactly what coal is bad at. Anything less than a day is bad news for coal. Which means that all this coal capacity is building is going to be for rarer seasonal events, and going to be mostly sitting unused.

> The reason I'm skeptical of that framing is it implies coal production is being replaced by clean energy, rather than total energy production being increased.

I wasn't intending to imply that. It's entirely possible China might get to 90% renewable energy production without shutting down a single coal plant.

> Lots of countries announce decarbonization goals, but I will remain skeptical until the data show progress.

Sure, but that doesn't conflict with having more and more of your energy production being renewable.