'Unstoppable force' of solar power propels world to 40% clean electricity

I am excited to see the next 20 years :)

China keeps adding coal power plants like no other and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future

In 2024, the world added 553 GW of new solar capacity. China added 277.17 GW.

They add coal as peaking power plants. They're not planning to run the grid on coal.

For more breathless headlines touting a green transition as emissions continue to mysteriously increase at a record pace?

> will continue to do so for the foreseeable future

Not really, there is going to be about a 40-year trough in the Chinese economy due to demographics. At some point soon, manufacturing in China won't make sense anymore, (and world wide demand will also decrease due to demographics) so presumably China will be able to decommission a lot of their power generation instead of adding to it. Will they axe their coal? Time will tell, but adding capacity will end, and not too far in the future, either.

It's not a mystery. The US and EU have year on year been decreasing emissions for fifteen ish years now (yes, including during trump I, even if you account for the COVID drop).

Exactly, this graph sums it up: https://climatanthropocene.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/co...

We talk more about it but in the facts nothing changes, if anything it's accelerating

That's a cool story you can tell your kids before bed but the reality is that when you include imports the US/EU emissions are stagnating or going up. It's easy not to pollute when you import most of your things from abroad.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/imported-or-exported-co-e...

That graph measures whether they are importing or not.

So it's not the emissions that are stagnant, it's the per capita imports of emissions which are roughly flat.

They have a separate graph which reflects "consumption" based emissions:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...

This graph might be more relevant: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re...

The countries most talking about net-zero are indeed reducing their emissions. China is meanwhile trying to catch up to the standard of living of their Western counterparts, driving up emissions massively (while still having great per-capita values, there are just a lot of Chinese that previously lived on basically nothing)

Sure but they're also absolutely plastering entire valleys in solar panels simultaneously.

In context of climate change, absolute values of CO2 are still more relevant than proportion in generated energy.

On the other hand, the share of power produced by coal (and other fossil fuels) in China has been decreasing for over 10 years while the US has remained relatively stable. This tend will also continue for the foreseeable future.

Somewhat, but proportional/per-capita becomes more relevant when you allow for changing standards of living.

Put differently: Unless you have a plan to change the number of people on Earth (please don't) or the amount of power required per person (potentially viable), then proportional and absolute are essentially equivalent.

Funny to read these comments when China is easily dwarfing all other nations in solar capacity and technology. You can make these dismissive comments all you want, but China is going to be at the forefront of “green” energy production this century.

Sure, but there's something to be said for continuing to add non-green energy alongside it.

From an ecological perspective, it's like going on a diet and smoking an extra cigarette for every 100 calories you cut out.

They are already ramping down new construction and they are starting to replace older (less efficient) plants. It's quite likely that one of these last 3 years will have been peak coal in China. The bad news is: That's a lot of coal that being burned. The good news is: They are less reliant on "recouping costs", which means _those_ plants will be shut down as soon as that's feasible

By "imports of emissions" here, are we referring to the emissions involved in the creation of the imported goods? Or just what exactly?

It's an estimate, but AIUI yes.

Those data are moment in time. See one of the child posts for what you're talking about -- and in terms of trade corrected emissions the US and Europe turned the corner even earlier.

Also, they are steadily reducing the capacity factor of their coal plants. All of their recent coal plants are dispatchable plants, designed to run only when the sun isn't shining. So even though they are increasing capacity quickly, their actual usage of coal is relatively flat in comparison.

And they've started building massive battery storage plants, which will likely substantially replace their coal plants over the next decade.

Running them less though:

>In the first decade of the 2000s, plants were running around 70% of the time. They’re now running around 50% (https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants)