For several years now China has been producing more pollution than any other nation. Given their large population and the shift to bring their people out of poverty and into the middle class, some would say this was inevitable. But pollution and GDP are not truly bound together, many countries are cutting their fossil fuel emissions while increasing their GDP.
China has been doing something remarkable. Each year China installs more renewable power generation than the rest of the world combined. China has been covering ALL of its NEW power demand with renewables and is pushing beyond this. Even while China continues to build some new coal plants, others are reaching end of life, and the percentage of electricity from coal is dropping. here are a collection of (some repetitive) tweets on this topic.
@LionHirth
China‘s coal share dropped by 16 percentage points since 2010, Germany’s by 9 pp.
China‘s thermal (coal and gas) power generation fell 7% on year in June, accelerating from a 4% drop in May. Solar power continued to deliver most of power generation growth, and the recovery of hydropower from earlier droughts helped push fossil fuels down sharply. Industrial emissions likely fell too, with cement production down 11% and iron production 3%. Steel products output grew 3%, showing that there was progress in increasing the share of recycled steel. Crude oil processing volumes, an indicator of oil products consumption, also fell 4%. The production of electric vehicles grew 37% while overall vehicle production was almost flat, raising the share of EVs to 39% of all vehicles produced. Total energy consumption grew about 4.2% in the second quarter, while GDP grew 4.7%. The pattern of energy-intensive growth continues, with only a very modest drop in the energy intensity of GDP. I will have a detailed analysis of the changes in emissions and power generation in a few weeks when the data is available, but it seems clear that the clean energy boom is finally bending China’s emissions path.
#china peak coal on the horizon: “if hydropower pulls its weight and renewables maintain their blistering growth, it’s likely china’s #coal consumption will peak in 2023, plateau in 2024, and begin its long decline thereafter.”
China is going to use less coal, despite reports to the contrary – The China Project
China‘s energy consumption structure continues to improve. In 2023, the country saw its coal consumption account for 55.3% of its total primary energy consumption, down 12.1 percentage points compared to a decade ago http://xhtxs.cn/XVa
China actually seems to be beating everyone on renewables https://carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-clean-energy-pushes-coal-to-record-low-53-share-of-power-in-may-2024/…
Good morning with good news: China! China is the good news. China‘s economy-wide CO2 emissions fell 1% in Q2 2024. Plug-in EVs were 51.1% of auto sales in July in China. Road transport fuel demand is down 4%. Diesel demand is falling.
NEW | China‘s coal-fired power generation fell for a third consecutive month in July 2024 Our latest
data shows that wind and solar + gains in hydropower have led to the largest declines in two years and the first sustained declines since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Good morning with good news: China‘s coal generation fell in July by ~5%. July is the third month in a row of declining coal generation. Down: May, June & July. Wow! Why is coal generation falling? Rising solar, wind, hydro plus economic rebalancing. Credit
For the first time in industrial history, global greenhouse gas emissions have declined. Why? Because China reduced the price of solar and wind power by 99x in one decade with its industrial might. Staggering.
So if you hear people villifying China… It is often because they are missing the context that countries like the US (at least till recently if not still) have polluted more in total than China has. But China is Fixing the price of solar. worldwide we benefit from this. the price of batteries and the price of solar are falling falling falling.
Every day that passes, solar PV and batteries become more affordable. If we ignore batteries and just talk generation, solar is cheaper in 80% of situations. If we include the batteries, then we have to wait till about 2027 before solar (and batteries) beats all other forms of generation.
But wait, there is more. China didn’t just make the market better to tip towards solar. China is actually reducing their pollution. Think of a bell curve… headed in the wrong direction, then the growth stops plateaus and then we see things heading in the right direction.
So with massive clean energy and electric rail and much more, China’s overall pollution is dropping and this is part of what we need to see with worldwide pollution from fossil fuels dropping.
This is a good news story and the hero in this story is China.