July 11th, 2024

China Building Twice as Much Wind and Solar as Rest of World Combined

China leads global renewable energy development with plans for 180GW solar and 159GW wind projects, surpassing the world's total capacity. This shift reduces coal reliance, driving emissions decline and discouraging new coal projects.

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China Building Twice as Much Wind and Solar as Rest of World Combined

China is leading the world in renewable energy development, with plans to build 180 gigawatts of large solar projects and 159 gigawatts of large wind projects. This capacity surpasses the rest of the world combined and is driving a shift away from coal on the power grid. Wind and solar energy already make up over a third of China's power capacity and are expected to exceed coal capacity this year. The country's success in transitioning to renewables has led to a significant drop in coal output, indicating a potential peak in emissions. If China continues its current pace of wind and solar expansion, it is likely to further reduce fossil fuel reliance and emissions. The shift towards renewables has also caused a decline in new coal projects in China, signaling a broader trend towards cleaner energy sources.

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Link Icon 8 comments
By @jandrese - 3 months
This is very forward thinking. Over the medium and long term burning fossil fuels is expensive. It is an enormous economic driver to have cheap energy.

It drives me crazy that the Western response is to just increase tariffs on renewable projects.

By @aiauthoritydev - 3 months
India and China will determine the future emissions and hence both these nations moving to renewables would be in our interest.
By @alanwreath - 3 months
Oil dependence is a risk. Chinas capacity to remove it makes them a more resilient. I wish the US would act accordingly.
By @asdefghyk - 3 months
RE China building 2x as much Solar as Rest of the World Combined. Just Observing the cost of the Solar Cells would be much cheaper than countries they exported too. Having another source of energy is good idea , in case they can not obtain coal ( from overseas ) for whatever reason. China is also rapidly increasing nuclear power stations . China has 50 nuclear power stations and are currently building another 23. The problem with Solar and wind is storing it for the inevitable combined solar and wind droughts that occur every several years. Their is also the possible "transmission problem" in such a (no solar/wind for several days) situation. Their needs to be the transmission capacity to get the electricity from where its stored (in batteries OR hydro storage ) to where the solar/wind drought is happening.
By @iamgopal - 3 months
That’s good, they are also consuming as much. Hopefully India soon catch up.
By @Log_out_ - 3 months
The party claims in state owned media?