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
Nice I love seeing China Greenwashing get reposted. Remember that China is 3x the size of the EU so them having 3x the solar power is a stupid comparison. China also continues to increase coal generation by more than renewables. China is only %27 renewables while the EU is 47%. China is 17% of the world and almost 40% of the emissions.
OECD countries are actually working on emission reduction instead of china which continue to increase emissions with absolute no signs of stopping. They have missed every single renewable target and goal they’re set. But dont worry im sure they will stop building more coal plants in 2030, im sure it wont be to late by then.
I don’t believe this:
https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/china/
Even if you add these 2 together and pretend they were finished the same year it’s not even close to:
https://theasialive.com/chinas-energy-production-coal-and-renewables-locked-in-competition-amid-clean-energy-boom/2025/02/14/
I don’t believe this is true either unless you are referring to some other targets?
https://carboncredits.com/chinas-renewable-energy-boom-a-record-breaking-shift-or-still-chained-to-coal/
Don’t worry, just like everything else I’m sure that will flip in the future
Europe has plenty of money apparently to suddenly:
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/06/25/defence-spend-to-5-of-gdp-ukraine-russia-the-key-takeaways-from-the-nato-summit
Just why does it take an emergency to make some proper progress:
https://reneweconomy.com.au/no-time-to-waste-huge-big-battery-plans-unveiled-for-spain-as-accusations-traded-over-blackout/
Where will the batteries be made I wonder?
On top of this energy prices in the EU are ridiculous and for some reason they still can’t get off the gas, which leads to an unreal point of France giving more money to Russia for gas than in aid to Ukraine, so they have high energy prices and they’re funding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and their companies and manufacturing are leaving them… to go to China…
https://aussie.zone/comment/17361559
But I appreciate your scepticism (I gave your post an upvote because China does sometimes get a little bit too much credit), they are the worlds top producer of CO2 by FAR but I do want to address
This is something I’ve wanted for a while:
https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/what-to-expect-from-the-eu-carbon-border-adjustment-mechanism_719d2ff9-en.html
I’ve long disliked that places like the EU and the rest of the west can export their dirty manufacturing over to China where companies take advantage of lax or no environmental regulations, it’s a false economy and makes the west look a whole lot greener and cleaner than it would if we were manufacturing what we used back at home
https://www.smh.com.au/national/china-has-apple-by-the-balls-how-the-rising-superpower-captured-the-tech-giant-20250609-p5m5z1.html
edit: boy I sure do love to procrastinate and talk about energy and co2 instead of studying :|
I feel the same way, but I had to actually focus on real life over the weekend instead of combing through the energy reports. I will start by saying that its very likely that 2024 stats are significantly more in favor of strong renewable growth but I also couldnt find a csv of data on ember-energy so i couldnt look at the actual numbers. The major energy reports I normally go by dont seem to have included 2024 data yet. Its likely that even in 2024 non renewables still increased more than renewables even though china claims that renewables were 80% of the growth I will explain below why this has previously been the case.
China loves this stat and its a good stat but its a bit misleading, these show renewable energy as a % of total power which is relative instead of absolute. Why this is important is because it allows china to brag about increasing renewables while still massively increasing non renewables.
Year 2022: Renewable = 8114 TWh | Non-renewable = 36401 TWh | % renewables = 18.2% From Energy Institute’s world review
Year 2023: Renewable = 8719 TWh | Non-renewable = 38708 TWh | % renewables = 18.3%
Renewable energy increase was 605 TWh and Non-renewable was 2307 TWh
There is another stat that these reports normally parade around. Its % increase of a specific energy type. (these stats are made up cause i could be fucked finding an example article of a claim) They will say something like solar went from 600gw to 1000 thats a 66% increase this year and coal only increased 40% except coal is 3600gw to 6400.
Maybe I’m wrong and if so i’d love for someone smarter than me to correct me.
China does this thing where they go to climate meetings and agree on world goals like 13% energy intensity reduction and carbon intensity reduction. They then go back home and broadcast random goals like adding x amount of solar or carbon peak by x year. These are no climate targets, these are personal targets from the CCP that even if achieved (the carbon peak 1000% wont be) are no where close to what is required to meet their climate goals.
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/international-issues/china-is-missing-key-climate-targets/
I’m not sure how european defense spending is relevant considering china’s defense spending has also more than doubled in the last few years and is nearing the US
Prehaps they would be made in a country with environmental and labour laws if governments legislated properly to prevent companies outsourcing manufacturing. However this doesnt absolve china. China isnt being forced at Gunpoint to produce these goods with low labour regulation and low environmental regulation.
Can someone actually point out to me where this comes from? Even when I look up the peak spike of germany Energy prices it doesnt seem that bad. At the end of the day energy is a small % of EU household spending and ill think that until i see otherwise.
This would be great, it would have been greater 10 years ago. But the best time to act was yesterday and the 2nd best time is today so i’d be happy to see something like this implemented although I dont know how effective it would be since manufacturing competitiveness is no where close anymore.
New power plants don’t mean using those power plants. Resilience/backup power. Use of coal for electricity has declined despite new coal plants.
Deceiving metrics. What percentage of world PPP GDP is China? China doesn’t pollute due to its population, it pollutes because it’s the industrial hub of the world. How comfortable of you to sit in your office and import Chinese products disregarding the effect of that in the pollution metrics of your country and China.
And how long did China take to develop? What are the cumulative CO2 emissions of China vs those of the US or Europe? Furthermore: where are the solar panels that Europe uses manufactured? Europe may have a blossoming wind industry, but photovoltaics are almost entirely Chinese.
What a chauvinistic and anti-Chinese point of view. BTW, you got completely proven wrong on China building more coal than renewables, you’re just spitting disinformation.
you’re retarded
While everyone else is paying the costs that come with environmental regulation china is exploiting it and getting celebrated for it. Its insane what a few dollars can do to change peoples minds on a topic.
tbh I’m surprised that you even got upvotes, didn’t went that well for me with a similar answer on another post…
Yeah the .ml must have missed this thread.