As a result of the strong capacity growth – and despite poor wind conditions – solar and wind covered 52% of electricity demand growth in the first half of 2024 and 71% since March. (The fall in wind speeds can be seen from NASA MERRA-2 data averaged for all of China.)
Indeed, the increase in power generation from solar and wind reported by the National Energy Administration in the first half of the year, at 171 terawatt hours (TWh), exceeded the UK’s total electricity supply of 160TWh in the first half of 2023.
Rapid demand growth in January–February, at 11%, had outpaced even the clean energy additions. But combined with a rebound in hydropower generation, the increase in non-fossil electricity supply exceeded power demand growth in the March to June period.
The population is functionally flat. The rapid onboarding of green energy has displaced the need for new fossil fuel sources and depressed carbon emissions for the first time since the pandemic.
Also China had insane emissions growth for decades
China had normal, if not below average, emissions growth for decades. Their reliance on hydro power and mass transit has kept them well below the western industrial average.
The main reason production is leaving China is high cost
The costs are coming in the form of tariffs and other trade restrictions placed by an increasingly trade-hostile US federal government. Real cost of manufacturing in the Chinese economy continues to fall, as new advanced infrastructure reduce the material and energy costs of per-unit production.
What the other Pacific Rim countries have that China lacks is a scorched earth commitment to industrial expansion. They’re destroying their local ecology and sacrificing the quality of life of their native residents to fuel a short term burst of foreign investment. But it can’t last.
Comparing gross to per-capita is deliberately misleading, not factual.
The population is functionally flat. The rapid onboarding of green energy has displaced the need for new fossil fuel sources and depressed carbon emissions for the first time since the pandemic.
China had normal, if not below average, emissions growth for decades. Their reliance on hydro power and mass transit has kept them well below the western industrial average.
The costs are coming in the form of tariffs and other trade restrictions placed by an increasingly trade-hostile US federal government. Real cost of manufacturing in the Chinese economy continues to fall, as new advanced infrastructure reduce the material and energy costs of per-unit production.
What the other Pacific Rim countries have that China lacks is a scorched earth commitment to industrial expansion. They’re destroying their local ecology and sacrificing the quality of life of their native residents to fuel a short term burst of foreign investment. But it can’t last.