China's green energy boom could spell the end of the fossil fuel age

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• WatDabney@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  And thanks to Trump, the US is perfectly placed to be entirely left behind.

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  • takeda@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    This moron doesn’t understand that green energy was a new sector where US could dominate for decades.

    A lot of countries are forced to import fossil fuels as they can’t produce their own so replacing that with local alternatives actually increases national security.

    Do people think China went into renewable energy because suddenly Xi became a tree hugger?

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    • WatDabney@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      From what I’ve gleaned of the ravings of the angry stupid right blogosphere, a lot of people actually do think that only tree huggers want green energy.

      And I have little doubt that that’s an opinion that Trump shares, but that’s not his main motivation in all of this. His main motivation is big fat bribes from the fossil fuel industry.

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    • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      It’s the moment Sears let Amazon take the lead on mail order shopping just because Sears didn’t understand how the internet and shopping could work together.

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    • Wytch@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Doesn’t understand, also doesn’t care. Coal and oil paid for his loyalty.

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  • Evono@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Not only the US , Germany is also far behind

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    • AppleTea@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      don’t worry, you can start shutting down france’s nuclear generators once you run out of your own

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    • Skua@kbin.earth ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Germany is worse than average for Europe, but it's far better than America and about on par with China. Per capita emissions are a little lower than China's, but China is a bit better if you look at consumption-based emissions instead

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    • chaosCruiser@futurology.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Oh, but Germans can just buy their electricity from French nuclear plants.

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  • ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Don’t get my hopes up

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  • devolution@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    More behind than an anal orgy.

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• Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  China’s electrification efforts are substantial and to be applauded and encouraged.

  The problem is when you tell one sided stories, the important details get lost.

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  This is the most recent figure on China’s total energy mix from the IEA. They have a stupid long way to go on emissions.

  It sounds nice to say they installed more solar in a month that australia has ever in it’s history. Let’s look at the trends…

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  Coal is up. Way up. Why did this article lose the narrative so badly? Because it’s a fluff piece, not an informed, intelligent discussion on emissions.

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  • PlasticLove@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Image

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  • pdqcp@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    What’s the source of these graphs? I’ve seen them used before for a different country and they look really cool. I could probably waste a few hours just browsing different countries

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    • Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      www.iea.org/countries/china/energy-mix

      You can look at any country.

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  • TheUnicornOfPerfidy@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Is there data for 2024 yet?

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    • Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Not that I saw. See another bost below with the iea website.

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• acosmichippo@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  not until we actually stop using fossil fuels. we are still using more fossil fuels than ever.

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  • AppleTea@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    my dad once said that if he was in Bush’s position, he would have used 9/11 to justify decoupling from Saudi oil and push for more solar and wind development

    I still think about that. So many missed off-ramps to this…

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    • frongt@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      If the US has tried that, SA would have tanked the dollar.

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    • takeda@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Actually right now US is not dependent on Saudi. Thanks to shale revolution it is now a net exporter.

      Though, yeah that still pollutes and it didn’t remove our allies’ dependence so. The green tech should have been the next step.

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    • fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The tech wasn’t there yet

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  • avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Not for them, and not for the horizon they care about. They’re, (and the US as a whole) heavily invested in fossil fuels, so economically for them it makes the most sense to squeeze as much profit from those investments as possible.

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  • iopq@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Fund Ukraine to bomb Russian refineries. Huge win for the environment

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  • halfsalesman@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Only up to a point, fossil fuels getting cheaper will reach a point where it wont be worth extraction outside of for niche customers.

    If renewables become plentiful and cheap enough globally fossil fuels will more or less die off in use, even if right now they're going upward in use its temporary. The problem is we're stuck with severe consequences even if they do eventually largely stop. We're stuck with severe consequences if they stop this very instant in fact.

    What we really want is renewable energy to become so cheap and plentiful that not only do fossil fuels stop being used but carbon capture technology's high energy cost becomes null and it just becomes a net good. ATM the technology is useless because the high energy cost ends up just putting more co2 into the air anyway than is removed.

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• DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Man, they’re twisting the data hard to try to make China look good here. They’re falling back on per capita, and cumulative to try to hide that they’re the largest emitter of carbon by far, much of it is from burning coal, which they are still doing much more than any other country.

  This is greenwashing, nothing more.

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  • Skua@kbin.earth ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    National emissions should be approached per capita. It'd be silly to expect that Luxembourg and France should have the same total emissions

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    • Fizz@lemmy.nz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Per capita emissions favour densly packed high population countries.

      I dont think countries thay have 5m people should be held to the same number as ones that have 1billion. For nz the best way for us to reduce our per capita emissions is to add another 50m people but that would be counter productive since we want to reduce overall pollution.

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  • AppleTea@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Maybe… but… remember ten years ago when there were all those articles about how “China is building train stations to no-where!” and today those same train stations are now in the center of new bustling cities? Isn’t this what we’d expect to see, right at the start of a pivot to green energy?

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    • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      bustling…cities?

      not what I’ve seen. I’ve seen entire 30 floor buildings empty.

      just because there is a “city” doesn’t mean it’s populated.

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  • avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    They’re not hiding anything. If you observe snapshots in time you’d understand what the facts are at that point in time. If you observe the trends at a point in time, you’d understand what things are likely to look at a future point in time. To me the interesting and informative bit is the trend and its short and long term projections. E.g. that it points to peak oil consumption within a couple of years and that it points to reduction of the leverage of OPEC and the US over China.

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• devolution@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Oh come on! Cheetolini knows best that fossil fuels are the future. All this woke green energy talk.

  ~I’m case I have to spell it out, I’m being sarcastic.~

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• m3t00@piefed.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Subsidies for solar going away because it was getting cheaper than coal/oil. bribes paid. it's still cheaper than new fossil plants. oil still getting subsidies.

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  • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I think I need to tell my friend Luigi about this.

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• the_q@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Except the anchor that is America will keep fossil fuels going forever.

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• Reverendender@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Jeff Daniels was right in Looper. “Go to china!”

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