5 ms·

Is this still true? China seems to be winning now. And lead in solar, and robots.

drstewart 19d ago
China seems to be winning in brightest minds by what metric? >And lead in solar, and robots. And new coal, don't forget about that.
- tialaramex 19d ago
  > And new coal, don't forget about that. For the last full year where we have data (2025), China made slightly less electricity from coal than the one before. Unlike Trump, China's authoritarian leadership seem to have their eye on the ball, China is on Earth so if we trash Earth's climate that's China's climate too. But also, more so than the gas which powers so much of Europe and America's electricity generators, coal is obviously poison, even the unburned coal looks like a movie prop to signify "Mysterious evil" The toxic waste from a gas power plant is a transparent gas that readily mixes with the atmosphere. Does it cause problems? Yes. But compared to "And here's a mountain of radioactive and highly toxic coal ash that's produced by our coal power plant" it's rather subtle.
  - cryptopian 19d ago
    It's important to remember how radical a change to electricity generation is. Apart from just new plants, you've got to keep the existing grid going, create new distribution infrastructure, reorganise supply chains and labour forces, and you'll also have old infrastructure aging out. It's not ideal, but a long term plan may involve building new fossil fuel generators in the immediate term
    - tialaramex 19d ago
      > a long term plan may involve building new fossil fuel generators in the immediate term In all but some very extreme cases this is unaffordable because the fossil fuel generator is expensive to build and yet is increasingly stranded destroying any further value.
- FrustratedMonky 19d ago
  Do your own research. There are metrics. I'm done explaining to Republicans what they could just as easily go read in a book themselves.
  - drstewart 19d ago
    [flagged]
    - FrustratedMonky 19d ago
      no, you
- Sweepi 19d ago
  China reduced the CO2/kWh of electricity by 33% in the last 20 years, while increasing output by 320%. The U.S. reduced it by 37%, while increasing output by ... 12%. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-mix?tab=line&stackMode=relative&time=2005..2025&country=CHN%7EDEU%7EUSA&tableFilter=selection&source=total&metric=generation&frequency=annual https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-mix?tab=line&... Also talking into considering the insane wealth disparity and the current rate of change, "coal" is just ragebait. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-mix?tab=line&stackMode=relative&time=2020..2025&country=CHN%7EDEU%7EUSA&tableFilter=selection&source=total&metric=carbon_intensity&frequency=annual https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-mix?tab=line&...
- tialaramex 16d ago
  I already replied to this, but I think it's worth explaining why you can be building more coal plants and yet burning less coal. Rather than try to guess from our high level data about China I'm going to explain more generally how this works. Generators always have what's called a "Capacity factor" which tells us how much power is actually produced relative to the naive "nameplate capacity" the specified maximum power output of that generator. For a nuclear power station maybe you run for 48 days straight at 100% output and then you spend 2 days shutting down, refuelling and spinning it back up, so that's 96% capacity factor. That's very high, only need a few maintenance problems and you would not hit those numbers, real world nukes maybe trend to 90% Coal needs more maintenance downtime but historically you might expect 80% factor, say you have 1000 400MW coal power stations, that's theoretically 400GW of power but because of 80% capacity factor figure you've got more like 320GW Renewables are free, so increasingly it makes no sense to run a fuel consuming generator when there's free electricity available. However both PV and wind are intermittent to some degree, it's not sunny at night and sometimes it's just not windy. So you might build 500 more of those 400MW power stations, at your 80% capacity factor that's 160GW of new electricity supply for a total of 480GW. But actually your plan is to run them just as hard but less often, for 50% capacity factor across the entire fleet, an average of 200 + 100 = 300GW. Over a year your total output from coal generation is down, but your fleet of coal power stations grew enormously, you just don't run them as often. At midnight with dead calm, those power stations are running pretty hard, belching out far more CO2 than in the past. But on a breezy but clear summer afternoon most of them are idle because there's free electricity from every solar and wind farm. So it averages out as less coal, yet there are more coal power stations, at least for a time. Cheap storage starts to eat into this. A coal station which runs for an average of 18 hours per day is fine (75% capacity factor), one which runs for six hours per day (25% factor) is an economic encumbrance, six hours per week (<4%) is a reason to mothball the oldest or worst stations and give the others more work.

China seems to be winning in brightest minds by what metric? >And lead in solar, and robots. And new coal, don't forget about that.

tialaramex 19d ago
> And new coal, don't forget about that. For the last full year where we have data (2025), China made slightly less electricity from coal than the one before. Unlike Trump, China's authoritarian leadership seem to have their eye on the ball, China is on Earth so if we trash Earth's climate that's China's climate too. But also, more so than the gas which powers so much of Europe and America's electricity generators, coal is obviously poison, even the unburned coal looks like a movie prop to signify "Mysterious evil" The toxic waste from a gas power plant is a transparent gas that readily mixes with the atmosphere. Does it cause problems? Yes. But compared to "And here's a mountain of radioactive and highly toxic coal ash that's produced by our coal power plant" it's rather subtle.
- cryptopian 19d ago
  It's important to remember how radical a change to electricity generation is. Apart from just new plants, you've got to keep the existing grid going, create new distribution infrastructure, reorganise supply chains and labour forces, and you'll also have old infrastructure aging out. It's not ideal, but a long term plan may involve building new fossil fuel generators in the immediate term
  - tialaramex 19d ago
    > a long term plan may involve building new fossil fuel generators in the immediate term In all but some very extreme cases this is unaffordable because the fossil fuel generator is expensive to build and yet is increasingly stranded destroying any further value.
FrustratedMonky 19d ago
Do your own research. There are metrics. I'm done explaining to Republicans what they could just as easily go read in a book themselves.
- drstewart 19d ago
  [flagged]
  - FrustratedMonky 19d ago
    no, you
Sweepi 19d ago
China reduced the CO2/kWh of electricity by 33% in the last 20 years, while increasing output by 320%. The U.S. reduced it by 37%, while increasing output by ... 12%. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-mix?tab=line&stackMode=relative&time=2005..2025&country=CHN%7EDEU%7EUSA&tableFilter=selection&source=total&metric=generation&frequency=annual https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-mix?tab=line&... Also talking into considering the insane wealth disparity and the current rate of change, "coal" is just ragebait. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-mix?tab=line&stackMode=relative&time=2020..2025&country=CHN%7EDEU%7EUSA&tableFilter=selection&source=total&metric=carbon_intensity&frequency=annual https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-mix?tab=line&...
tialaramex 16d ago
I already replied to this, but I think it's worth explaining why you can be building more coal plants and yet burning less coal. Rather than try to guess from our high level data about China I'm going to explain more generally how this works. Generators always have what's called a "Capacity factor" which tells us how much power is actually produced relative to the naive "nameplate capacity" the specified maximum power output of that generator. For a nuclear power station maybe you run for 48 days straight at 100% output and then you spend 2 days shutting down, refuelling and spinning it back up, so that's 96% capacity factor. That's very high, only need a few maintenance problems and you would not hit those numbers, real world nukes maybe trend to 90% Coal needs more maintenance downtime but historically you might expect 80% factor, say you have 1000 400MW coal power stations, that's theoretically 400GW of power but because of 80% capacity factor figure you've got more like 320GW Renewables are free, so increasingly it makes no sense to run a fuel consuming generator when there's free electricity available. However both PV and wind are intermittent to some degree, it's not sunny at night and sometimes it's just not windy. So you might build 500 more of those 400MW power stations, at your 80% capacity factor that's 160GW of new electricity supply for a total of 480GW. But actually your plan is to run them just as hard but less often, for 50% capacity factor across the entire fleet, an average of 200 + 100 = 300GW. Over a year your total output from coal generation is down, but your fleet of coal power stations grew enormously, you just don't run them as often. At midnight with dead calm, those power stations are running pretty hard, belching out far more CO2 than in the past. But on a breezy but clear summer afternoon most of them are idle because there's free electricity from every solar and wind farm. So it averages out as less coal, yet there are more coal power stations, at least for a time. Cheap storage starts to eat into this. A coal station which runs for an average of 18 hours per day is fine (75% capacity factor), one which runs for six hours per day (25% factor) is an economic encumbrance, six hours per week (<4%) is a reason to mothball the oldest or worst stations and give the others more work.