this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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Currently seeing the US climate narrative shift from "why should we stop burning fossils and get our shit together when China won't? >:(" to "why should we stop burning fossils and get our shit together when Senegal won't? >:(" Can't wait for 20 years from now when we're balls deep in climate disasters, Senegal gets its shit together, and the US narrative moves to ~~honduras~~ ~~El Salvador~~ ~~Uganda~~ comparing itself to the Philippines.
Holy crap you guys, it turns out that the narrative that the developing world is going to burn an ass-ton of fossil fuels is a lot weaker than I thought. It looks like there's a fuckton of equatorial and global south countries with renewables/hydro power, Honduras is even adding Geothermal. God damn it, USA, get off your ass and fix your shit already.
We've moved from 17% to 40% of total energy production coming from renewables since 2020. Thanks to Biden policies. Even though according to reddit he's an incontinent dementia patient.
Source? I haven't seen final numbers for 2023 from EIA yet, but 2022 was like 22%. The growth is accelerating as economics change, and in large part the IRA (thanks Biden), but it's not 40%. I'm speaking of electricity production, but I can't think of a reasonable metric that's anywhere near 40% nationally. Let's try to stick to reality here.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_United_States
https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/03/05/us-got-a-record-breaking-40-of-its-energy-from-carbon-free-sources-in-2022-report-reveals
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/03/us-electricity-energy-carbon-renewables/
Reality enough for you lol?
You said renewables are 40%, which is wrong. Then you sourced articles showing that carbon free sources are 40%, which includes nuclear. Nobody calls nuclear "renewable", so I suggest getting your language straight so as not to confuse.
to be fair nuclear nuclear is much much better than keeping up with all that fossil fuel burning.
in fact id rather see (properly maintained!!!) nuclear than waiting until actual renewables can cover all of the world's demand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_proposed_as_renewable_energy
You are a total douche, btw.
This what you said. You're comparing a 2020 number without nuclear to a 2022 number with nuclear. That's dumb and misleading. That doesn't make me a douche, it makes you wrong and petty. Grow up and just try to get your numbers and facts straight.
The US DOE puts the US at 20% renewable energy.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/renewable-energy
Pretty easy to argue nuclear is renewable and is carbon neutral. Ergo, 40%.
Except when you leave out nuclear in 2020 and add it in 2023 you're not pointing out anything about Biden (or anyone else's) policies. You're just demonstrating that shifting your metrics mid sentence leads to a nonsense conclusion.
I mean... It can all be true, right?
Listen to Biden's interview on Conan O'Brien's podcast then come back here and tell me he's demented. I'll wait.
I also had sweet dreams last night
Same with EVs. After BYD became the largest EV manufacturer, suddenly EV is not cool anymore. Maybe if car manufacturers focus on making EV affordable instead of cramming more and more luxury features, maybe EV sales in US won't dwindle.
The anti-EV sentiment has been building much longer than BYD becoming the big boy on the block. About 8 months ago my state passed the equivalent of about a $100 per gallon tax on EV charging.
That sounds bad, but how would they know you are using electricity to charge your EV?
It's a DC charger tax.
Mine requires you to pay an extra like thousand dollars when buying your plates as an EV tax, they try to justify by saying they’re missing out on your fuel taxes for the next decade so they want to collect it up front.
Then they go and spend it on hunting down women getting abortions and black kids existing..
China needs a fuckload of power, they are building more of everything including coal. The only reason they aren't building more coal is people like seeing out their windows.
The US is actually winding down coal use. China is still expanding, this is a problem. The fact China also added a ton of solar panels is a nice distraction.
I seem to have been working on old info, as China has decommissioned 70 GW of coal plants, but it looks like they also just approved a whole lot more of them.
From Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/chinas-coal-country-full-steam-ahead-with-new-power-plants-despite-climate-2023-11-30/#:~:text=After%202025%2C%20it%20is%20unclear,and%20are%20phasing%20out%20plants.
Well, shit.
Anyway, I'm glad for the solar and nuclear capacity (LOTS of it!) that China's been building. I'm glad to hear that we are spinning down coal capacity, but I'd be interested to learn what we're replacing it with. It seems like natural gas is all the rage these days, and that still produces GHG emissions.
the coal is approved because on how power plants function. dirty energy is usually used to level out power spikes in demand, but not as a main source after you have a remeweable source. its a tually very hard to go 100% renewables.
It's less about balance and more about raw needs. Providing power to a billion people is hard and they are building everything to meet the growing demand.
Balance is what determines the supply mix else everyone would just run nukes. Previous commenter is right about why fossil fuels are still used, we don't have tech to replace their capabilities, which are necessary for reliability of the transmission grid. Energy storage is an area of huge investment right now because of this, with batteries and flywheel storage pilot projects to try and mature this technology. SMRs are another area of research. Programs like demand response to incentivize heavy consumers to change their usage patterns.
Without the ramp rate of fossils to respond quickly to grid conditions, there would be constant frequency drops and spikes across the transmission grid. Turbines would become out of sync from the frequency on the lines and things would start tripping and we would have a blackout. This is even more complex with unpredictable renewal integration where fossil becomes even more critical for its capabilities, while slightly less for its capacity.
I thought China's population has stopped growing and is actually on a track to start shrinking rapidly?
But at the same time, quality of life is rapidly improving which means energy usage per capita will eventually ramp up to similar level with average western citizen's energy usage.
That depends on whether it'll keep its position as world's cheap factory. Quality of life improving tends to affect that too. What energy China now consumes for production may not be required in 20 years.
China already is losing cheap factories to India and other neighboring countries.
It's why I'm a bit disgruntled many places around the world aren't getting their arses in gear and developing and building storage.
Even if that storage is woefully inefficient (liquid air energy storage, for example) it would be hugely beneficial. In Queensland, Australia, for example, barely any new solar is being built because energy prices are negative in the middle of the day and plants are being curtailed.
We need storage, any storage, a butt-tonne more of it, like now.
I'm not so sure about that. China is about to ramp up solar even more. They build a lot of solar and battery-related factories and secured mining rights for solar and battery raw elements in Asia and Africa in the past few years, sometimes to the point of fighting with the displaced locals (China tend to bring their own workers from mainland instead of employing local workers).
Renewables may be more plausible for some developing countries because of lack of competency or administrative consistency (sometimes to the degree of stealing everything which isn't nailed to the floor) for centralized grid with a few big producers, and weak infrastructure in general.
But of course it would be good if some things weren't stagnating in countries without such factors.
It's also easier to justify adopting newer tech in places that are less developed. If you made a billion dollar investment and are still paying for it, it's harder to scrap it and pivot.
It's more because developing countries don't attract the interest of corporations so much that they won't devote much energy to sabotage the installation of renewable energy.
Maybe, but it's rather that this lack of interest allows local establishment to take the niche and the power in their countries associated with it. So they use the opportunity gladly.