Thread by Kyle 🚄

twitter.com
1 Recommender
1 Mention
Recommend
Post
Save
Complete
Collect
Thread
To say that China is the "world leader in renewable energy" is a colossal understatement.

Actually, China is the ONLY country in the world that both has enough resources to make a real difference AND is actually treating the climate emergency like it’s an emergency.

Thread đŸ§”
In each year from 2020 to 2022, China accounted for about 140 gigawatts of new renewable electricity generation capacity, more than the United States, the EU, and India put together. (A gigawatt is enough to power three-quarters of a million homes.)
www.ft.com/content/33ca0d1b-6173-4ce1-a072-a8d3c0b492be
In 2021, more offshore wind generation capacity was installed in China in one year than the rest of the world combined had installed in the past five years. As of January 2022, the PRC operated half of all the world’s offshore wind turbines.
www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2022/01/26/china-built-more-offshore-wind-in-2021-than-every-other-...
These figures seriously underestimate the PRC’s real role in fighting climate change. In 2021, China accounted for over 80% of all stages of solar photovoltaic manufacturing but only 36% of all demand. 4 out of 5 solar panels in the world are Chinese-made
www.iea.org/reports/solar-pv-global-supply-chains/executive-summary
China’s “nuclear pipeline” or the total capacity of all its new reactors under development, is also as big as the rest of the world’s combined, at ~250 GW. In 2021, 19 new reactors were under construction, 43 awaiting permits, and another 166 were planned.
www.energymonitor.ai/sectors/power/weekly-data-chinas-nuclear-pipeline-as-big-as-the-rest-of-the-worl...
In April 2022, plans for a further 6 new reactors were announced, and another 30 new reactors (estimated) will be built around the world through the Belt and Road Initiative by the end of the decade.
www.reuters.com/article/us-china-nuclearpower-idUSKCN1TL0HZ
Even China's struggling coal-fired power plants are significantly cleaner and more efficient than the west's. Chinese plants have set world records in efficiency (~50%) while western plants typically perform at around 30%.

You can read a very through analysis of them here👇

A common canard of western media is that China is the "world's biggest carbon emitter". In fact, China's per capita emissions aren’t just lower than the US, Japan or Russia, but with 30% of the world's industrial manufacturing, its emissions share is disproportionately LOW at 27%
China's total rate of emissions saw an inflection point at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. As China industrialized, its emissions increased by 13% in just one year; but in the most recent period, it's taken EIGHT years to match the same level of increase.
In mathematics, an inflection point is where a function's curvature changes direction. In this case, it was when the rate of the INCREASE in emissions became negative. If future rates of emissions follow a (for example) Gaussian curve, the PRC will meet its 2060 carbon-zero goal.
Even the western press considered the PRC's climate target to be all-important to preventing complete global disaster. Climate models estimated it would reduce the total global temperature increase from 2.7 degrees Celcius to around 2.4 degrees Celsius.
foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/25/xi-china-climate-change-saved-the-world
Anyone who seriously doubts the PRC’s ability to meet its goals is not paying attention.

Power plants are only one aspect to the climate solution; China is ALSO disproportionately the greatest contributor in EVERY OTHER aspect.
China has more electric high-speed rail than the rest of the world combined, and more electric buses than the rest of the world combined. (In fact, 98% of all electric buses in the world are deployed in Chinese cities as of this year.)
www.sustainable-bus.com/electric-bus/electric-bus-public-transport-main-fleets-projects-around-world/...
In 2022, the NYT admitted that more electric vehicles would be sold in China than the rest of the world combined. EVs were over 20% of all car sales—meeting the PRC's EV goal 3 years ahead of schedule. (To compare, EVs are only 5% of all sales in the US.)
www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/business/china-electric-vehicles.html
The PRC has also planted more new trees in the past 40 years than the rest of the world combined. Currently, enough new trees are planted in China each year to cover the entire land area of Belgium.
www.afr.com/world/asia/china-s-40-year-billion-tree-project-is-a-lesson-for-the-world-20200915-p55vnk...
According to statistics calculated by economist Sean Starrs, The PRC controls only an estimated 6% of global capital, yet has spent more on the energy transition than any other country in every year since 2012.
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-15/just-how-big-is-the-374-billion-us-climate-bill-in-global-...
So proportional to its share of capital, in 2021 China spent TEN TIMES more to fight climate change than the rest of the world combined.

Too few westerners seem willing to admit it, but this is what can happen when a Communist Party rules an industrial superpower.
If a bourgeois dictatorship is capable of delivering results anywhere close to the PRC’s in the age of US hegemony, we have yet to see it.

Most likely, we never will. It’s either climate socialism, or we’re all doomed.
Real philanthropy, the kind that actually makes a fundamental difference, isn't profitable; western capitalists have a LOT more money that they COULD spend to fight climate change, they simply don't want to give it up, and right now no one has the power to make them.
Some further remarks.

First, as some folks pointed out, China isn’t just building more nuclear reactors than everyone else, its reactor technology is also considerably more advanced👇

Second, I tried to preempt it a little, but a lot of responses to this thread still have to do with gross vs per capita emissions. I think that’s entirely the wrong way to be thinking about solving climate change.
The anti-China position is to blame the PRC with a blinkered focus on the current gross rates. Pro-China folks will show that its per capita and/or total emissions are relatively low.

But really, it’s production, not population, that is more important with respect to emissions.
It’s industry, agriculture, and freight that drive most emissions. As I mentioned earlier, China’s emissions *proportional to its share of global manufacturing* are reasonable.

If you want to assign blame, look at the west, which consumes disproportionately.
An issue with assigning blame is that it’s a global phenomenon. Industry can’t exist without consumption or materials. EVERY country is complicit; if you’re not already part of the problem, you’ll be FORCED to become part of it.

But that’s not true of being part of the SOLUTION.
If you’re a peripheral country and you decide to stop exporting raw materials, you will likely find yourself sanctioned, invaded, or couped in short order.

But if you start using more fossil fuels instead of renewables, you‘ll just get a scolding.
Third, criticism of how the PRC is going about fighting climate change also needs to take into account that this is uncharted territory. No one else has done or is doing as much to solve the problem, so any mistakes should be viewed in that context.
In 2015, the PRC’s central government instituted an “environmental audit” of local officials. But the department in charge had trouble implementing the policy.
A major reason was, this was such an unprecedented policy that no other country had ever adopted a similar one that they could learn from.

Cross the river by feeling for the stones.

thediplomat.com/2015/09/chinas-new-blueprint-for-an-ecological-civilization/
Mentions
See All