[ollybee]

China has also just launched a megawatt scale wind generator a the helium-lifted balloon, the S2000 , they have active thorium rector the TMSR-LF1 and GW/h Vandium flow battery. The scale , speed and breadth of what they are doing is incredible and I think missed my people

[noosphr]

Even the people who understand the scale don't understand the purpose.

The Chinese grid isn't renewable or non-renewable. It's built to keep the lights on for anything short of a thousand year catastrophe.

Their 2060 plan has enough non intermittent base load that they can run the whole country off it for a decade.

That half of your grid capacity is there 'just in case' is something no one in the west can wrap their head around. China building out massive solar and wind farms isn't because wind and solar are the future. It's because they can tick off their 30 year plan 25 years ahead of schedule and focus on the hard parts next.

[movedx]

I feel like energy is the most critical aspect to any economy and military. It's the beginning of anything and everything you want to achieve.

[kccqzy]

It totally is. I don’t remember where I heard it from but there’s a saying that all poverty is energy poverty. Not enough food for your citizens? That’s because you don’t have enough energy to run the Haber Bosch process for fertilizer production.

[dfee]

short of the defense of energy infrastructure, of course.

[Workaccount2]

People worship China for being "green focused".

The reality is that they don't have a good source of fossil fuels, and energy independence is a core necessity.

[dalyons]

And thank god they have this incentive alignment! Chinas greentech buildout and export is the only thing with a chance of getting us out of this climate mess. Imagine how fucked we’d be if they had their own oil.

[protocolture]

>And thank god they have this incentive alignment! Chinas greentech buildout and export is the only thing with a chance of getting us out of this climate mess. Imagine how fucked we’d be if they had their own oil.

IIRC that list of companies that polluted the most on the planet, 1 and 2 were Chinese state owned entities. China Coal and China Petroleum from memory.

OFC they are dwarfed IIRC by the US Military.

[dalyons]

sure. But today china is the #1 producer of solar panels (80% of global production capacity), #1 producer of wind turbines (40%), #1 producer of batteries (~80%), #1 producer of EVs (75%).

Noone has done more for global clean energy, and its not even close. Sure they polluted a lot up until now, but honesty who cares about the past, times change fast.

[protocolture]

Oh I dont care so much. Its more that:

A. Where would we be without China, well with a significantly reduced problem. But they are doing their part and doing it well.

B. That list gets used as a bludgeon against free enterprise and a great deal of the entities on the list dont represent free enterprise.

[dahart]

The trend is clear that if we keep using fossil up, then soon nobody will have a good source for it. And it’s clear that for geopolitical reasons in addition to environmental reasons, energy independence will be a core necessity everywhere on earth. It’s handy that the sun is sending us enough energy, directly (solar) and indirectly (wind, hydro), that nobody has a good reason not to be “green focused” and phase out fossil fuels for energy. Any country that leads and shows the rest of the world that it can be done deserves applause.

[chaostheory]

Who is going to pay for it? Even when it was cheap, solar uptake was low except in Texas. EV adoption is still poor outside of California. Then there’s the issue of a K Shaped economy. Outside of our bubble in Silicon Valley, a lot of people can barely afford necessities let alone go green.

[dahart]

You might be confusing consumer purchasing choices with the national energy policy and infrastructure we were talking about. Going green personally is only more expensive to consumers in places where our country isn’t building and offering green power by default. EVs are a bit of a different topic. But what difference does it make when fossil fuels run out? Left unchecked, sooner or later market forces will make oil much more expensive as it becomes scarce, and eventually there is no choice. Yes we might be decades or even hundreds of years away from that, but in the big picture that’s not far away, and it doesn’t matter because the eventuality is obvious. Eventually there will be no such thing as non-renewable energy. Might as well start now.

[reeredfdfdf]

Solar panels are being built like crazy in really poor developing countries like Pakistan, simply because it's cheaper than the alternatives. If they can afford it, average American surely should too.

[triceratops]

China isn't "going green" to go green. They're doing it because it's cheaper.

The elites are pinning us to fossil fuels and driving up the cost of necessities.

[ahartmetz]

They have a large coal mining industry.

[Workaccount2]

And consume 50% of global coal production.

But coal is the worst fossil fuel from a practical stance. It's really only good for energy generation. You can't really power tanks or warships with it.

[ahartmetz]

Oh, you can convert coal to liquid fuels if you have to. Germany produced low single digit millions of tons per year during World War 2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergius_process

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...

[eunos]

Something something Black cat or white cat, doesnt matter as long as it catches mice.

[siscia]

What's the hard part?

[noosphr]

Nuclear build out, wires and transformers.

China has been building 5% extra nuclear capacity every year for the last 30 years. On target for making up 24% of their energy mix in 2060.

[dalyons]

Everything I’ve read says their nuclear share is actually declining y/y, due to the crazy growth of renewables. I think that target is out of date?

[subroutine]

If they build out wind and solar first then yes, the nuclear share will have declined year over year.

[dyauspitr]

Declining because they’re building out everything else so rapidly. I believe they have 30+ reactors being actively constructed right now.

[dalyons]

Sure, I’m just pointing out that 24% share of power being nuke by 2060 is never going to happen now. Renewables got too cheap, and it’s not “on target”

[jacquesm]

Climate change, and having an abundance of energy allows a country to offset some of those challenges.

[bobson381]

Weathering the knock-on effects of ecological overshoot, probably. It's going to be interesting.

[phtrivier]

Demography. They're soon going to run out of "young" workers, which mean they have to invent the robotics of the 2100s to ensure the few remaining people will have machine to harvest crops and wage wars.

Also, they're soon going to run out of women, so they need to perfect artificial wombs.

The few remaining party elites will want to live practically forever, so biology will be on the programs once fusion and robots have been cracked.

And it doesnot even seem like china will make ussr-level mistakes.

Our only hope for beating China, at this point, would be to recreate an "opium wars" situation where the whole population becomes dumb and stop caring. (A bit like what tiktok and X are doing to use at the moment, but with much more social control.)

[komali2]

> Our only hope for beating China, at this point, would be to recreate an "opium wars" situation where the whole population becomes dumb and stop caring. (A bit like what tiktok and X are doing to use at the moment, but with much more social control.)

Might be more accurate to say that the PRC has successfully done an opium wars situation to the USA with e.g. fentanyl precursors.

[frinxor]

I think a major factor is politics - when China's leadership sets out to do something, they go out and get it done. Look at China's high speed rail (now more than the combined rest of the world), renewable energy growth, and their recent investment in chips. They commit to it, and make incredible progress - far outpacing everyone else. China's leadership seems to plan for the long term in infrastructure.

Compare that to something like the California High Speed Rail, or our every 4 year tug of war for elections (and mid term elections). Everything is short sighted "wins" for the next reelection, of one party vs another party, instead of making actual progress.

Its almost like when there is a good benevolent leadership in charge, for a long term, then progress comes much faster. (Singapore, China, ?)

[mkl]

That's GWh and vanadium flow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery