Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by amanaplanacanal 48 days ago
China is installing new solar faster than anybody else, in case you weren't aware.
1 comments

Coal too. Or has India taken that crown yet?

New solar doesn't reduce CO2 emissions if it isn't even covering increasing demand.

Solar is in actual fact covering the whole of increased electricity demand globally, as of 2026, and still growing fast.

It covered 75% in 2025. And wind the rest, also still growing.

We could have got there faster, but there was, and is, a long running disinformation campaign to deny there was a problem, question the root causes of the problem and demonise the most promising solutions.

So that just happened now, this year? Solar is only barely covering just growth? Decades after it had "killed coal"?

So it took solar that long to take the easiest 8% of global electricity generation share. The long-dead coal is somehow still far a larger producer of electricity. 4x bigger than total solar capacity.

both countries reached peak coal this year.
Peak coal that was dead killed by far cheaper renewables 30 years ago? That's amazing, let's see for ourselves...

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/04/india-coal-power-heatwave-ln...

"Coal-fired power generation in India in April increased to 164.9 average gigawatts, compared with 160.7 average gigawatts last year, according to data shared by S&P Global Energy. According to the data, coal-fired power generation rose sequentially by 5.6 average gigawatts, or 3.5%, in April."

Yikes.