Hacker News Reader

Comment by nforgerit | Hacker News Reader

I'd suggest browsing through ourworldindata.org's energy section. It is an absolutely astonishing accomplishment what China has built with slashing PV and battery prices as well as production capacities in recent years. Dynamics are such that there's hope they'll reach peak CO2 emissions in the upcoming few years, way ahead of their own plans. I'm saying that as a German whose 20y old idea (be a global supplier for renewable tech) they copied and executed like 10x better.

View on HN

China had 3 big goals for last 20+ years or so in their 5 year economic plans: getting rod of fossil fuel dependency, becoming a knowledge economy, increasing the share of service economy. Every government organization is working on to realize these. All the subsidies for EVs are there because they don't want to rely on gas and coal since it's not sustainable. Germany was lobbying to EU on the benefits of "clean diesel" till recently.

And they missed all of them. And their PR pieces got peddled in the west by journalists, to keep the remainders of the "green" revolution going in the west in increments, by generating virtual progress of a imaginary opposition. Goto keep up with the Johnsons halfway around the world, whos house may or may not be cardboard. Well meaning, but in the end, even well meaning lies destroy your megaphone.

I don't know what journalista say, I don't read newspapers.

My source on thus is international institutions like IEA and World Bank. The energy transition is going good according to the World Bank https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-rep...

I ve read the report: https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/1628416385085972...

It does not quote its sources, but that sources seem to be the chinese government. Which then reports the progress of its provinicial governments- who miraculously always meet the set goals, by shifting goalposts and faking it. So, that fluff peace this aggregated into up on an hill high, does mean nothing.

During the great leap forward the chinese government statistics reported record harvests, enough to export grain to the sovjiet union. Meanwhile on the ground: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward#Deaths_by_f...

So, just because some provincial government buys scrapped solar cells to put them up unconnected some not used fields, buy a sattelite picture and doctor a report, while actually depending on coal plants that are planned and built. https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-coal-plant-t... i do not believe that nonsense.

Most EVs sold in China are actually hybrids which is why the category is called NEV, i.e. new energy vehicles.

I can't find any data to support this, just the figure that NEVs account for ~40% of new sales, no further breakdown. Do you have a reference, I'd be very curious to see the breakdown -- my view is biased by the high pure EV penetration in cities like Shenzhen.

> A total of 2.62 million passenger cars were sold in December, meaning the NEV penetration rate was 52.6%.

> Between January and November, BEV share was 58%, while PHEV share was 42% in China.

https://carnewschina.com/2025/01/08/early-data-shows-record-...

> the subsidies for EVs are there because they don't want to rely on gas and coal since it's not sustainable

China doesn't want to rely on gas because they have to import it. They're fine relying on coal, which they can produce reliably, which is why they keep building coal-fired plants.

So does Germany. They are facing a recession due to over reliance of Russian gas not playing out well.

> So does Germany

Germany has the same reliance but Europe broadly hasn't done anything about it, substituting piped gas from Russia with shipped gas from America. (Which, unfortunately, is their only option absent re-firing coal or turning on nukes.)

Nuclear is the best option for Germany, which they use a lot, buy buying electricity from France.

China is currently building 29 nuclear power plants in parallel and plans to issue construction permits for 10 reactors each year.

The country is expected to reach an installed nuclear capacity of 400 GW in 2060.

And, unlike wind and solar, nuclear power plants provide baseload and can actually drive an electricity grid.

> The country is expected to reach an installed nuclear capacity of 400 GW in 2060.

Within the next ~14 months, the world will be deploying ~1TW/solar every year, ~200GW assuming 20% capacity factor for "apples to apples" comparison to thermal generation with a higher capacity factor. Compare to the rate of nuclear deployment and your 2060 figure, 35 years away.

> And, unlike wind and solar, nuclear power plants provide baseload and can actually drive an electricity grid.

There are numerous electrical grids in the world that operate without nuclear. There is minimum demand that needs to be met, but clearly nuclear isn't needed to do that (as evidenced by low carbon grids that operate without it).

https://e360.yale.edu/features/three-myths-about-renewable-e...

https://www.minister.industry.gov.au/ministers/husic/media-r...

https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/NYNu...

https://www.google.com/search?q=baseload+is+a+myth

Reply on news.ycombinator.com