Climate Change and Renewable Energy News and Discussion

lol, good for China for calling out the huge environmental setup in America with the Supreme Court decision.
With the democrats likely to lose power in the midterm and possibly presidency, America will be back to pretending climate change does not exist. Well, except for west coast and the Northeast.

Yes, all this Biden effort to improve American competitiveness isn't going to happen if half of the country is against it. All this talk of establishing supply chain is a pipe dream. Republicans don't want it (they want nuclear). Europeans don't have the unity for it.

Due to COVID lockdowns, China's emissions collapsed from March to May
In fact, it has the second largest emissions drop of any major economy from Jan to May
Who could've thought adopting EVs and a lot of renewables would help? Obviously not the Republicans that still blame China for climate change and refuse to do anything about it.
China's ground transport emissions is down 4.5% YoY (partially lockdown related, I'm sure)

China's carbon intensity dropped by half vs 2005. Pretty sure that is more than they promised.

Not a surprise to anyone that follows this thread, but China/Russia reactors are the dominant types since 2017

More analysis that China is likely to beat its own projected wind/solar installation targets and peak a lot sooner than 2030.
I think it will depend on a combination of this + more natural gas + replacing coal plants with more efficient ones + more nuclear.
Anyhow, I don't know why they keep on deliberately underestimating things and then over performing targets. It gives them a bad name for not doing enough on climate change, when they are doing a lot.

I'm not sure why IEA is hyping that China threat stuff. After warning of China/Russia dominating nuclear. Now, they are warning China dominating solar.

more article on the LingLong-One reactor

Article about how Western countries forgot how to build nuclear reactors

Romania canceled nuclear power project with China in 2020 for political reasons and went with US reactors. My guess is that it will run years late and over budget like the AP1000 under construction in Georgia

Here is how badly over budget AP1000 in Georgia is.

The French are nationalizing EDF, lol. This is going to end up disastrously.

A lot of these countries don't seem to realize that it takes years to train up labor force to build a nuclear plant. It also takes years to develop the knowledge of how to build nuclear plants. Picking vendor choices for nuclear reactors based on political reasons rarely turn out well.

tphuang said:

I'm not sure why IEA is hyping that China threat stuff. After warning of China/Russia dominating nuclear. Now, they are warning China dominating solar.

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I think you're getting fooled a bit by the click-bait title. The actual report is not critical of China at all. It points out that risks of supply chain disruptions are elevated when all the production is concentrated in one geographic area, which is quite fair I think. The actual quote about "imbalance" sounds more like an advice for China to balance the production of polysilicon with respect to other components. The overarching theme of the article IMO is that the world should study China's model and try to replicate it, as it uses China as an example many, many times on how to help proliferate solar. Here are the relevant quotes, you be the judge:


"Government policies in China have shaped the global supply, demand and price of solar PV over the last decade. Chinese industrial policies focusing on solar PV as a strategic sector and on growing domestic demand have enabled economies of scale and supported continuous innovation throughout the supply chain. These policies have contributed to a cost decline more than 80%, helping solar PV to become the most affordable electricity generation technology in many parts of the world. However, they have also led to supply-demand imbalances in the PV supply chain. Global capacity for manufacturing wafers and cells, which are key solar PV elements, and for assembling them into solar panels (also known as modules), exceeded demand by at least 100% at the end of 2021. By contrast, production of polysilicon, the key material for solar PV, is currently a bottleneck in an otherwise oversupplied supply chain. This has led to tight global supplies and a quadrupling of polysilicon prices over the last year."

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Increase diversification to improve PV supply chain resilience Disproportionate geographical/jurisdictional and facility-level concentrations of raw material processing and manufacturing make the solar PV supply chain vulnerable to supply chain disruptions. Supply source diversification – through international co-ordination and trade that avoids restrictive import/export policies – is thus essential to reduce this vulnerability.

Polysilicon and ingot/wafer manufacturing should take policy priority in diversification efforts because they have the highest market concentrations, require the largest initial capital investments, and need low electricity prices to be cost competitive.

However, diversifying the solar PV supply chain will also require industrial policy tools beyond government incentives to support demand, and a collaborative effort between the public and private sectors will be needed to secure the solar PV technology supply chain. For instance, China’s role in solar PV manufacturing hinges upon not only its industrial priorities and targets, but the incentives the government has provided continuously for more than a decade.

While these incentives have contributed to the rapid scale-up of global PV manufacturing capacity and reduced module costs, some policies have also prompted investigations into dumping and resulted in multiple trade restrictions. Thus, international co-ordination on subsidy design and financial support to encourage domestic production while avoiding trade restrictions is critical to diversify the solar PV supply chain and improve its resilience.

Expanding domestic solar PV manufacturing capacity is an option to increase solar PV supply chain resiliency at the country level. Considering the multiple steps involved in manufacturing segments and the geographic location of raw materials, full self-sufficiency is not usually a practical option (nor is it economical, except in a few countries). Thus, regional co-ordination will be essential to secure the raw materials, manufacturing investments and trade required for supply chain diversification. Many countries will need to rely on imports alone to satisfy domestic demand, in which case diversifying import sources will be critical to reduce supply risks."

tphuang said:

The French are nationalizing EDF, lol. This is going to end up disastrously.

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A lot of these countries don't seem to realize that it takes years to train up labor force to build a nuclear plant. It also takes years to develop the knowledge of how to build nuclear plants. Picking vendor choices for nuclear reactors based on political reasons rarely turn out well.

Click to expand...

The French fully nationalising EDF is not a bad idea to be honest.
Currently it is dysfunctional because it has the worst parts of being partly privatised and also partly government run.

hydropower has been a huge boon in lowering emissions and providing cheap energy this year.

the cost overruns and delays will be hilarious. see: CA high speed rail.

600GW wow

China's shrinking carbon footprint so far in 2022 presented in chart.

This is quite important. 50% of new public buildings/factories to have solar panel by 2025. Considering how long Chinese buildings last, this is quite an important development.

Even more
By 2030, 60% of urban communities to be green communities
By 2025, all new urban buildings will be constructed in line with green building standards

Trina Solar building 50 MW floating solar farm in Malaysia
This is the kind of stuff that China should be doing. They should also be proactively involved in building up green energy industries in ASEAN countries.

In June, China power consumption up 4.7% over last year

oil consumption down 10% in June vs a year ago. Probably a combination of EVs and economic issues.
According to this chart, power generation up 1.5%. Maybe different than other tweet due to power storage and lack of accounting distributed solar power generation.
a lot of industrial production are down.

In power generation in June
Hydro up 29%!!!!
Solar up 10%
Wind up 17%
Thermal -6%
Nuclear -9% (not sure what's going on with nuclear)

For first 6 months
Hydro +20%
Solar + 13.5%
Wind +8%
Thermal -4%
Nuclear +2%

China had 80% of world's offshore wind capacity additions in 2021.

lol, they really get very creative. Produce mushrooms and harvesting solar power.