Climate Change and Renewable Energy News and Discussion

Renewable energy exports at an all-time high in July, driven by customers in Africa (including Middle East) and Southeast Asia.

China's energy strategy for its future computing and data centers, a thread:

GulfLander said:

The article writer

Hk univs still hiring people from western thinktanks/financial insti?

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Adjuncts don't get paid shit, have variable hours, and are essentially at the absolute bottom of academia. They're there to do the shit that nobody else wants to do.

Mingyang scoring major contract in UK with Octopus Energy.

CMP said:

Adjuncts don't get paid shit, have variable hours, and are essentially at the absolute bottom of academia. They're there to do the shit that nobody else wants to do.

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(parent company of Natixis)

Just adding broader context pertaining to this writer, her employer(s), and the platform upon which she published. It's clear she fully represents propagation of false Western narratives intended to manipulate and deceive the public.

The US regime is fully committed to oil and gas, while China is all in on renewable energy. Who will be the winner in the future? From the New York Times:

‘China Is the Engine’ Driving Nations Away From Fossil Fuels, Report Says​

Its vast investment in solar, wind and batteries is on track to end an era of global growth in the use of coal, oil and gas, the researchers said.

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supercat said:

The US regime is fully committed to oil and gas, while China is all in on renewable energy. Who will be the winner in the future? From the New York Times:

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The paper the article is based on:

The fact that China is pushing renewable is actually lowering the demand, hence pushing down the price of oil and gas and benefiting net importer of oil and gas

I must said that China renewable energy development is one of the strongest points in hard power and soft power.

in Foreign Policy magazine posits the tension between fossil fuel and renewable energy interests as the basis for a new Cold War conducted between a Sino-European bloc and a USA-Russia-Saudi bloc, with the Global South as a major battlefield. The author perhaps overstates his case, but it is an interesting read nonetheless:

These material facts have geostrategic implications: Europe, having already suffered the consequences of its reliance on Russian gas, now confronts the unsettling prospect of long-term dependence on natural gas from an increasingly hostile United States—giving it a strong strategic incentive to seek energy autonomy. At the same time, China’s unchallenged leadership in solar, wind, and battery production provides a compelling foundation for a formalized Sino-European supply chain partnership, ensuring Europe’s access to vital technologies and raw materials [....] As the green transition gathers momentum, underpinned by Chinese technological prowess, a reactionary counter-bloc has already begun to coalesce—not around a commitment to liberal democracy or human rights, but to the continued extraction and political centrality of hydrocarbons. Call it the axis of petrostates: a nascent coalition of states—notably, the United States, Russia, and Saudi Arabia—whose economic models, geopolitical power, and civilizational narratives are inextricably tied to fossil fuels.

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What is missing from this and similar narratives is the fundamental difference between dependency on fossil fuels and dependency on (mostly Chinese, as stipulated) renewable energy technologies and infrastructure. If the supply of fossil fuels is interrupted then existing ICE vehicles, power plants, home furnaces, etc. cease to operate, more-or-less immediately. If the supply of Chinese-manufactured renewable energy infrastructure is interrupted, existing infrastructure will continue to operate for years, perhaps decades. Ongoing maintenance and spare parts may be required, and certainly new contracts are required to support capacity expansion or the eventual renewal of aged infrastructure, but those things play out over dramatically elongated timescales relative to the dependencies engendered by fossil fuels, allowing for substitution with alternative infrastructure if required. Renewable energy infrastructure does not substitute one form of dependency for another, but rather liberates the communities, nations, etc. that use it from dependency on fossil fuel supply, infrastructure and market variability.