cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/971805

Sources for all claims in link.

I wrote in December that to call China the “world leader in renewable energy” was a colossal understatement.

Even the Western press considers the PRC’s climate target to be all-important to preventing complete global disaster. It was estimated to reduce projected temperature by 0.3 degrees Celsius, the largest drop ever calculated by climate models.

Anyone doubting that the PRC is willing and capable of not just fulfilling, but exceeding, its goals is not paying attention.

Each year from 2020 to 2022, China installed about 140GW of new renewable electricity capacity, more than the US, the EU, and India put together. (A gigawatt is enough to power 750,000 homes.)

In December, ground was broken on the world’s largest desert renewable energy project in Inner Mongolia.

The IEA estimated China would add 80GW of new solar capacity in 2023; in February, the China Photovoltaic Industry Association said between 95 and 120

Both are already wrong. In the first four months of 2023, nearly THREE TIMES as much new solar capacity had been installed than in the same period in 2022. China’s NEW solar capacity installed this year will exceed the entire TOTAL in the US.

In May, the chairman of Tongwei Solar predicted that new installations might fall between 200 and 300 gigawatts in 2024—almost TWICE the current US total.

It’s not just solar energy that China does well. In 2021, China installed more offshore wind capacity in one year than the rest of the world combined had in the past five. As of January 2022, China operated half of all the world’s offshore wind turbines.

According a report by Global Energy Monitor in June, China is currently on track to DOUBLE its entire renewable energy capacity by 2025—five years earlier than the government’s original target date of 2030.

China’s “nuclear pipeline” or the total capacity of all its new reactors under development, is also as big as the rest of the world’s combined, at ~250 GW. In 2021, 19 new reactors were under construction, 43 awaiting permits, and another 166 were planned.

In April 2022, plans for another 6 new reactors were announced. China also has the most advanced and efficient reactors in the world, with no need for water cooling; in 2022, for example, the first “fourth-generation” reactor came online in Shandong.

… In fact, proportional to their share, the US contribution was 0.05% of China’s in 2021.

Energy is only one aspect of the climate solution, though; China is ALSO far and away the world leader in EVERY OTHER aspect.

Since 1980, China doubled its forest coverage, planting more new trees than the rest of the world combined.

Per the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, between 2010 and 2020 China had an average annual net gain in forest area of almost 2 million hectares, over 4 times as much as Australia’s (2nd-largest) and nearly 20 times as much as the United States’.

In 2021, the government set a new target rate of afforestation of 36,000 square kilometers per year—or 3.6 million hectares, nearly double its previous rate, or enough new trees to cover the land area of Belgium.

China’s shift to a green economy isn’t just happening fast—it’s still accelerating.

From 2016-2018, EV sales in China jumped from 1% to 5%. They reached 20% in 2022—three years ahead of schedule. (The US finally reached 5% in 2022.)

As of 2022, 98% of all electric buses in the world were deployed in Chinese cities.

China’s electric high-speed rail network is longer than every other country’s combined, and continues to expand. In 2007 China had virtually no HSR; today, if they had been placed in one line, China’s high-speed railways could wrap around the circumference of the Earth.

According to the Paulson Institute in Chicago, when accounting for not just revenue but passenger time and airline trips saved, China’s HSR had generated a net surplus of nearly $400 billion as of 2022.

No other country is forcing China to lead the world in the conversion to a sustainable economy—in fact, the United States government has been trying to STOP it, for example by placing sanctions on China’s photovoltaic manufacturing.

China’s goal was peak emissions before 2030 and carbon-neutrality by 2060. Given how much Chinese renewables have overperformed recently, the peak will likely come sooner rather than later—maybe within the next two years. It may even already be passed.

China’s emissions are mainly from coal. But Chinese coal-fired power plants are much different from Western plants.

Chinese coal plants have set the world record for efficiency, approaching 50%, compared with a typical Australian plant’s 30% efficiency.

The PRC’s clean air policies not only cut air pollution almost in half between 2013 and 2020, but also drove a global decline in air pollution. (I.e. if China’s contribution were tallied separately, the overall rate would have increased, not decreased.)

Violating China’s environmental policies can lead to real punishment. In March 2021, four major steel mills in Hebei were caught falsifying records to evade carbon emission limits; the next year, dozens of executives responsible were sentenced to prison.

In contrast, though the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe killed several workers and was the largest marine oil spill in history, no one from BP spent even a day in jail.

As of this tweet, Norfolk Southern faces no criminal charges for the East Palestine train disaster in February.

Last summer, after weeks of struggle, the wildfires besieging Chongqing were driven back and extinguished; not just by water, sand, chemicals, or controlled burns, but by community.

Twenty thousand civil servants and volunteers climbed or biked up and down the mountain in the sweltering heat to deliver supplies and construct fire barriers; through their collective action, the cities were saved.

The solutions to the climate apocalypse are collective and mundane—economic planning, technological development, and the redistribution of resources—but the freedom to pursue those solutions is very rare and very dear.

Presently, China alone seems to have this freedom.

Also in China is the largest economic engine in history controlled by a Communist Party and a workers’ state, that is not required by class interest to seek profit above all else.

Probably just a coincidence or something, idk.