Australia not being number 1 should be a national shame
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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Australia only needs ~200GW of capacity to meet demand I believe (5882PJ --> ~1.6M GWh, 8760h/year --> 186.5GW) math might be wrong there, but even if Australia was fully solar powered it would still have only 50% of China's installed capacity.
Now rate it per capita.
You'd have to rate relative to consumption per capita obviously https://www.statista.com/statistics/383633/worldwide-consumption-of-electricity-by-country/
So let's see the relationship between per capita consumption and per capita production.....
Together renewables comprised 43% of total capacity in China. So, 43% of per capita consumption is backed by renewable energy.
Neat. Tho I wonder if those numbers are all just self reported, or have been independently verified.
After all, history has shown us that China, like most nations, tends to overinflate the good news to overshadow the bad, so as to keep themselves looking "good" to the people of the rest of the world.
I have never seen these numbers disputed even in western media. If you're suggesting these numbers are in question then do provide sources to substantiate this fantastical claim of yours.
China can support 55M citizens on solar alone, US can support 8.5M on solar alone
This is also skewed because China also has a much larger electrified transit system meaning that the power they are generating is being used in a way that offsets fossil fuels.
China has 4x the population as the U.S. and this graphic says they have 3.69 as much solar power so that's slightly less per capita?
You also have to consider energy consumption per capita here which is far higher in US. And of course, solar isn't the only alternative energy used in China. Overall, fossil fuel use was already less than half of power capacity back in 2023.
iirc their new installations in 2023 exceeded the rest of the world's installed capacity. They’ve gotten that much solar only in the last few years whereas all other countries lag very far behind in new projects
Makes sense, but also lowcarbonpower . org places yearly electric energy per person at 7 MWh in China vs 12.8 MWh in the US. The percentage of solar in the electricity mix works out to 8.3% in China and 6.9% in the US. YoY growth relative to overall electricity consumption in China is definitely higher as well, but I haven't checked in detail. What really sucks in China is the high dependence on coal which results in way worse CO2 than the US. Similar problem to Germany but even more so, since theres almost no gas power in China.
A while ago I was surprised to learn China only really started installing solar panels around the year 2012, while in germany the trend started in around 2005. US in 2010. (I chose the year where solar passed a threshold of 0.1% of overall electricity according to my source.
Surprised the UK is so high tbh. Given the particular focus on wind over solar.
that seems well low for australia
Rooftop solar has been popular for a long while. Maybe it's just because of the comparative populations?
Could it just be because Australia has a fraction the population of these other countries? One would assume that translates into less power consumption overall, even if not proportionate to population.
Domestic rooftop solar is super common and really cheap due to government rebates. a quick google search says that over 20GW is generated by rooftop solar (i.e. solar panels feeding into the grid from people installing solar panels on their roof). i wasnt expecting total power generation to be above China or us or maybe India, but definitely above most eu regimes.
Nope. We are basically just a bunch of coal mines pretending to be a country, anything remotely good is spat on and villified by our media, which is majority Rupert Murdoch owned, and labor are spineless and the liberal coalition are straight up evil, so even the slightest positive change is hard fought and very quickly lost.
they don't have enough sunlight don't you know
But at what cost?
our poor poor oil magnates 
how will they feed their families!
But I thought China had dirtiest energy ever and China bad