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China Is The World's First Electrostate (cleantechnica.com)

submitted 5 days ago by Lugh to c/futurology

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[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Aha? But isn't China generating like 60% of it's electricity from coal? (Wikipedia) So what's the difference between me heating the apartment with natural gas and China maybe transporting the required energy via electricity, but it's generated from coal?

But yes, China is investing in renewables for quite some time now. Hydropower, solar, electric vehicles. But according to Wikipedia they're still 70% powered by coal, then oil and then some renewables. But that shouldn't take away from anything. My country is also powered 77.6% by fossil energy. I just don't think it's just about how we transport the energy. IMO we should measure how it's obtained and what kind of impact that has on the environment. (And how efficient we are with it.) And compare that.

[–] WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

China has peak coal behind them.

The share of coal in power generation fell to a record low of 54% in April, with the share of wind and solar in overall output rising to 26%, data from energy think-tank Ember showed. (source)

So yeah, electrify everything and clean up the grid put into practice.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Hmmh, your linked article says peak coal isn't behind, but ahead. They mainly talk about how the market changed and the shift toward domestic mined coal. And how it's still on the rise.

And the numbers are a bit difficult to parse and require some explanation. For example we had 55.3% renewables in the electricity load here in Germany in April 2025. And it was "only" a 25% share of coal in the electricity we generated that month. But these are very specific numbers and they don't directly talk about sustainability or ecology. And it also doesn't mean we're way ahead of the Chinese (which you might think when simply comparing our 25% to 54%) or they live in the future. There's way more to it.

But yes, things like heat pumps and electric transport are the future. Any effort towards that is very welcome. And they're in the process of doing it.

[–] HK65@sopuli.xyz 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I guess the point is that it's easier to just put a solar plant at the end of the wire going forward than to replace the heating at the site of consumption.

I don't care for the Chinese leadership, but this is to be celebrated. Let's all make progress.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 points 5 days ago

Yes, I didn't intend to bash on them or anything. It's a very welcome effort and badly needed. And heating pumps are up to 5(?) times as efficient as burning something to produce heat. Plus we have some other concepts like district heating which might be a good option for big cities.