sick of positive sounding headlines about renewable energy that bury the lede that carbon energy isn’t being replaced. It’s all just added capacity. We have to shut down plants.
“Look! Market forces are solving the problem for us! The system works!”
Meanwhile those same market forces leading private owners of planet killing factories leaving them on because the money they print still spends.
The article says that renewable capacity in China grew faster than demand though:
In the race to net zero, there is one country with more influence than the rest.
Through the 2000s and 2010s, China’s fossil fuel emissions were rising at a rapid rate, largely due to increasing demand for coal as the country industrialised.
But this trend has been quietly reversing, starting about a decade ago as China invested heavily in renewable energy.
By 2017, solar farms were sprouting up all around the country, but it would only ramp up from there.
That same year, its renewable capacity grew faster than its overall demand for electricity — meaning its fossil fuel usage actually went backwards.
Since then, two major international climate agencies are predicting that global emissions could have reached their peak in 2023 and began declining in 2024.
In this case though it’s globally relevant because China is actively exporting their solar tech to the rest of the world. All the developing countries will be able to use solar as backbone of their energy grids instead of relying on fossil fuels the way “developed” western countries do.
“Look! Market forces are solving the problem for us! The system works!”
Meanwhile those same market forces leading private owners of planet killing factories leaving them on because the money they print still spends.
The article says that renewable capacity in China grew faster than demand though:
That same year, its renewable capacity grew faster than its overall demand for electricity — meaning its fossil fuel usage actually went backwards.
Okay but using China as an example of good things happening is kinda cheating
In this case though it’s globally relevant because China is actively exporting their solar tech to the rest of the world. All the developing countries will be able to use solar as backbone of their energy grids instead of relying on fossil fuels the way “developed” western countries do.
Chinas over production of panels gives global south access to them cheaply