It genuinely makes me so sad to see the US not doing the same. Having grown up to the constant beat of “energy independence” as the core goal of a party it seemed obvious that the nearly limitless energy that rains down from the sky would be the answer. But instead we’ve kept choosing the option which requires devastating our, and other’s around the world, community. That’s not to exclude the harsh reality of mining for the minerals required to build these, nor the land use concerns. But it’s difficult to compare localized damage to war and globalized damage.
Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout
21–30 of 612 posts
Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout
#22Wouldn't it be better to just go with nuclear? Isn't this a gigantic waste of space and overhead to maintain it? And how "renewable" are the materials used to produce these?
PRC Solar is cheaper (LCOE) than nuclear, more distributed, faster to build. Western PRC with good solar is mostly empty/depopulated (2/3 of PRC with 80% of solar/wind potential has like 5% of population, it's empty). Easy to install, lots of transferrable skills from general construction (vs nuclear workforce). Real estate crack down = lots of lower skilled blue collar installing solar as jobs program. Serendipitous synergy. PRC installed renewable capacity exceeds energy required to manufacture same equipment on GW basis, functionally makes production of entire sector carbon neutral/sink, as in will displace more fossil than used in production and sink after. Obviously manufacture works off grid mix, including coal, but broad point is every panel going to save more emissions vs embodied carbon payback through life cycle. There's also plans for recycling / recover materials for circular economy.
Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout
#23Wouldn't it be better to just go with nuclear? Isn't this a gigantic waste of space and overhead to maintain it? And how "renewable" are the materials used to produce these?
> how "renewable" are the materials used to produce these
Very renewable. Solar panels are mostly glass, silicon and a little bit of metal. And they last ~30 years. Wind turbine blades are made out of fiberglass or similar materials. They may need replacing every ~30 years as well.
Other infrastructure would not need any significant maintenance for even longer.
These kind of power plants, apart from being renewable, have very low running costs. And that is the point.
Of course their production is very variable and therefore they cannot be used as the only power source. So e.g. nuclear power plants are still needed to back them up.
I think it is very rational to build as much power plants that are cheap to run. And back it up with nuclear or other power plants that are expensive to run but which can cover for time when the production of renewables is low.
Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout
#24Meanwhile, in London, UK, local council doesn't allow you to put anything on your rooftop that doesn't gel with the Victorian look..
Is your building listed or something? In most cases it doesn't require planning permission even in a conservation area, and some councils are actively installing them on council houses.
Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout
#25Why aren't we doing it in the rest of the world as well?
The rest of the world is, in fact, doing it as well.
Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout
#26Meanwhile, in London, UK, local council doesn't allow you to put anything on your rooftop that doesn't gel with the Victorian look..
The UK is actually world leading in wind electricity generation (especially offshore). So it's not all bad.
Not quite accurate anymore. The UK was indeed the world leader from 2008 until around 2021, but has since fallen to second place behind China. China now has over 41 GW installed (>50% of global capacity), while the UK sits at ~15 GW (~22%). [1][2]
Still impressive for a country of that size, but "world leading" is technically no longer correct.
[1] https://www.renewableuk.com/energypulse/blog/uk-wind-and-glo... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1489147/uk-offshore-wind...
ps.: Per capita it's also not #1 — Denmark and the Netherlands both have higher offshore wind capacity per person.
Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout
#27Wouldn't it be better to just go with nuclear? Isn't this a gigantic waste of space and overhead to maintain it? And how "renewable" are the materials used to produce these?
Nuclear still have to deal with nuclear waste. > gigantic waste of space Good thing China isn’t running out of space
The latest generation of Nuclear power plants are full cycle, produce close to nothing amount of waste
Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout
#28Wouldn't it be better to just go with nuclear? Isn't this a gigantic waste of space and overhead to maintain it? And how "renewable" are the materials used to produce these?
Take too long time and cost. I honestly perplexed by the fethism towards Nuclear Power Plants. Have you seen the delay and bloating cost of Olkiluoto, Flamanville and Vogtle? Nuclear Power Plants are only good too spread the cost of maintaining strategic nuclear jobs and industry and some hope that nuclear space propulsion could be available later.
They'll just blame those delays and cost overruns on greens or liberals.
Better to point out that in China the nuclear targets are many years behind and continually lowered while the renewable targets are met years early and raised.
Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout
#29Meanwhile, in London, UK, local council doesn't allow you to put anything on your rooftop that doesn't gel with the Victorian look..
[deleted]
Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout
#30Meanwhile, in London, UK, local council doesn't allow you to put anything on your rooftop that doesn't gel with the Victorian look..
It's a big town. You might want to specify which of the 33 boroughs this stupid policy exists in. There's no problem with solar where I live.