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Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

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Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#411

Post by loodish »

yndoendo wrote: post #321
yeureka wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently read, and recommend a book titled "Here Comes the Sun" by Bill McKibben. There's a passage where a calculation is made of the amount of minerals that have to be mined in order to build renewable energy to cover all current energy needs. This quantity is huge. However it is equivalent in mass to the amount of fossil fuels that are extracted every year. The major difference is that the equipment for renewabl…

One point that gets very little coverage is that fossil fuels are a limited resource. Once they used they are gone. The materials for renewable energy are still in a usable form.

The finiteness of fossil fuels isn't real in a practical sense.

The globe burnt about 8.8 billion tons of coal in 2024. Which is a huge amount. This is the peak, most estimates are that we will reduce from there.

Australia alone estimates that it has 147 billion tons of economically recoverable coal. That is Australia alone could supply the entire globe at peak usage for over 16 years. And Australia only has about 14% of the globes coal reserves, we can keep burning coal at this pace for at least the next hundred years. And it a hundred years the scope of what we consider to be economically recoverable will have expanded greatly, further increasing our supply.

We will cook ourselves before we run out of fuel.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#412

Post by Qwertious »

x0b4dc0d3 wrote: post #393
fakedang wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China's betting on renewables while Republicans are betting on nuclear fusion and gutting the NRC.

China knows better than to weaken their position in the global theater by having large dependence on other nations for energy. They are aiming for domination and they are well on their way.

China is fine with dependence on other nations, it just can't rely on sea-based imports when the US could easily block them by blockading the strait of Malacca. That's why China has invested so heavily into their Belt And Road initiative (which is notably a giant land-based shipping route).

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#413

Post by xbmcuser »

tzs wrote: post #354
roxolotl wrote: post #21

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…

Up to the 2008 election the Republican party platform called for reducing fossil fuel use, establishing a Climate Prize for scientists who solve the challenges of climate change, a long term tax credit for renewable energy (with specific mentions of solar and wind), more recycling, and making consumer products more energy efficient. They wanted to aggressively support technological advances to reduce the dependence o…

Fracking and access to cheap gas and oil

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#414

Post by perihelions »

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #284
senordevnyc wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was curious, so I did a 30 second search: "The US Geological Survey estimates that onshore northeast Greenland (including ice-covered areas) contains around 31 billion barrels of oil-equivalent in hydrocarbons – similar to the US’s entire volume of proven crude oil reserves." Source: https://theconversation.com/greenland-is-rich-in-natural-res...

Another 30 second search would show you that their oil is not readily available and is unproven. Otherwise Denmark would already be an even wealthier petrostate like Norway.

> "Denmark would already be an even wealthier petrostate"

Denmark does not (since 2009) control Greenland's minerals, nor take revenues from resource extraction[0,1]; and Greenland's democratic government has in fact totally banned oil exploration[2].

[0] https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-neglect-greenland-min... ("In 2009, Denmark handed Greenland's inhabitants control of their natural resources...")

[1] https://english.stm.dk/the-prime-ministers-office/the-unity-... ("Revenues from mineral resource activities in Greenland are to accrue to the Self-Government. Such revenues will have influence on the size of the Danish Government subsidy, cf. section below on the economic arrangement.")

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27871672 ("Greenland bans all oil exploration (cbc.ca)" (2021))

> "Global warming means that retreating ice could uncover potential oil and mineral resources which, if successfully tapped, could dramatically change the fortunes of the semi-autonomous territory of 57,000 people."

> ""The future does not lie in oil. The future belongs to renewable energy, and in that respect we have much more to gain," the Greenland government said in a statement. The government said it "wants to take co-responsibility for combating the global climate crisis."

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#415

Post by boston_clone »

peyton wrote: post #398
tim-tday wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell they hated Obama not for what he did, said or believed. Those things were quite middle of the road. They hated him for what he was.

Didn’t help that he showed up at his first couple Senate meetings gloating about winning the election. And tried to set working hours for his former colleagues. Among other things.

"Other things" most obviously being the racism caused in part by significant cognitive dissonance that uniquely affects white supremacists when having a black president.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#416

Post by gregbot »

natmaka wrote: post #323
L_gates wrote: post #311

[flagged]

Uranium requires mining and is recyclable at most once (solar panels components are way better). Recyclable wind turbines blades are appearing (RecyclableBlade, ZEBRA, PECAN...) and even existing ones (today, decommissioned blades are burned in cement plants, thus providing energy) may become so (check the 'CETEC initiative')

Uranium actually does not require mining. Most uranium is extracted using underground wells where water is pumped underground and the Uranium is extracted from the water. Also extracting Uranium from sea water (which would be basically unlimited) is close to being commercially viable and has received a lot of lab-scale research.

Also, Uranium is only recyclable once with light water reactors. With breeder reactors (which have been built in the past) it can be recycled a hundred times.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#417

Post by gregbot »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #334
hollowturtle wrote: post #308

All I see is missed opportunities to build a bunch less nuclear power plants and call it a day, without messing up with the landscape. Am I the only one? I believe if we Europeans and Americans start building nuclear power plants again we could finally compete. Renewable energy is not constant and has a storage problem

If nuclear plants were as inexpensive as renewables, that would make a ton of sense.

France decarbonized way before the rest of Europe with nuclear and it wasn't expensive. 50 reactors for $200 billion. Gernamy has spent twice that on intermittents and still relies on coal

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#418

Post by mullingitover »

madeofpalk wrote: post #52
roxolotl wrote: post #21

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…

Its crazy that in 1999 "home solar" was a fancy, new millennium idea, and now we're still barely any closer. Honestly, I think building regulations should mandate solar energy for homes.

We're getting there: California does[1] require solar installation on many new builds, and has followed Australia in doing automatic permit processing[2] to streamline installation. It's possible to pay around $20k for an average home, and in as little as one week have 100% of your power bill covered by solar.

[1] https://www.greenlancer.com/post/california-solar-mandate

[2] https://www.energy.ca.gov/programs-and-topics/programs/calif...

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#419

Post by DavidPiper »

rstuart4133 wrote: post #388
DavidPiper wrote: post #345

I would love to see photos like these from Australia too one day. We have so much inhospitable land that would be perfect for solar and wind farms. Suncable is trying to do this on a small(er than China) scale. We are just too politically confused and too deep in the belief that mining is the only thing we can do here.

> I would love to see photos like these from Australia too one day. You may never see them. Not because we aren't adding renewables, but because South Australia was at about 80% renewable last year (average, not peak) so if you were going to get those sort of pictures anywhere in Australia, you would be getting them from SA now. You probably don't see them because while the countries are about the same size in land a…

This is true, and I'm a big fan of SA leading the charge, having grown up there.

However, we could also build out more green energy technology to become a large energy exporter. (You could argue we are kind of that now, with the amount of coal we export.)

Especially given we have strong but complicated geopolitical ties to both China and the USA, it feels like guaranteeing our own energy sovereignty, plus gaining the ability to export power directly, would be a strong political as well as environmental move.

Re: Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

#420

Post by gregbot »

hnmullany wrote: post #150
throwaway7679 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This construction of wind and solar has nothing to do with renewable, and everything to do with China's desire to get as much electricity generation as possible, which involves increasing nuclear, coal, hydro, and everything else.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China

That wikipedia article needs to be updated for the last few years. 2025 was the first year where coal generation declined YoY. Nuclear capacity additions in 2025 were about 1% of solar additions - there is no comparison. Primarily solar and secondarily wind is the core generation strategy.

1GW of nuclear is worth about 3 to 6GW of solar if you account for the weather and nighttime. If you also account for nuclear not needing fossil backup its worth even more
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