China The Renewables Leader? Do Your Homework, Guardian
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/29/china-wind-solar-power-global-renewable-energy-leader
The Guardian don’t mention that China’s target was a very easy one.
Even now, solar & wind’s share of total electricity in China is under half that of the UK:
BP Energy Review
Solar & wind capacity last year was 759GW in China, and according to the Guardian they have a target of 1200GW by 2030, so even then their share of generation in China will still be well below ours.
Significantly is this comment by the Guardian:
It says that as of the first quarter of the year, China’s utility-scale solar capacity has reached 228GW, more than that of the rest of the world combined.
China, of course, accounts for a third of the world’s electricity generation, so everything it does is automatically on a much larger scale. Nevertheless the Guardian’s claim suggests that the rest of the world is lagging well behind, rather than China storming ahead. Probably because most countries know that solar power is not the answer to large scale generation.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Grauniad and homework! An oxymoron if ever there was one.
Nothing to do with homework, it just downright dishonest spin.
Absoulutely, and not to mention the legest constructor of new coal power stations in the world. Grauniad is a joke, it makes the Dandy look positively truthful.
At least with the Dandy one knew what one was in for!
‘oxymoron’
Someone starved of oxygen at birth
‘moron’
[ A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years and generally having communication and social skills enabling some degree of academic or vocational education. ]
Sounds like most of the media pundits !!
Probably because most countries know that solar power is not the answer to large scale generation.
Then how do we explain that every year solar growth is exponential globally and the energy agencies repeatedly underestimate growth in the sector.
It was only this month the IEA revised up their estimate as they do every year by 100GW
And growth isn’t local either
The wind industry is feeling the pressure, especially in Europe right now essentially to raw materials and maintenance ,something that doesn’t effect the solar industry as much….expect to se solar continue to grow in its share of large scale generation.
Gosh Bob are you the cheer leader for the solar panel industry? Solar panel capacity is a meaningless figure – you do know that don’t you? It has a chronically low capacity factor, is the ultimate in intermittency and is the exemplar of variability. As a DC generator with zero inertia it is parasitic on conventional generation. Its own reactive power provision is continuously zero by definition. Short Circuit Level is Sweet FA, and you can forget synchronicity.
Not all power generation is equal and solar is the lowest of the low.
How do I explain its growth – easy follow the money/subsidy.
How do we explain? Simple.
The power of subsidies!!
Solar panels have one, apparently overlooked, problem – they don’t generate anything at night which, in northerly (and indeed southerly) latitudes lasts a long time in the winter when the energy is most needed. Unless and until large scale storage of electricity becomes possible, solar panels will NOT be the answer to energy needs.
If it wasn’t for its circulation in the BBC and HOC I doubt the Guardian could even claim to be a newspaper.
Even those copies were not enough to save it from heading to bankruptcy until the world’s most evil man, Bill Gates stepped in.
If that’s snow on the ground around the solar farm in the pic I wonder how much power is generated when there’s been a fresh, heavy snowfall.
China going green
The constant fool’s pardon afforded to China – the world’s greatest carbon dioxide polluter – by the Western Left/Warmists is profoundly revealing about what this hustle is really about.
Top 3 Solar Manufacturers are from China. LONGi, Trina Solar, and Jinko Solar.
Out of the Top 10 Windmill Manufacturers, the No 3, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10 are from China.
Top 10 Wind Turbine Manufacturers in the World 2022 – BizVibe
Xi JinPing is improving on Lenin’s Theory: “The Capitalists Will Sell Us the Rope with Which We Will Hang Them”.
Xi’s version “We Will Sell Them the Rope with Which They Will Hang Themselves (Economically Speaking)”
It is a Marketing Ploy – Everybody buy more Solar Panels and Windmills to save the Planet! Who benefits? CHINA!
Our World in Data has a wonderful graph titled
“Primary energy consumption by source, China.”
This century the largest increase in energy consumption is in coal, followed by oil and gas. Coal, Oil and Gas set records. My eyeball estimate is that coal is 15 times wind.
WUWT has picked up the same story by the BBC, as I posted the other day. WUWT makes a pithy observation.
“My question – will the BBC write nice articles about our green progress, if Western energy companies start playing this game, and build co-located coal plants to firm Western renewable energy plants? Or does the BBC only give coal plant passes to communist dictatorships?”
Chinese solar achieved about a 14% capacity factor last year (hard to be sure because of the rate of increase of capacity, so calculated on the average of year end capacities. Better than the UK, but not spectacular. Wind fared much worse, averaging just 19.5%. For the same capital costs per MW it would make their wind over 70% more expensive than ours (which as we know is very expensive indeed), although our solar would be 24% more costly than theirs.