No country is expanding renewables faster

Farmer Shi Mei shows his solar system outside Jinan. China mainly exported panels. There has also been a massive expansion of our own capacity in recent years. Build: Keystone

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A goal shared by 118 countries is to triple global renewable energy generation by 2030. December 2023 Last UN in Dubai

We will (further) miss this goal.

According to a recent analysis by the International Energy Agency (IEA), we will increase renewable capacity by 2030. 8000 gigawatts. 11,000 should have been. “There is a gap, but the gap can be narrowed,” said IEA analyst Heimi Bahar. “Guardian”.

The culprits will be caught soon. At least at the regulars’ table and in comment columns on the Internet: “What’s the point of expanding our renewables?”, “China won’t join anyway” you’ll hear over and over again. Most recently I read this in Watson’s Comments column.

The statement cannot be wrong. China is installing renewables by 2023 at a dizzying pace and on a scale that would make European and American efforts laugh.

According to calculations by the Independent Energy Think Tank Emit (with Data from International Renewable Energy Agency IRENA), China has installed nearly 300 GW (297.57 GW) of additional capacity by 2023.

The G7 (except China) and the rest of the world (except China and the G7) have established only a fraction of it.

By 2023, China will account for two-thirds (63 percent) of the world’s installed solar power and wind power (65 percent). The Middle Kingdom has plenty of motivation to do this, given China’s ongoing electricity woes.

By the fall of 2021 (depending on the source), more than 20 regions and provinces suffered from severe power shortages. At the time, the terrible price of coal and problems with coal supply (a dispute with Australia, unreliable supplies from Mongolia and Indonesia) caused an emergency. According to Goldman Sachs, 44 percent of China’s total industry was affected. A country that claims to be a major power cannot accept this – and Beijing has reacted with strong measures. This includes a drastic expansion of renewables.

However, it is also wrong to present the giant empire as a role model for the energy transition. China will have 29 percent in 2022 Global greenhouse gas emissions Responsible. And the country continues to build coal-fired power plants.

China was also under construction for 2023 Coal-fired power plants are very active. Of the total global capacity of 69.5 GW, 47.4 GW or 68 percent falls on China. The billion-dollar country’s appetite for energy continues to grow, though the West should take a cue: many consumer goods produced there are sold in the country. After all, the increase in renewables is nearly seven times that of coal power.

When it comes to per capita kilowatt-hours produced with renewables, China is making rapid progress – and will overtake the EU and the US in the next few years. Switzerland, whose schedule of regulars is perfect in this respect, is still a long way off in comparison. But we are not among the absolute top countries in these statistics.

Click for the best read! Austria and Finland have overtaken Switzerland in terms of renewable kWh per capita in recent years. Build: Screenshot “Our world data“