While Australia debates the merits of going nuclear and frustration grows over the slower-than-needed rollout of solar and wind power, China is going all in on renewables.
New figures show the pace of its clean energy transition is roughly the equivalent of installing five large-scale nuclear power plants worth of renewables every week.
A report by Sydney-based think tank Climate Energy Finance (CEF) said China was installing renewables so rapidly it would meet its end-of-2030 target by the end of this month — or 6.5 years early.
It’s installing at least 10 gigawatts of wind and solar generation capacity every fortnight.
By comparison, experts have said the Coalition’s plan to build seven nuclear power plants would add fewer than 10GW of generation capacity to the grid sometime after 2035.
Energy experts are looking to China, the world’s largest emitter, once seen as a climate villain, for lessons on how to go green, fast.
“We’ve seen America under President Biden throw a trillion dollars on the table [for clean energy],” CEF director Tim Buckley said.
“China’s response to that has been to double down and go twice as fast.”
I don’t agree with that because I don’t think China is primarily investing in solar technology because they’re worried about energy.
I think their renewable investment is primarily a political move that they Love pointing to as soon as xi decided to compete with the US on the world stage.
" You think we’re just a dictatorship? No, we’re global stewards. Look how much we care about the environment."
The move benefits them politically, technologically, and economically.
So I think we would have seen this massive investment regardless of how oil-rich their country was or was not, because they weren’t as married to any energy infrastructure like the us or other countries were, they could LeapFrog straight to the most economically beneficial technology with the largest roi that would also make them look good in the eyes of the world.