this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
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show a coal chart too :/
Yeah I don't think it's useful to list GW capacities, as the country consumes and produces more power overall.
A more useful metric would be the percentage of renewables in the national grid.
Still, China is fairly impressive in that respect.
Sharing this here as it's exactly what you mention!
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity
CO2g per KWh is the standard metric for "how much a countries electricity pollutes".
Tldr China's is 580 and improving. USA is 370 and improving at a similar rate (this obviously might change under the current administration).
Others worth pointing too is Sweden (40gCO2) which is a good marker of what's possible for a wealthy country and India (700gCO2) because as a country with a lot of economic development and recent historic poverty, it shows why China's improvement is worth noting.
EDIT: I probabably implied that China and USA should be compared in terms of their improvements, but didn't mean too! I figure Lemmy is a mostly USA centric place, so thought that was a good benchmark. Comparing USA to similar wealthy, established enconomies like European countries, it's improving a lot slower. Comparing China to fast developing countries like India or Nigeria (probably a messy comparison) shows its improving faster than you'd expect.
Looks like China's is improving, but still a little over the worldwide average.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity?tab=chart&country
Edit: oops this is the same data you were showing, just in graph form instead.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/chinas-construction-of-new-coal-power-plants-reached-10-year-high-in-2024/
Compared to the whole "move fast and break things" mantra thats migrated to the US government, this seems like a wise move.
What a weird graph, doesn't tell us anything, why not an energy mix graph to show coal increasing in the energy mix? Oh it isn't? These coal factory's are made to shut older ones? Ohhh you're not very smart
Or you could read the article.
Thanks! That is indeed a more useful and interesting piece of data.
I expected numbers on China to be a bit lower, but an improvement is surely significant.
Love the time slider!