{"id":283373,"date":"2026-02-06T05:31:30","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T05:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/283373\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T05:31:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T05:31:30","slug":"the-chinese-renewable-energy-revolution-affects-the-whole-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/283373\/","title":{"rendered":"The Chinese Renewable Energy Revolution Affects The Whole World"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Jeremy Wallace is a professor of China Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of the \u201cChina Lab\u201d newsletter. His story for Wired<\/a> published on January 28, 2026, begins with this headline: \u201cChina\u2019s Renewable Energy Revolution Is a Huge Mess That Might Save the World.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA global onslaught of cheap Chinese green power is upending everything in its path. No one is ready for its repercussions,\u201d Wallace says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the scale and pace that China is producing [solar panels and wind turbines], plenty of things stand to be swept away \u2014 including the seemingly intractable problems of energy poverty and fossil fuel dependence,\u201d he adds. \u201cIn 2024, the total installed electricity capacity of the planet \u2014 every coal, gas, hydro, and nuclear plant and all of the renewables \u2014 was about 10 terawatts. The Chinese solar supply chain can now pump out 1 terawatt of panels every year\u201d [emphasis added].<\/p>\n

Globally, the glut of solar has lowered the average cost of generating electricity to 4 cents a kilowatt-hour, which may be the cheapest form of energy in the history of humanity, Wallace claims.<\/p>\n

The world is beginning to notice the tidal wave of renewable energy made possible by China. \u201cBut chroniclers of this green tech revolution almost always understate its chaos. At this point, it is far less a tightly managed, top-down creation of state subsidies than a runaway train of competition. The resulting, onrushing utopia is anything but neat,\u201d Wallace writes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a panorama of coal communities decimated, price wars sweeping across one market after another, and electrical grids destabilizing as they become more central to the energy system. And absolutely no one \u2014 least of all some monolithic \u2018China\u2019 \u2014 knows how to deal with its repercussions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Policies Not Subsidies<\/p>\n

People always accuse China of granting massive subsidies to renewable energy and electric car companies, but that is not quite accurate. What China does is create government policies that reward companies for pursuing national goals, but the policies can shift dramatically once those goals are achieved.<\/p>\n

In January of last year, China announced it would discontinue a policy that had effectively propped up renewable energy prices by pegging them to the price of the baseline coal power in each province. Any solar capacity that went in after May 2025, Beijing declared, would no longer get this deal.<\/p>\n

What happened next was completely predictable. In the first three months of 2025, 60 gigawatts of new solar capacity were added to the national grid. In April, 45 more gigawatts were installed. Then in May, an eye popping 92 gigawatts were added \u2014 an average of three gigawatts every day. To put that in perspective, a typical nuclear power plant produces about one gigawatt of electricity. After May, new solar deployments<\/a> plummeted. In the last four months of the year, just 10 gigawatts of new solar were added per month.<\/p>\n

Wallace explains what the effect of all this renewable energy has on grid operators in terms that are easily understood by those of us who are not energy industry experts.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor electricity markets to work, grid managers must constantly balance supply and demand \u2014 but the former can\u2019t always be throttled back when it exceeds the latter. Nuclear power plants can\u2019t just be switched on and off whenever solar power floods the grid. And some Chinese coal plants provide heat to communities through steam, so they need to run even if the electricity they generate is superfluous.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne perverse result of all this energetic oversupply is that a lot of solar power simply gets wasted, or \u201ccurtailed,\u201d to make way for dirty forms of energy that are harder to turn off. Another is that the inherently intermittent power of renewables simply makes it more challenging for managers to keep the grid stable.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn August 2024, in China\u2019s far western region of Xinjiang \u2014 where the renewables build-out is at its most grandiose \u2014 poorly handled voltage fluctuations from solar and wind caused a regional blackout and even threatened the national electrical system, according to the South China Morning Post.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs challenging as the glut is to manage at the technical level, its economics are even more vexing. As Econ 101 teaches, prices go down when supply rises faster than demand. But in most markets, there\u2019s an end point to this process: free.<\/p>\n

\u201cElectricity markets are different. Some power generating entities (like coal and nuclear plants) are so loath to ramp down their production that they offer to pay for the privilege of continuing to generate power. This, combined with the absolute imperative to keep the grid balanced, can create negative prices, which have become common in China\u2019s heavily populated Shandong Province.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an untenable situation, but energy-hungry industrial firms are happy to milk it. Decades ago, the metals giant Weiqiao Aluminum left the Shandong grid in favor of running its own captive coal fleet to power its smelters. This past year it plugged back into the grid to take advantage of cheaper rates coming from green tech.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wallace Joins Mark Jacobson On KQED<\/p>\n

Recently, Wallace took part in a program on KQED, the famed public radio station in San Francisco. Joining him was Mark Z. Jacobson, a CleanTechnica contributor and professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. Jacobson told host Alexis Madrigal, \u201cChina has built more electricity capacity<\/a> from wind, water, and solar than all the nuclear reactors ever built in human history \u2014 combined.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cAt their current pace, if China electrifies transportation, buildings, and industry and continues deploying renewables, they could reach 100 percent renewable energy across all sectors by about 2051. The US, meanwhile, would reach that point roughly 100 years later \u2014 around 2148\u00a0[emphasis added].<\/p>\n

\u201cChina accounts for about 35 percent of global energy use and emissions, so their transition really matters. And they\u2019re exporting almost as much renewable capacity as they\u2019re installing domestically, which is helping the rest of the world transition too.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bad news is that some countries \u2014 including the US<\/a> \u2014 are moving slowly. But there are bright spots. South Dakota produced about 120 percent of its electricity demand last year from wind, hydro, and solar. There are now a dozen states producing between 50 and 120 percent of their electricity demand from renewables in the power sector alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat said, we still need to transition transportation, buildings, and industry \u2014 not just electricity \u2014 and that\u2019s where we have a long way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Green Energy In Red States<\/p>\n

Madrigal pointed out that many of those US states are in thrall to the Republican Party, which seems counter-intuitive. Jacobson replied that \u201cIowa, a deeply red state, produces almost 80 percent of its electricity from wind. Montana has a huge share of renewables. Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas are rapidly expanding their renewable capacity as well. The Great Plains are basically the Saudi Arabia of wind. There\u2019s enormous potential to export that power across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also have massive offshore wind potential on both coasts, though that\u2019s being stifled right now. And beyond wind and solar, the U.S. has geothermal energy, particularly enhanced geothermal systems \u2026 which provide constant, baseload power similar to nuclear, but without the risks. You drill deep \u2014 three to eight kilometers \u2014 where temperatures are high enough to generate steam. It\u2019s now a commercial technology, deployable quickly, with far fewer safety concerns. It can replace nuclear entirely. It\u2019s faster, cheaper, safer, and uses very little land.\u201d What\u2019s not to love?<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to solve climate change, air pollution, and energy security, you have to deploy clean energy quickly,\u201d Jacobson added. \u201cWind, solar, and batteries excel at that. Enhanced geothermal<\/a> does too \u2014 without the meltdown risk, weapons proliferation risk, radioactive waste, or uranium mining hazards of nuclear power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chairman Mao On Revolutions<\/p>\n

Wallace ends his Wired article with a reference to Mao Zedong, the brutal Chinese leader who subjected his people to a punishing Cultural Revolution. \u201cA revolution is not a dinner party. It is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another,\u201d Mao said.<\/p>\n

The green tech revolution is definitely not a dinner party, Wallace says, but rather a withering assault on the value of the assets of fossil fuel companies. \u201cIt is the result of the conscious choices made by people, firms, and governments, many of the most critical ones made in China. But it is happening now, and faster than our systems \u2014 electricity grids, industrial sectors, labor, geopolitics, and more \u2014 are ready for.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it\u2019s a good thing, too, because there is another force powered by the sun\u2019s fusion that is also arriving at a force and scale that we are not prepared for \u2014 climate change. A global energy system undergirds modern life. Through all the chaos, that system is getting a major upgrade,\u201d thanks to an influx of renewable energy, he says.<\/p>\n

Unstoppable<\/p>\n

\u201cThe course of true love never did run smooth,\u201d Shakespeare wrote. The same can be said of the renewable energy revolution. The world is on the cusp of transitioning away from the pollution and expense of using fossil fuels and nuclear to generate electricity.<\/p>\n

It is unfortunate that the US is working overtime to slow that transition down, but its intransigence just makes its government look venial, petty, and stupid. Meanwhile, the larger world is laughing at the US and working overtime to leverage the benefits of renewables.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the nuclear power era, visionaries talked about electricity becoming too cheap to meter. That didn\u2019t quite happen, as the cost of nuclear power plants rose into the stratosphere, but today renewables are close to making that prospect a reality. At this point, even The Mouth That Roared cannot derail the renewable energy revolution.<\/p>\n

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