Clean energy is starting to bend the curve on China\u2019s fossil-fuel use.<\/p>\n
Overall, carbon-free sources met more than 80% of China\u2019s new electricity demand last year \u2014 a\u00a0marked difference from recent years. Between 2011 and 2020, they met less than half of new demand, according to a\u00a0new report<\/a> from think tank\u00a0Ember.<\/p>\n Thanks to China\u2019s astonishingly fast rollout of carbon-free electricity, the country saw its fossil-fueled power generation fall by 2% in the first half of this year compared to the first six months of 2024. That\u2019s a\u00a0crucial metric to watch: China is the world\u2019s largest source of planet-warming carbon emissions, and its electricity production generates more carbon dioxide than any other sector.<\/p>\n So far this year, the country has deployed 256\u00a0gigawatts of new solar capacity \u2014 double the amount it installed during the same period last year and orders of magnitude more than installed by the runner-up nations, India and the U.S. Earlier this year, China\u2019s total solar and wind power capacity surpassed its coal-fired power capacity. In 2024, China installed more grid batteries than the U.S. and Europe combined. And the country is home to nearly half<\/a> of the nuclear power plants currently under construction.<\/p>\n China\u2019s overall fossil-fuel use could be about to decline, too. That\u2019s because the nation is rapidly electrifying its economy \u2014 retooling more and more fuel-burning sectors, like transportation and heavy industry, to be powered by electrons instead of combustion. Electricity accounted for nearly one-third of the country\u2019s final energy consumption in 2023, compared to less than a\u00a0quarter for the U.S. and major European nations.<\/p>\n It\u2019s yet more evidence that China is all in on becoming an \u200b\u201celectrostate<\/a>.\u201d Meanwhile, under President Donald Trump, the U.S. has lost its momentum in abandoning fossil fuels. Greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. are still expected to fall under Trump, but more slowly<\/a> than had been expected under Biden-era policies, as the federal government chooses to embrace fossil-fuel nostalgia<\/a> over a\u00a0clean-energy future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clean energy is starting to bend the curve on China\u2019s fossil-fuel use. Overall, carbon-free sources met more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-185837","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}