I would say China is installing wind & solar as a way to stimulate its domestic wind, solar, batteries & other components hegemony for the export market. It would make a bad example if they didn't use much wind/solar while being the World's primary seller. A big money maker for them. They can't be that interested in using it for practical energy generation and replacing gas consumption since a lot of their wind & solar installations are not even grid connected and the capacity factor of their solar is a miserable 12%, and wind of 23%. A lot of their solar is just garbage, rusted out black metal frames, just parked haphazardly on the ground with cabling strewn between them.
To replace their LNG dependency, of course, they are relying now on a bosom-buddy relationship with Russia, building gas pipelines, since the West (Bankster empire) alienated Russia, pushing them into that partnership.
What China is doing is using a lot of Methanol which they produce from coal for 13 cents/liter. And it is clean burning fuel that replaces gas in all energy applications, transportation, power generation, cooking fuel and heating fuel.
As for nuclear, all I can say is something stinks in China. Building a trivial 17TWh/yr or 2 GWe of Nuclear power?!? They should be doing a lot more than the one NPP per month that the USA was completing by 1974. They should be completing 7 per month [2023-1.4B pop vs USA 1974-209M pop] to keep up with what the US did proportional to population. Much faster than that considering the advanced construction & factory production methods available to China. They erect 15 stories of high rise buildings in 2 days, 6 days including the walls. They build 2400km of high speed rail per yr. Whereas the US can't build 24km/yr even while spending $11B. So instead of expanding Nuclear by 7-17 Twh/yr as they are now, they should/could be expanding over 900 Twh/yr. And that is more than their avg electricity expansion of 460 Twh/yr since 2015. With Sweden achieving 650 kwh/capita of avg annual nuclear expansion over the 1976 to 1986 period. Whereas the fastest Germany did with wind & solar was 80 kwh/capita, @ 650 kwh/yr/capita x 1.4B = 910 Twh/yr nuclear rate of expansion.
Instead China is building 344 TWh/yr of Coal power [2023] and 17 Twh/yr Nuclear [2023], 20X more coal. So they should be building zero Coal power plants, adding 65 GWe NPPs every year, while replacing 39 GWe of Coal power plants, instead of adding that many as they did last year.
@SmithFS Great contribution to the complex question - thank you. I completely agree that China has an advantage in using the stuff it makes (a bit like GDP in creasing when you pay people to dig holes and pay people to fill in those same holes). WRT LNG - its going to be a while before Russia can realistically divert much gas eastwards. Russia could unwittingly end up as a vassel state rather than an equal trading partner, but thats another story.
WRT to nuclear, if the solar infrastructure is as bad as yous say it is, then maybe we shold be happy that the nuclear roll-out is limited?
WRT Methanol - I didn't know this and will go do some reading. Thanks!
Well, China supplies most of the high tech we use in the World today. One of the largest Aircraft, rocket, satellite, ship, BEVs, high speed rail etc builders. So they are quite capable of the highest tech on Earth. They also produce a lot of crap & junk. So they put their best & brightest on the former, including Nuclear Power plants, and relegate low skilled labor to installing solar. Shows how much they value that. #1 value of solar = earns lots of foreign exchange selling it to suckers in the West.
A good book on Methanol is by the late Nobel Prize winning chemist, George Olah:
I would say China is installing wind & solar as a way to stimulate its domestic wind, solar, batteries & other components hegemony for the export market. It would make a bad example if they didn't use much wind/solar while being the World's primary seller. A big money maker for them. They can't be that interested in using it for practical energy generation and replacing gas consumption since a lot of their wind & solar installations are not even grid connected and the capacity factor of their solar is a miserable 12%, and wind of 23%. A lot of their solar is just garbage, rusted out black metal frames, just parked haphazardly on the ground with cabling strewn between them.
To replace their LNG dependency, of course, they are relying now on a bosom-buddy relationship with Russia, building gas pipelines, since the West (Bankster empire) alienated Russia, pushing them into that partnership.
What China is doing is using a lot of Methanol which they produce from coal for 13 cents/liter. And it is clean burning fuel that replaces gas in all energy applications, transportation, power generation, cooking fuel and heating fuel.
As for nuclear, all I can say is something stinks in China. Building a trivial 17TWh/yr or 2 GWe of Nuclear power?!? They should be doing a lot more than the one NPP per month that the USA was completing by 1974. They should be completing 7 per month [2023-1.4B pop vs USA 1974-209M pop] to keep up with what the US did proportional to population. Much faster than that considering the advanced construction & factory production methods available to China. They erect 15 stories of high rise buildings in 2 days, 6 days including the walls. They build 2400km of high speed rail per yr. Whereas the US can't build 24km/yr even while spending $11B. So instead of expanding Nuclear by 7-17 Twh/yr as they are now, they should/could be expanding over 900 Twh/yr. And that is more than their avg electricity expansion of 460 Twh/yr since 2015. With Sweden achieving 650 kwh/capita of avg annual nuclear expansion over the 1976 to 1986 period. Whereas the fastest Germany did with wind & solar was 80 kwh/capita, @ 650 kwh/yr/capita x 1.4B = 910 Twh/yr nuclear rate of expansion.
Instead China is building 344 TWh/yr of Coal power [2023] and 17 Twh/yr Nuclear [2023], 20X more coal. So they should be building zero Coal power plants, adding 65 GWe NPPs every year, while replacing 39 GWe of Coal power plants, instead of adding that many as they did last year.
@SmithFS Great contribution to the complex question - thank you. I completely agree that China has an advantage in using the stuff it makes (a bit like GDP in creasing when you pay people to dig holes and pay people to fill in those same holes). WRT LNG - its going to be a while before Russia can realistically divert much gas eastwards. Russia could unwittingly end up as a vassel state rather than an equal trading partner, but thats another story.
WRT to nuclear, if the solar infrastructure is as bad as yous say it is, then maybe we shold be happy that the nuclear roll-out is limited?
WRT Methanol - I didn't know this and will go do some reading. Thanks!
Well, China supplies most of the high tech we use in the World today. One of the largest Aircraft, rocket, satellite, ship, BEVs, high speed rail etc builders. So they are quite capable of the highest tech on Earth. They also produce a lot of crap & junk. So they put their best & brightest on the former, including Nuclear Power plants, and relegate low skilled labor to installing solar. Shows how much they value that. #1 value of solar = earns lots of foreign exchange selling it to suckers in the West.
A good book on Methanol is by the late Nobel Prize winning chemist, George Olah:
Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy:
https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Oil-Gas-Methanol-Economy-ebook/dp/B08671RCN9/