cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/22189256
The latest data, for the first quarter of 2025, shows that China’s CO2 emissions have now been stable or falling for more than a year, as shown in the figure below.
However, with emissions remaining just 1% below the recent peak, it remains possible that they could jump once again to a new record high.
Outside of the power sector, emissions increased 3.5%, with the largest rises in the use of coal in the metals and chemicals industries.
Sector-by-sector analysis suggests that, in addition to the power sector, emissions have likely also peaked in the building materials and steel sectors, as well as oil products consumption.
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I hate China, but at times they do correct shit and because of the structure of the government it’s almost always successful.
Wish they didn’t have so much human rights violations.
I don’t know what community to post this in either so I’m just gonna add it here, hexbear and Lemmygrad claim to be communists, claim to not be revisionists, claim to use materialistic dialectics, but have you ever visited their ProleWiki? Shit is full with contradictions, how are you gonna educate socialists when your own encyclopedia can’t even get itself right? Actively denying reality is the opposite of what Marx wrote.
Excellent news!
Now it’s on US deniers - we can no longer claim we shouldn’t do anything because China is not
I hate to be the bearer of unpopular takes but it’s likely a sign of a shrinking economy. That‘s something that won‘t convince any voters at the moment.
That’s what I keep telling delayers who always say that China pollutes so much it’s not worth doing any effort without them. The day that the Chinese government decides to go green it will be done in a matter of years, the day that the US decides to go green it will be done in a matter of decades.
I personally suspect the crash in solar panel prices is a result of them deciding to get on with fixing the problem. Basically turn it from a political problem to an economic one.
They are also pushing hard for both modern nuclear fission and nuclear fusion power. Once they start coming online in bulk, their CO2 output will likely plummet.
the day that the US decides to go green…
pfff
Noone ever believes me when I tell them that at >20% yearly growth, solar alone is going to overtake fossil in a decade
People don’t understand how growth works. And there’s a lot of fossil fuel propaganda (“what are you going to do at night / when there’s no wind”). You can deal with those things using batteries, pumped storage and by shifting load.
Solar panel cost drops -50% each 11-12 years too. It’s crazy actually.
I have done some napkin calculations and those 400W balcony panels (full kit) are paid off in around 5 years. And it’s just getting better and better.
ROI of on-grid solar, just in general, is 5-7 years. Down from 10-15 some 10-15 years ago.
They probably don’t believe you because most of the time a 20% growth rate doesn’t just stay constant for a decade, allowing for such simplistic extrapolations. There are examples to the contrary. But a 20% growth rate means 750% growth over 10 years and that is a lot.
Depends on the location and season, but yeah, I can see that.
Then we must invent some way of transporting electricity, like cables, pylons or something 😉
Throw the electricity into the trunk of my car I’ll drive it over to the next town that needs it. Just clear some room next to my backpack
You jest but EVs are a great way to compensate over night fluctuations. If we had a grid that supports it and enough EVs charging at home.
I wish we had smarter chargers for this. While I don’t accept using my battery to reinforce the grid without significant payback, I’m more than willing to dynamically schedule charging.
Why can’t I set it to “charge to 80% by morning, during times that help the power company”? If enough people do this we should be able to smooth out the overnight load to something consistent and predictable to match whatever generation is online
My energy provider in the Netherlands provides something kind of like this, if you install a compatible EV charger it can charge when it’s cheapest (which I assume correlates).
Some places here also have time of use metering. However as far as I know it’s old style fixed schedule, like 11p-5am or something.
This is an opportunity to be a lot more dynamic to help the utility smooth the load better.
We had time of use metering where I grew up, but at the time the only intelligence we had was a timer. Now we have $50k+ vehicles with an ai computer - it better be capable of more
And resilient batteries.
Valid concern but there are very promising results for recycling or restoring lithium batteries. The future might be bright.
That’s probably the most important part (ecology) but if the battery wears out faster, people well not like that (batteries are expensive).
But I also do think the future will be bright!
Of course it will, but its too late. We need it now.
Not to ruin it for anyone but the only reason is that solar is the cheapest option nowadays…
Why would that ruin it?
This is good news but I hate the title. It makes it sound like they are fixing more carbon than they are producing. Its more that its decelerating. Which is awesome.
Their emissions are lower. It’s not just slower growth in emissions.
Net doesn’t matter. If we get net zero emissions, we’re fucked.
We must get it to 0.
Yeah, but isn’t net zero the huge milestone that’s actually accomplishable in “our lifetime”*?
*on some self reflection and as a millennial, very net negative emissions feels accomplishable in my lifetime, so I suppose when I’m saying “our lifetime” I mean before the Boomers/Gen X die off.
The reduction in China’s first-quarter CO2 emissions in 2025 was due to a 5.8% drop in the power sector. While power demand grew by 2.5% overall, there was a 4.7% drop in thermal power generation – mainly coal and gas.
This is catching up to Europe’s FF use declines (10%+ in 2024) in power sector. The overall reduction in emissions isn’t that big because China is doing something pretty crazy and highly emittive. It is making liquid fuels from coal. Geopolitics forces it to for independence.
So, 350 million Americans managed to elect Trump. After 5 months, and him totally crashing the country, they haven’t managed to stop him… not to hopeful about humanity’s chances on stopping climate change 😢
Oh my, it couldn’t be related to the US massively reducing their demand on the country’s manufacture, could it?! If more people stopped demanding cheap, unnecessary, poor quality products with high environmental and ethical costs, maybe China’s emissions will drop even further!
No. It’s because they are adding a fuck load of solar panels every day. They are leading the world by an insane margin. They got a lot of shitty things going on over there but they are crushing it on clean energy
China clearly saw my solar power setup in Factorio and got jealous.
/s
Stable of falling for more than a year. us demand hasn’tbeen mattively reduced that long-
No its because many countries are slowly turning things around and the USA is not
