> a boom in solar that saw the country [China] add 92 gigawatts of capacity—that’s 92 billion watts—in a single month in May, compared to all-time U.S. installations of 134 GW.
That's an insane stat. China added 92GW of solar in May 2025 alone.
davis · 4h ago
It is an insane number but May 2025 is a bit of an outlier. The entire first half of the year they installed 197.85 and in May they installed 92.92 of that.
Much of this solar was rushed construction to get them in before the new electricity pricing policy goes into effect. It isn't known yet how much the buildout will drop off for the remainder of the year but it is pretty conceivable that some fraction of the construction for the rest of the year was "pulled" forward and rushed to get it in before June. I'm hopeful China's insane buildout will continue but we probably won't see numbers like May 2025 for awhile at least.
The short summary: if a renewable project was built and finished before June, it gets the old, more profitable electricity rates, but if it is finished after June, it is less profitable.
That stat is bonkers. China's GDP is only 5x that of UK. Total UK solar is about 19GW.
So even if you divide China's solar by 5, they added in a month what we have built in >10 years
chippiewill · 5h ago
Comparing to the UK probably isn't the best though since the UK latitude makes it not super favourable to Solar. It would be better to compare it to Southern Europe.
Spain has 40GW and GDP that's about 1/10th of China. Still, dividing China's capacity of 90GW by 10 still means they built a quarter of Spain's capacity in a month. Crazy.
lucb1e · 4h ago
I don't think it's going to look much better if you add in wind capacity :(
1. it's not a representative month. Building a solar farm for two years and having it go online in one month, leads to big jumps. If you look at the previous year, in 2024 China added 277 GW, so 23 MW per month.
2. At the end of 2024 the US had 239 GW installed. So about the same order of magnitude as China added in 2024 (277 GW, or 15% more).
3. The fact China added in 2024 a similar amount of solar capacity as the US in its entire history, is partly a function of exponential growth in solar in general.
For example Spain doubled its capacity in 2019 versus 2018. Then doubled it again two years later in 2021. Then almost doubled it again two years later in 2022 etc.
In other words it's not so strange in solar actually to see you add in a single year, the same capacity as you've built in all the years prior, regardless of whether it is China. Spain doubled in 1-year period, and then doubled twice in a row in a 2-year period, in the most recent years.
Still it's an insane stat, just wanted to add some nuance. -- The fact we have a president who utters nonsense about wind and solar and is actively working against it, is insane and sad.
davis · 43m ago
My comment went into details why this month was an outlier by the way.
monero-xmr · 5h ago
They make it and not enough people buying so may as well use it themselves. They acquire at cost. If only the West could build things
tokioyoyo · 4h ago
They make it, because they have huge internal goals for energy generation.
aucisson_masque · 4h ago
Back when I worked in EDF, biggest nuclear energy producer, I was astonished to see how fast China was developing its nuclear power.
it had to build nuclear reactor, solar panels and also diesel engines because they just need so much energy but the sheer amount of money spent on nuclear reactor is unthinkable.
That was 10 years ago already, I’m glad to see it’s having an impact. Soon enough, the picture of polluted air in China will be gone and we’ll see that instead in the USA.
bryanlarsen · 38m ago
China has significantly slowed their nuclear build out. They're still building them faster than anyone else, but the primary cause of the headline is solar.
K0nserv · 4h ago
The US, like most democracies, is worse at long term planning. It needs robust incentives to counteract short term instincts.
A $100/ton carbon tax would raise $490b(based on 4.9 billion tons of co2 emissions[0]) per year that could be distributed to lower income households (to offset the effect, making the tax progressive) and be used to fund green energy investment.
And the first person to come along screaming "I will cut the carbon tax that is making your life unaffordable!" will be elected
bigbadfeline · 48m ago
Well, make life afordable then, a simple solution. After that is achieved, make
de-carbonated energy naturally cheaper than the carbon-based alternatives - there will be no need for carbon taxation and the right won't be able to mount a successful attack.
K0nserv · 3h ago
Certainly and that speaks to the problems of democracies. At least in theory if you ensure the tax is progressive as I suggested it shouldn't make the life of the majority unaffordable. However, monied interest would of course try, and maybe succeed, to convince voters of that anyway (thanks Citizens United).
panarchy · 2h ago
I was referencing Canada where they implemented a carbon tax with a rebate. Facts didn't matter because the majority conservative media landscape just uncritically blasted out "carbon tax bad" for months/years on end. Most people were making money off of it but the perception that it was making things expensive (things were expensive from covid-era inflation) won out. It also didn't immediately solve global climate change so it was apparently bad policy too.
bryanlarsen · 32m ago
It didn't help that there were some very influential and sympathetic constituencies that were getting hurt by it, like farmers.
The carbon tax is supposed to be a three tier system: tax, rebate & tariff. There's supposed to be a tariff on the carbon content of all imports from any jurisdiction that doesn't have comparable carbon policies. It's the "carbon club" that William Nordhaus won the Nobel Memorial prize for. It sounds like Canada was close to setting this up with Europe, but the sticking point was the US -- nobody wanted to piss of the US by putting a tariff boundary with the US. Of course hindsight is 20/20 here. We should have slammed it in place the instead Trump starting being Trump, but by that time the carbon tax was gone. With the carbon club system, Canada's exporters wouldn't have been hurt by the carbon tax so badly.
wakawaka28 · 2h ago
Speaking of long-term planning, we can't even balance the budget. $500B is chump change, perhaps equivalent to the deficit of a couple of months.
ericmay · 4h ago
People say that but the underlying assumption seems to be planning for the long-term at the nation state level is a good idea.
Given how chaotic the world is, I’m not sure that is true or if so just how true it is.
Democracies are inherently more chaotic than Communist dictatorships because of their very nature - democracies don’t tend to aim for stability, because stability brings about some good things but some bad things like lack of innovation and reduced competing, though I am not saying those are aspects of China per se, just speaking generally.
If we were to speak about China we could bring up a few long term planning failures. 3 stand out in my mind: the One Child Policy, the mass killing and starvation of Chinese people under Mao which set China back decades never mind the suffering, and more recently perhaps over-construction and the resulting ghost cities and unused infrastructure.
We could point to American short term thinking problems too but we are broadly familiar with those.
All that is to say, there’s a lot of either fear mongering or propaganda, not sure which. “China is long term oriented better watch out!” Is the current media phenomenon but nobody seems to really look at their long term planning failures or ask whether such long term planning is even good or successful.
Though one area China has been great at for long term planning is making sure their kids aren’t addicted to TikTok like ours.
orwin · 1h ago
China's CCP do party politics we'd have trouble to distinguish from failed democracies. They kinda fight with each other within the party, then the local CCP members vote on which delegates to send to the central committee equivalent (the NPC), and those 3000 delegates basically vote on country officials (which ultimately decides the political orientation). You also have weird political games between provincial politics and the pressure they put on delegates, and the pressure national officials put on provincial politics.
All in all, China can't be reduced to 'a dictatorship'. It's an oligarchy for sure (90 millions vote, less than 1% of the population) but it has too much political life to be reduced to that.
kelipso · 1h ago
90 million is around 10% not 1%.
K0nserv · 3h ago
I didn't mean to imply communist dictatorships always get this right, of course even with central planning and, supposed, long term thinking it has gone horribly wrong before, as you point out.
It does make me think about the failure to react to changes or ideas that we ill-advised from the very start. I think, at least partially, this stems less from the long time horizon when planning and more from the lack of dissent in a dictatorship. The Chernobyl TV series's "The cost of lies" concept feels very poignant.
Is there a future where China uses this as leverage with the rest of the world to put sanctions on the US if we don't transition?
Workaccount2 · 5h ago
China is doing this for energy independence. Their fossil fuel supply chain is critically vulnerable. They don't care about the climate, but will happily play the optics.
K0nserv · 4h ago
Fossil fuels aren't just bad for global climate, air pollution (which is mostly local) kills 7-8 million people per year.
There's an interesting study that arises from a natural experiment based on coal subsidies in China[0]. It found that life expectancy in otherwise similar locations is 3 years lower where the subsidy is paid, and thus more coal is burned.
They do care about reducing pollution, and have managed to do so quite significantly in many cities.
China also has quite a bit to lose: many large cities on the coasts, and worsening water shortage problems.
National security probably plays a large role, and I reckon they would prioritize economy over climate, but the evidence implies that they do also care.
ericmay · 4h ago
Regarding Paris it’s probably a matter of convenience too. Why not sign on to all this stuff if you’re going to build solar anyway to reduce your commodity dependency exposure as you prep for Taiwan?
You can think about this as if China had access to the same oil reserves or oil markets as the US does, would they behave differently? Absolutely.
Separately I think eliminating pollution is more along the lines of their country just doing good things for their people. Climate change stances and whatnot I don’t think are the same, nor are the intentions.
chrisco255 · 4h ago
Water shortage has nothing to do with global warming, just overpopulation in specific regions. The world if anything is getting more precipitous than in the past.
adgjlsfhk1 · 4h ago
Climate change has local effects. More flooding in some areas can coexist with more drought in others.
chrisco255 · 3h ago
Drought prone areas have actually reduced in recent decades overall. Drought and flood cycles are also impacted by ancient oceanic factors including the El Nino/La Nina cycle as well as the multidecadal oscillations in Pacific and Atlantic.
robocat · 4h ago
Oversimplification to single causes is sign of poor thinking.
Solar is also economically better for China.
Secondly, I would strongly guess China ramped up production thinking that there would be more overseas demand. It isn't just low demand from the US; for example my "green" New Zealand is also not buying utility scale solar (oversimplified reason from horse's mouth: it is due to our major electricity generators colluding - the actual blocking reasons are more capitalistically complex).
There are very few situations in the world where cause and effect are clear: facile explanations of cause and effect are usually wrong in important ways.
presentation · 4h ago
China actually has quite a bit of public debate and discontent around air quality at a minimum. They definitely care in that they don’t want to piss off the populace.
Waterluvian · 4h ago
I’m not sure it’s absolutely knowable. These are all just opinions. But I feel that China is far more likely to actually care about the climate than America is.
One of the benefits of being a pseudodemocratic centralized government is that you can kind of decide something is important without worrying how to get reelected in a few years. All it takes is a leadership that decides this is their vanity project to be remembered by, or perhaps to actually care about China in 100 years (the Americans obviously can’t think or see this far anymore). This is possibly helped by having a population with a culture of collectivism. For better or worse you don’t have to actually solve the “what’s in it for me?” question that seems to completely screw climate plans when the plan is, “it’ll suck for you but your grandkids will appreciate it.”
triceratops · 4h ago
> They don't care about the climate
Like all the crypto climate deniers and True Bird Lovers* are fond of saying, the climate doesn't care about per capita emissions, only total emissions. And now China's total emissions have reduced.
* they oppose wind power
Sharlin · 4h ago
I'm pretty sure they care. They can afford to think long term.
bgnn · 5h ago
Neither the US cares about the climate amd doesn't care about the optics either.
This is capitalism in action: solar is cheaper than anything else per kwh. The obsession with fossil in the West is due to the fossil fuel lobbies, not because of the rational market forces. China doesn't have that.
Workaccount2 · 4h ago
I'm as big of a proponent on solar as anyone, but to avoid confusion, understand that those cheap solar figures come from using state subsidized Chinese panels on near worthless land in the cloudless remote southwest.
If you are trying to use American made panels near population centers in the Northeast or the Midwest, the economics become much more challenging.
toomuchtodo · 4h ago
California obtains almost 80% of their daily needs from solar, and is the world’s fourth largest economy. Almost the entire US could run off of solar and batteries based on current utility scale costs of both technologies (but will likely continue to use a mix of nuclear, renewables, batteries, transmission, demand response, and fossil gas for filling in the gaps as learning curves continue to deliver cheaper low carbon energy).
It's simply a matter of will (or in the case of the US, lack thereof).
(existing coal is more expensive than new renewables and storage in the US and Europe, I cannot speak to the cost in China)
ViewTrick1002 · 4h ago
> And they onboarded more coal plants in 2024 than any time in the prev 10 years:
Which is a statistic missing the forest for the trees.
In 2025 the Chinese coal consumption has in absolute terms decreased while they have kept building.
New built renewables are able to both absorb all new demand and reduce coal usage.
Sure, it would be better to not build coal plants sitting idle and instead spend the money on renewables and storage.
Through selectively quoting facts you make it seem like China is expanding their coal usage which is incorrect.
grues-dinner · 4h ago
And China's biggest solar and wind farms are in Gansu and Xinjiang. Which is even more remote.
China developed and built many UHVDC transmission lines to deal with it.
adgjlsfhk1 · 4h ago
Ridiculously cheap power is what turns near worthless land into valuable land.
bwestergard · 5h ago
Has there ever been a polity where your "rational market forces" prevailed over "lobbies" created by market forces?
chrisco255 · 4h ago
China continues to get the bulk of their energy from fossil fuels. 56% from coal. China has double the emissions of the USA and new construction for coal plants reached a 10 year high in 2024:
The entire world gets the bulk of their energy from fossil. One country is leading the pack in defossiling their economy relatively rapidly, and that's China. Double emissions of the US translates to half-emissions on a per-capita basis. Much less if you include historical emissions. And China's emissions dropped in the previous period, the US increased.
The coal plants are known to be built to support economic growth for one (simple truth), and as baseload for renewable sources (you simply can't go renewable without this, at the moment). Coal plant utilisation rates have been dropping for two decades and are expected to keep dropping. [0]
A case study in lying by omission. They build coal plants but they don't use them. In 2024 more than 80% of their energy growth came from solar and wind. As of 2023 solar was already cheaper than coal in China.
Nothing I said was a lie. Its literally the entire picture of their power grid not just the last 12 months of some boom cycle. You omitted the fact that the majority of their power comes from the most polluting fossil fuel in existence: coal. And it continues to grow coal capacity. It's not building these plants for shits and giggles these are capital intensive projects.
adgjlsfhk1 · 4h ago
It's backup power. The power plants will never pay for themselves, but they enable much wider solar deployment because you can use the plants the 1 day a year when the whole country is cloudy.
Sabinus · 3h ago
You build gas plants to be the backup for that not coal plants. Coal plants get too long to get to temperature to be a backup for renewable energy.
bryanlarsen · 20m ago
Not in China. China has lots of coal but has to import gas, so they build coal peakers instead of gas peakers. China builds their coal plants a little differently so they spin up faster, but mostly they just use plain old weather prediction. 4 hour weather prediction is highly accurate, so they know far enough in advance to know when to spin up the coal.
triceratops · 4h ago
> Nothing I said was a lie.
"Lying by omission" means things not said. Facts deliberately left out to mislead.
> You omitted the fact that the majority of their power comes from the most polluting fossil fuel in existence: coal
And you omitted the fact that majority of cumulative carbon emissions come from developed countries. Not to mention you're spreading your lies on an article that's literally about them reducing total emissions, the final refuge for people like you ("America still emits less, the climate doesn't care about pe-capita blah blah"). Seriously, re-evaluate your priors. Consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, someone is doing something about the climate, and not even on purpose, while we just sit around.
> It's not building these plants for shits and giggles
Apparently they are because 80% of their energy growth doesn't come from those plants. I think they're part jobs programs, part backup plan.
decimalenough · 4h ago
Yup, China added the most capacity in the world of solar, coal and nuclear at the same time.
However, the new coal plants are largely replacing old, inefficient, heavily polluting ones, so they're still a net positive.
nine_zeros · 4h ago
> They don't care about the climate, but will happily play the optics
It is not just optics or energy independence. There is a genuine effort to reduce pollution. People forget in 00s media used to bash the smog in China. It was an unlivable air. They truly wanted to transform it - it just so happens that renewables solve a lot of problems simultaneously.
carabiner · 4h ago
How is this different from the US?
stackskipton · 4h ago
US Fossil Fuel chain right now is not very vulnerable. Vast majority of oil/gas production is internal or from nearby states that foreign powers would have hard time cutting off and our relations are ok with, recent administration aside.
China gets its oil from Russia and Middle East. Russia is unstable partner and Middle East can get cut off by US Naval power for now.
adgjlsfhk1 · 4h ago
The US is an energy exporter (and its energy imports are mostly hydro and oil from Canada which is a pretty safe trade route). China is a massive importer and they import from countries they aren't especially friendly with
bilbo0s · 4h ago
It's not.
The reply was just explaining the calculus that China, and other nations, are using with respect to renewable energy.
zahlman · 5h ago
The US also apparently seeks energy independence, but seems unwilling to give up "farmland" (or, you know, household roofs or awnings over parking lots) to do it.
toomuchtodo · 4h ago
The US farms 60 million acres for corn and soybean biofuels currently. Lots of suboptimal ag land available for more efficient energy production (besides rooftops, irrigation canals, parking lots, etc; California has 4k miles of irrigation canals they can cover with solar PV, and is actively working towards this goal). As _aavaa_ mentions, agrivoltaics are very favorably for solar PV and ag production synergies.
(average age of farmers is ~58 years old, and with the decline in labor for ag, now is an optimal time to lease and lock up this land for renewables for the next 25-30 years [at which point generators can be repowered or the land returned to its previous condition])
Happy to give up farmland if you can install a pump jack.
chrisco255 · 4h ago
Pumpjacks take up the size of a shed. Fwiw, farmland in west Texas frequently has pumpjacks and windmills installed on them right alongside cow postures and corn fields.
anonfordays · 4h ago
Pump jacks use an order of magnitude less space.
_aavaa_ · 4h ago
A) that’s simply untrue. Solar panels and wind turbines don’t use up the land. You can grow crops and graze under the panels and the wind turbine is mostly in the sky.
B) solar panels and wind turbines tend not to spill toxic waste into the ground around them. And tend not to be put up on your own land without your consent.
outside1234 · 4h ago
Than a wind turbine? Not sure that's true
chrisco255 · 4h ago
Wind turbines have a bigger base than pumpjacks, but both are frequently scattered across west texas farm and cattle fields. Solar wouldn't be as economical as far as space goes. But you go a little further west and that's arid desert which prob should be fine for solar.
throwawaymaths · 4h ago
us is very close to net energy independence, if anything the nondesire to retool petrochemical plants for ultrasweet fracked fuel is the blocker for true energy independence.
dlachausse · 5h ago
Household solar installations are still too expensive to be a reasonable option for many consumers in the United States. The amount of solar generation is also very dependent on where you live. Not to mention, it is becoming increasingly difficult to become a homeowner with people achieving this milestone later than ever. If you rent, it’s not really an option at all.
> On average, it takes between nine and 12 years for solar panels to pay for themselves.
This is all factually accurate. If you're a renter, see if your utility offers a community solar option. This enables you to get economic savings and exposure to solar without installing a system yourself. If you're a homeowner, in many cases, the return on investment (depending on installation cost) is under 10 years (after which your power is free for the life of the system, which will exceed 25 years). It should be compared to a bond return/investment (assuming cash purchase vs financing or a lease).
The EU will introduce "sanctions" via a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) at the end of this year. Currently the US wouldn't be affected much by this -- it only affects cement, aluminium, fertilisers, iron and steel, hydrogen and electricity for now.
It might be extended in the future, though.
chrisco255 · 4h ago
What sanctions are China going to leverage on USA? The Yuan is pegged to the USD at an artificially low exchange rate and America owns little of strategic value in China. Tariff wars are already ongoing as the economies go through a gradual divorce.
China's economy is export-based and U.S. is its largest buyer. If it refused to export to the U.S. its economy would go into a freefall and the Yuan would hyperinflate.
blitzar · 4h ago
Unlikely, China isnt an outwardly hostile nation like the US.
chrisco255 · 4h ago
Quit drinking the kool aid. You know nothing about the CCP and its ambitions or its future.
Detrytus · 1h ago
Well, the CCP does not hide their ambitions at all: they aim to replace the US as the global superpower, and with Trump as POTUS they actually start looking like a more stable, more reliable alternative.
I mean: Trump is a clown, and the US under his rule is becoming a circus.
ajross · 5h ago
With that excuse specifically? Probably not. But we're 100% charging straight into a future where the US ends up being isolated and subject to punitive extortion of some form, yeah. Once we cross the threshold of being "more annoying to bend the knee toward than Beijing", our particular flavor of hegemony is over and the world enters its new era.
nerpderp82 · 5h ago
Continue on this path and we will look like Russia in 10 years. Sorry aboot the invasion Canada.
mempko · 5h ago
We need to transition. It's a disgrace the way we are moving backwards
wakawaka28 · 2h ago
Is there a future where you want an authoritarian government on the other side of the planet to bully you into shutting down all your industry to reach some nebulous "carbon" goals? Cutting ties with China could have lots of benefits though.
thegrim33 · 5h ago
China emits a full 1/3 of the entire planet's CO2 emissions, emits three times as much as the US does, and emits more than any other country on Earth.
notTooFarGone · 5h ago
The country with most people emit the most... Cmon HN...
boudin · 5h ago
Chima is also the country that produces a big chunk of what western countries consumes. The emissions from China are also our emissions.
AlecSchueler · 5h ago
And how much of the world's goods are they manufacturing?
GP no doubt complaining about Chinese emissions via their made in China smartphone.
iooi · 5h ago
Wrong. India is the most populous country, and the third highest emitter.
triceratops · 4h ago
People who still make these arguments are fundamentally dishonest and don't give a shit about the climate. They just want nothing to change for them.
I'd have more respect if they were honest about this.
ojbyrne · 5h ago
FYI, India has surpassed China for the largest population.
lucb1e · 5h ago
I assume they meant either between the two, namely that China dwarfs USA in population, or just as a general rule that more people have more needs
India compared to China is a 4% difference, 1.47 vs 1.41 B
chrisco255 · 4h ago
India is the most populous country.
richwater · 5h ago
Rising temperatures and sea levels don't care about per capita emissions.
If you _actually_ think climate change is an existential threat, you cannot think in per capita measurements.
triceratops · 4h ago
It's always easy to do nothing and blame others.
Americans (and other Westerners and developed countries) emit carbon to drive SUVs and eat burgers and steak. They tell everyone else to stay poor lest they emit carbon. Then also shame them for needing aid.
I'm glad China's at least making something useful with their emissions.
lucb1e · 5h ago
The opposite... if you think climate change is an issue, it's everyone's issue, not just china's
alex_smart · 5h ago
If you think that that is going to stop the people in China and India from wanting to increase their standard of livings, that is beyond delusional.
And did I read the article’s headline wrong or isn’t the article about China actually decreasing their absolute emissions.
scotty79 · 5h ago
Why would rising sea levels care about per-country emissions?
Per-capita measurements are more sensible because then you know how many humans and which ones need to get wiped for Gaia to be happy.
nerpderp82 · 5h ago
US Noped out of Paris Accords and is on the path to unregulate greenhouse gas emissions while the article talks about the INCREASING US emissions while China's falls.
The US outsourced massive swaths of its manufacturing to China and with it, the emissions from those industries.
Talking in absolutes without context, nor the trajectories is rigorous at best and disingenuous or worse.
From the article
> International Energy Agency (IEA) figures show Chinese coal consumption falling 2.6% in the first half of the year, largely due to a boom in solar that saw the country add 92 gigawatts of capacity—that’s 92 billion watts—in a single month in May, compared to all-time U.S. installations of 134 GW.
So in one month, China added 68% of our total solar capacity to its grid.
closewith · 5h ago
I wonder who the end users of all those emissions are?
chrisco255 · 3h ago
U.S. already migrated massive amounts of its energy sector from coal to natural gas over the last couple of decades, which reduced emissions from that replaced capacity by 60% years ago. If and when solar truly makes economic sense to justify the switching costs, it will happen, period. A lot of it is. Solar is growing healthily in the U.S.
Problems with solar remain, however. It's neither practical nor safe to build 100% solar grid. You must overbuild capacity on solar, because weather happens. No energy is generated at night. Therefore you have to factory battery install cost as well. Finally there are black swan weather events that DO happen in nature that NO ONE can prevent:
> neither practical nor safe to build 100% solar grid
No one is suggesting a 100% solar grid. You combine solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, and nuclear.
> battery
Battery prices have been in free-fall for a while, and there are a bunch of interesting tech for grid-scale energy storage. The vanadium redox battery is appealing for grid-scale energy because the energy capacity is determined by the amount of liquid you store in its tanks, so scaling that is trivial. Sodium ion batteries are appealing since they're made with abundant materials and their lower energy density compared to lithium ion isn't a concern for grid-scale storage.
> black swan weather events
Which is why no one is suggesting 100% solar. You do a mix like I described earlier.
WaitWaitWha · 2h ago
It would have been nice if the article clearly identified the rise and fall from what to what.
Scroll to the bottom, China fell from 30.98 in 2024 to 29.75 MtCO2. The US rose from 13.55 to 14.92 MtCO2.
Alifatisk · 5h ago
Good news for China, bad news for US. But don't forget China still emit 16B compared to US who emit 6B tons of CO2
> But don't forget China still emit 16B compared to US who emit 6B tons of CO2
China has 1.4 billion people, while U.S. has 340 million people.
nerpderp82 · 5h ago
And China makes all of our stuff. Instead of putting tariffs on solar from China, we should have dropped a trillion dollars on it and put it everywhere.
chrisco255 · 4h ago
Before you drop a trillion dollars, you do a cost benefit analysis and you factor for switching costs, the unique geography and population distribution of the U.S. the expected lifespan of solar panels, the battery install capacity necessary to facilitate nighttime and 100 to 1000 year weather event emergencies, the capacity to keep the grid online in the event of a world war, the cost to install HV lines to transport from solar hubs, etc.
You don't dogmatically order $1 trillion of something and sacrifice a functional independent, diverse, weather resilient, geographically distributed energy grid thats served the nation that invented the light bulb for over 125 years, because you read a clickbait headline about China.
craftkiller · 2h ago
> the capacity to keep the grid online in the event of a world war
If I'm learning anything from Russia, its that fossil fuel plants are hella vulnerable in a war. Solar would be much safer.
Fossil Fuel Plant: Knock out the right machine or building and you knock out the plant. The plant is literally storing explosives. The plant must be resupplied which leaves supply trucks/boats/pipelines vulnerable.
Solar: Distributed over a large area. Made of many independent complete power-generating devices so if you knock out 5% of them, all you've accomplished is reducing power output by 5%. Does not need a constant flow of supplies.
bialpio · 5h ago
Per capita is a better metric but it's worth noting that China is world's factory - it's easy to reduce emissions if you offshore a lot of your production elsewhere...
closewith · 5h ago
And the US, like most of the West, had outsourced their most carbon intensive manufacturing.
tonfa · 4h ago
And looking at historical emissions, US contributed 25% of all emissions vs China 15%.
yodsanklai · 5h ago
Emissions impact the whole world, not only the country that emit them. And the relevant metric is not per country, but per inhabitant in this country.
ACCount37 · 5h ago
Not really. Otherwise, US could slash its "relevant metrics" by annexing Nigeria.
triceratops · 4h ago
And China could slash the metrics you believe are "relevant" by dividing into 20 countries. It's time to stop talking and start doing. China is doing.
Leary · 5h ago
Except that does make sense because the new country would be the weighted average of the average CO2 contribution for both Americans and Nigerians.
ACCount37 · 5h ago
Clearly, that means annexing Nigeria is the best way for US to reduce its GHG emissions.
Just add poor people to your country! Per capita emission metrics HATE this one weird trick!
triceratops · 4h ago
Jeez the extent some people will go to not install solar.
notTooFarGone · 5h ago
So tell me why are you using absolute numbers?
gorwell · 5h ago
Those are the numbers that matter. Percentages are how you lie with statistics.
Sadly shows China going up, sharply until 2011, then more modestly. The latest 2023 data shows 8t/capita where the EU average is about 6 (not every EU country is rich, but sounds like that ought to be enough for a decent lifestyle) and US 14
ceejayoz · 5h ago
> Sadly shows China going up, sharply until 2011, then more modestly.
And how does their current value compare to the US?
lucb1e · 5h ago
> And how does their current value compare to the US?
Read my comment?
vondur · 5h ago
Looks like the US is decreasing from the chart.
ceejayoz · 5h ago
That's non-responsive to the question (and the article headline implies that's not even the case this year).
Which country currently produces more emissions per capita?
krrrh · 1h ago
Canada. But there aren't that many of us, and the absolute number and political units also matter if you care about warming as a practical problem. There are two interesting things about per capita CO2eq in this graph.
1. China is still trending up and the US is still trending down. It's dangerous to make straight-line projections but they are on trend to meet at some point.
2. The US per capita emissions appear to be on a steady downward trend since 1850. This is even more obvious if you discount the anomalous periods of the civil war and the Great Depression. You have to admit, that's something that demands unpacking.
Edit: Looks like Mongolia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE have the honour of being at the top actually. Might not be a comprehensive list.
tuatoru · 5h ago
I haven't done the math but I would expect that more than all of China's decline is due to two effects:
population aging -- older people use less fossil fuel.
reduced household formation, in part driven by increased youth unemployment. It's impossible to get figures for this.
w4yai · 5h ago
Which stage of denial is this ?
tuatoru · 5h ago
Knowledge of demography.
tokioyoyo · 4h ago
1/3 of Chinese population still lives in the rural areas. They’re still in the process of urbanization and building up new cities. That process results in emissions.
lucb1e · 5h ago
looking up your claim, https://www.mpg.de/4635546/co2-age-structure doesn't quite seem that much of a decline as compared to the giant increase from adulthood until ~60yo (presumably, as you accumulate wealth and require more care). You have to be over 70yo before it goes from ~15 to ~13 tons per capita per year. That's a small minority of people (like 9% if I'm eyeballing it right) who are 70+ in China in 2024 according to https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2024/ so the remaining 91% will be either stable or increasing emissions
edit: corrected the figure from 3% to 9% after noticing that I looked only at the left number and not the right one on that second graph. Forgot about all the women in the country, whoops
davis · 4h ago
The decline in emissions is due to the massive build out of renewables of solar and wind. The amount they are building is insane. Your theory is ignorant and you are spreading misinformation and nonsense.
henry2023 · 3h ago
I agree with you. You clearly haven’t done the math.
Freedom2 · 5h ago
Does China use a lot of windmills? The US president has a big concern with windmills, perhaps rightly so, which perhaps explains the rise in emissions.
oatsandsugar · 4h ago
> perhaps rightly so?
citation? You don't even say why he has a concern, so how can you say they are correct?
henry2023 · 3h ago
The comment reads as sarcasm to me
oatsandsugar · 2h ago
You have a more generous sarcasmometer then me :)
jimt1234 · 4h ago
Uh, hello? Windmills cause cancer! LOLOLOLOL
blooalien · 2h ago
And all those tiny little nearly invisible dots on the horizon make seaside golf courses ugly...
blitzar · 2h ago
We need more big beautiful oil rigs along the coast.
hollerith · 5h ago
I wonder if most of the 4.2% rise is AI training and inference.
Maybe China is in an economic slowdown, so its economy cannot afford to buy as much coal from Australia and petroleum from the Gulf as it used to.
ceejayoz · 5h ago
The article implies the Chinese reduction is due to widespread solar rollout:
> International Energy Agency (IEA) figures show Chinese coal consumption falling 2.6% in the first half of the year, largely due to a boom in solar that saw the country add 92 gigawatts of capacity—that’s 92 billion watts—in a single month in May, compared to all-time U.S. installations of 134 GW.
bryanlarsen · 5h ago
There are 4 roughly equivalent components to America's increase in energy use:
- population & GDP growth
- increased A/C usage
- AI/bitcoin/data centers
_aavaa_ · 5h ago
Or, hear me out, they don’t need to buy as much since they are producing more electricity themselves with their renewables.
That's an insane stat. China added 92GW of solar in May 2025 alone.
Much of this solar was rushed construction to get them in before the new electricity pricing policy goes into effect. It isn't known yet how much the buildout will drop off for the remainder of the year but it is pretty conceivable that some fraction of the construction for the rest of the year was "pulled" forward and rushed to get it in before June. I'm hopeful China's insane buildout will continue but we probably won't see numbers like May 2025 for awhile at least.
The short summary: if a renewable project was built and finished before June, it gets the old, more profitable electricity rates, but if it is finished after June, it is less profitable.
More details on this here: https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-chinas-renewable-p...
So even if you divide China's solar by 5, they added in a month what we have built in >10 years
Spain has 40GW and GDP that's about 1/10th of China. Still, dividing China's capacity of 90GW by 10 still means they built a quarter of Spain's capacity in a month. Crazy.
Looking it up... 16 GW onshore and 15 GW offshore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_Kingd... This graph looks like it started in earnest in like 2005, so 1.6GW/year on- and offshore combined, peaking in 2017 with 3.5GW in one year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_Kingd...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
1. it's not a representative month. Building a solar farm for two years and having it go online in one month, leads to big jumps. If you look at the previous year, in 2024 China added 277 GW, so 23 MW per month.
2. At the end of 2024 the US had 239 GW installed. So about the same order of magnitude as China added in 2024 (277 GW, or 15% more).
3. The fact China added in 2024 a similar amount of solar capacity as the US in its entire history, is partly a function of exponential growth in solar in general.
For example Spain doubled its capacity in 2019 versus 2018. Then doubled it again two years later in 2021. Then almost doubled it again two years later in 2022 etc.
In other words it's not so strange in solar actually to see you add in a single year, the same capacity as you've built in all the years prior, regardless of whether it is China. Spain doubled in 1-year period, and then doubled twice in a row in a 2-year period, in the most recent years.
Still it's an insane stat, just wanted to add some nuance. -- The fact we have a president who utters nonsense about wind and solar and is actively working against it, is insane and sad.
it had to build nuclear reactor, solar panels and also diesel engines because they just need so much energy but the sheer amount of money spent on nuclear reactor is unthinkable.
That was 10 years ago already, I’m glad to see it’s having an impact. Soon enough, the picture of polluted air in China will be gone and we’ll see that instead in the USA.
A $100/ton carbon tax would raise $490b(based on 4.9 billion tons of co2 emissions[0]) per year that could be distributed to lower income households (to offset the effect, making the tax progressive) and be used to fund green energy investment.
0: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states
The carbon tax is supposed to be a three tier system: tax, rebate & tariff. There's supposed to be a tariff on the carbon content of all imports from any jurisdiction that doesn't have comparable carbon policies. It's the "carbon club" that William Nordhaus won the Nobel Memorial prize for. It sounds like Canada was close to setting this up with Europe, but the sticking point was the US -- nobody wanted to piss of the US by putting a tariff boundary with the US. Of course hindsight is 20/20 here. We should have slammed it in place the instead Trump starting being Trump, but by that time the carbon tax was gone. With the carbon club system, Canada's exporters wouldn't have been hurt by the carbon tax so badly.
Given how chaotic the world is, I’m not sure that is true or if so just how true it is.
Democracies are inherently more chaotic than Communist dictatorships because of their very nature - democracies don’t tend to aim for stability, because stability brings about some good things but some bad things like lack of innovation and reduced competing, though I am not saying those are aspects of China per se, just speaking generally.
If we were to speak about China we could bring up a few long term planning failures. 3 stand out in my mind: the One Child Policy, the mass killing and starvation of Chinese people under Mao which set China back decades never mind the suffering, and more recently perhaps over-construction and the resulting ghost cities and unused infrastructure.
We could point to American short term thinking problems too but we are broadly familiar with those.
All that is to say, there’s a lot of either fear mongering or propaganda, not sure which. “China is long term oriented better watch out!” Is the current media phenomenon but nobody seems to really look at their long term planning failures or ask whether such long term planning is even good or successful.
Though one area China has been great at for long term planning is making sure their kids aren’t addicted to TikTok like ours.
All in all, China can't be reduced to 'a dictatorship'. It's an oligarchy for sure (90 millions vote, less than 1% of the population) but it has too much political life to be reduced to that.
It does make me think about the failure to react to changes or ideas that we ill-advised from the very start. I think, at least partially, this stems less from the long time horizon when planning and more from the lack of dissent in a dictatorship. The Chernobyl TV series's "The cost of lies" concept feels very poignant.
China’s Decarbonization Is So Fast Even New Coal Plants Aren’t Stopping It - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44987548 - August 2025
There's an interesting study that arises from a natural experiment based on coal subsidies in China[0]. It found that life expectancy in otherwise similar locations is 3 years lower where the subsidy is paid, and thus more coal is burned.
0: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1300018110
I don't think it's that simple.
China is a signatory to Kyoto and Paris.
They do care about reducing pollution, and have managed to do so quite significantly in many cities.
China also has quite a bit to lose: many large cities on the coasts, and worsening water shortage problems.
National security probably plays a large role, and I reckon they would prioritize economy over climate, but the evidence implies that they do also care.
You can think about this as if China had access to the same oil reserves or oil markets as the US does, would they behave differently? Absolutely.
Separately I think eliminating pollution is more along the lines of their country just doing good things for their people. Climate change stances and whatnot I don’t think are the same, nor are the intentions.
Solar is also economically better for China.
Secondly, I would strongly guess China ramped up production thinking that there would be more overseas demand. It isn't just low demand from the US; for example my "green" New Zealand is also not buying utility scale solar (oversimplified reason from horse's mouth: it is due to our major electricity generators colluding - the actual blocking reasons are more capitalistically complex).
There are very few situations in the world where cause and effect are clear: facile explanations of cause and effect are usually wrong in important ways.
One of the benefits of being a pseudodemocratic centralized government is that you can kind of decide something is important without worrying how to get reelected in a few years. All it takes is a leadership that decides this is their vanity project to be remembered by, or perhaps to actually care about China in 100 years (the Americans obviously can’t think or see this far anymore). This is possibly helped by having a population with a culture of collectivism. For better or worse you don’t have to actually solve the “what’s in it for me?” question that seems to completely screw climate plans when the plan is, “it’ll suck for you but your grandkids will appreciate it.”
Like all the crypto climate deniers and True Bird Lovers* are fond of saying, the climate doesn't care about per capita emissions, only total emissions. And now China's total emissions have reduced.
* they oppose wind power
This is capitalism in action: solar is cheaper than anything else per kwh. The obsession with fossil in the West is due to the fossil fuel lobbies, not because of the rational market forces. China doesn't have that.
If you are trying to use American made panels near population centers in the Northeast or the Midwest, the economics become much more challenging.
It's simply a matter of will (or in the case of the US, lack thereof).
https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-beats-the-heat/
https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/
https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35097.pdf
https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us...
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31072025/inside-clean-ene...
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e...
https://electrek.co/2025/06/20/batteries-are-so-cheap-now-so...
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/26/there-is-one-clear-winn...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China#...
And they onboarded more coal plants in 2024 than any time in the prev 10 years:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/chinas-construction-of-new-coal-...
US coal plant phase out tracking at https://coal.sierraclub.org/coal-plant-map and https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64604 | Europe at https://beyondfossilfuels.org/europes-coal-exit/
(existing coal is more expensive than new renewables and storage in the US and Europe, I cannot speak to the cost in China)
Which is a statistic missing the forest for the trees.
In 2025 the Chinese coal consumption has in absolute terms decreased while they have kept building.
New built renewables are able to both absorb all new demand and reduce coal usage.
Sure, it would be better to not build coal plants sitting idle and instead spend the money on renewables and storage.
Through selectively quoting facts you make it seem like China is expanding their coal usage which is incorrect.
China developed and built many UHVDC transmission lines to deal with it.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/chinas-construction-of-new-coal-...
The coal plants are known to be built to support economic growth for one (simple truth), and as baseload for renewable sources (you simply can't go renewable without this, at the moment). Coal plant utilisation rates have been dropping for two decades and are expected to keep dropping. [0]
[0] https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DJUu!,w_1456,c_limit...
https://www.ess-news.com/2025/08/20/cnesa-chinas-new-energy-...
What do you gain from lying like this?
https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/china/#:~:tex...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China
"Lying by omission" means things not said. Facts deliberately left out to mislead.
> You omitted the fact that the majority of their power comes from the most polluting fossil fuel in existence: coal
And you omitted the fact that majority of cumulative carbon emissions come from developed countries. Not to mention you're spreading your lies on an article that's literally about them reducing total emissions, the final refuge for people like you ("America still emits less, the climate doesn't care about pe-capita blah blah"). Seriously, re-evaluate your priors. Consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, someone is doing something about the climate, and not even on purpose, while we just sit around.
> It's not building these plants for shits and giggles
Apparently they are because 80% of their energy growth doesn't come from those plants. I think they're part jobs programs, part backup plan.
However, the new coal plants are largely replacing old, inefficient, heavily polluting ones, so they're still a net positive.
It is not just optics or energy independence. There is a genuine effort to reduce pollution. People forget in 00s media used to bash the smog in China. It was an unlivable air. They truly wanted to transform it - it just so happens that renewables solve a lot of problems simultaneously.
China gets its oil from Russia and Middle East. Russia is unstable partner and Middle East can get cut off by US Naval power for now.
The reply was just explaining the calculus that China, and other nations, are using with respect to renewable energy.
(average age of farmers is ~58 years old, and with the decline in labor for ag, now is an optimal time to lease and lock up this land for renewables for the next 25-30 years [at which point generators can be repowered or the land returned to its previous condition])
There Is One Clear Winner In The Corn Vs. Solar Battle - https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/26/there-is-one-clear-winn... - April 28th, 2025
Ecologically informed solar enables a sustainable energy transition in US croplands - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2501605122 | https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2501605122
New study compares growing corn for energy to solar production. It’s no contest. - https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2025/04/new-study-compa... - April 25th, 2025
Impacts of agrisolar co-location on the food–energy–water nexus and economic security - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-025-01546-4 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01546-4
HN Search: agrivoltaics (sorted by date) - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
B) solar panels and wind turbines tend not to spill toxic waste into the ground around them. And tend not to be put up on your own land without your consent.
> On average, it takes between nine and 12 years for solar panels to pay for themselves.
https://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/spending/art...
https://seia.org/initiatives/community-solar/
It might be extended in the future, though.
China's economy is export-based and U.S. is its largest buyer. If it refused to export to the U.S. its economy would go into a freefall and the Yuan would hyperinflate.
I mean: Trump is a clown, and the US under his rule is becoming a circus.
GP no doubt complaining about Chinese emissions via their made in China smartphone.
I'd have more respect if they were honest about this.
India compared to China is a 4% difference, 1.47 vs 1.41 B
If you _actually_ think climate change is an existential threat, you cannot think in per capita measurements.
Americans (and other Westerners and developed countries) emit carbon to drive SUVs and eat burgers and steak. They tell everyone else to stay poor lest they emit carbon. Then also shame them for needing aid.
I'm glad China's at least making something useful with their emissions.
And did I read the article’s headline wrong or isn’t the article about China actually decreasing their absolute emissions.
Per-capita measurements are more sensible because then you know how many humans and which ones need to get wiped for Gaia to be happy.
The US outsourced massive swaths of its manufacturing to China and with it, the emissions from those industries.
Talking in absolutes without context, nor the trajectories is rigorous at best and disingenuous or worse.
From the article
> International Energy Agency (IEA) figures show Chinese coal consumption falling 2.6% in the first half of the year, largely due to a boom in solar that saw the country add 92 gigawatts of capacity—that’s 92 billion watts—in a single month in May, compared to all-time U.S. installations of 134 GW.
So in one month, China added 68% of our total solar capacity to its grid.
Problems with solar remain, however. It's neither practical nor safe to build 100% solar grid. You must overbuild capacity on solar, because weather happens. No energy is generated at night. Therefore you have to factory battery install cost as well. Finally there are black swan weather events that DO happen in nature that NO ONE can prevent:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer
Whereupon solar would be rendered useless precisely when humanity would need power the most.
Already does. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/20201019...
> neither practical nor safe to build 100% solar grid
No one is suggesting a 100% solar grid. You combine solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, and nuclear.
> battery
Battery prices have been in free-fall for a while, and there are a bunch of interesting tech for grid-scale energy storage. The vanadium redox battery is appealing for grid-scale energy because the energy capacity is determined by the amount of liquid you store in its tanks, so scaling that is trivial. Sodium ion batteries are appealing since they're made with abundant materials and their lower energy density compared to lithium ion isn't a concern for grid-scale storage.
> black swan weather events
Which is why no one is suggesting 100% solar. You do a mix like I described earlier.
Scroll to the bottom, China fell from 30.98 in 2024 to 29.75 MtCO2. The US rose from 13.55 to 14.92 MtCO2.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pollution...
China has 1.4 billion people, while U.S. has 340 million people.
You don't dogmatically order $1 trillion of something and sacrifice a functional independent, diverse, weather resilient, geographically distributed energy grid thats served the nation that invented the light bulb for over 125 years, because you read a clickbait headline about China.
If I'm learning anything from Russia, its that fossil fuel plants are hella vulnerable in a war. Solar would be much safer.
Fossil Fuel Plant: Knock out the right machine or building and you knock out the plant. The plant is literally storing explosives. The plant must be resupplied which leaves supply trucks/boats/pipelines vulnerable.
Solar: Distributed over a large area. Made of many independent complete power-generating devices so if you knock out 5% of them, all you've accomplished is reducing power output by 5%. Does not need a constant flow of supplies.
Just add poor people to your country! Per capita emission metrics HATE this one weird trick!
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...
But you have to know enough statistics to be sneaky with it.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...
Sadly shows China going up, sharply until 2011, then more modestly. The latest 2023 data shows 8t/capita where the EU average is about 6 (not every EU country is rich, but sounds like that ought to be enough for a decent lifestyle) and US 14
And how does their current value compare to the US?
Read my comment?
Which country currently produces more emissions per capita?
1. China is still trending up and the US is still trending down. It's dangerous to make straight-line projections but they are on trend to meet at some point.
2. The US per capita emissions appear to be on a steady downward trend since 1850. This is even more obvious if you discount the anomalous periods of the civil war and the Great Depression. You have to admit, that's something that demands unpacking.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/s4fy286y7gwpqgmeltark/Screens...
Edit: Looks like Mongolia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE have the honour of being at the top actually. Might not be a comprehensive list.
population aging -- older people use less fossil fuel.
reduced household formation, in part driven by increased youth unemployment. It's impossible to get figures for this.
edit: corrected the figure from 3% to 9% after noticing that I looked only at the left number and not the right one on that second graph. Forgot about all the women in the country, whoops
citation? You don't even say why he has a concern, so how can you say they are correct?
Maybe China is in an economic slowdown, so its economy cannot afford to buy as much coal from Australia and petroleum from the Gulf as it used to.
> International Energy Agency (IEA) figures show Chinese coal consumption falling 2.6% in the first half of the year, largely due to a boom in solar that saw the country add 92 gigawatts of capacity—that’s 92 billion watts—in a single month in May, compared to all-time U.S. installations of 134 GW.
- population & GDP growth - increased A/C usage - AI/bitcoin/data centers