this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
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US would reach 100% renewable energy by 2148 at current pace (www.pv-magazine.com)
submitted 1 day ago by schizoidman@lemmy.zip to c/energy@slrpnk.net
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China is on track to reach a fully renewable energy system by 2051, nearly a century earlier than the United States, according to a global study covering 150 countries.

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[–] jaschen306@sh.itjust.works 13 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I live in Taiwan and I'm one of the biggest Pooh bear critic on Lemmy.

A good amount of smog in Taiwan comes from China. The smog can sometimes be extremely thick that you could hardly see a few blocks away. We would regularly get warnings on our weather apps to stay indoors or close your windows.

In the past 2 years, I have seen our air quality improve significantly with this year being the best I have ever seen in Taiwan for at least a decade. The Taiwan government has also been improving its air quality, but with the recent closure of our nuclear plant and our crazy need to produce chips, it's 2 steps back and 1 step forward.

I gotta give credit where credit is due. China has been improving its air quality and we notice it here in Taiwan.

Still, fuck Xi and his desire to take over Taiwan.

[–] amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

inb4 an .ml comes here telling you that an invasion would improve your air quality because of unified standards

[–] jaschen306@sh.itjust.works 4 points 19 hours ago

I'm sure they have comments. I'm pretty content with our tiny islands. They can just have the rest of the land they already have.

[–] balsoft@lemmy.ml 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

These graphs is not how it works, progress (in China and other sane-ish parts of the world) will probably speed up in the near future and then slow down as we run out of low-hanging fruit. You can't project the behavior of extremely complex systems like this. See also:

xkcd "Sustainable"

But yeah in general US is clearly getting left behind on things that will matter this century. Hopefully it won't manage to drag the rest of us down with them.

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

But yeah in general US is clearly getting left behind on things that will matter this century. Hopefully it won’t manage to drag the rest of us down with them.

the US is not getting left behind, it's intentionally staying behind because the ruling class believes it'll weaken their grasp; it's disappeared from the political discussion of the last decade or so because of that and very few seem to notice.

[–] balsoft@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I meant it more as a statement of fact, "most of the world is leaving the US behind". You are 100% correct on the "why".

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 1 points 14 hours ago

it seems more like the US is leaving others behind due to the expected future realities of a climate-change-degraded/multi-polar-order world and only the global north has the luxury of "leaving"

a huge majority didn't willing enter an agreement and we're witnessing in venezula, bolivia, chile, colombia, nigera, sudan, nepal, etc. what happens when they try to leave the US behind.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

A lot of countries are already quite far along. Norway, DRC, Uruguay, Paraguay, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Kenya, Namibia, Albania and a bunch of others are doing much better then China or the US. If you include nuclear also France and Sweden go pretty far. Also Brazil is at nearly 90%.

[–] balsoft@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How do they compare with China in terms of energy use per capita? China is the world's factory, this level of industrial output requires a lot of energy.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 day ago

It depends. France is on a similar level to China, but much cleaner, Sweden and Norway are well above China. The other use much less. It is complex for sure. Especially when you consider efficiency as well.

[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Sustainable sustainable sustainable sustainable sustainable sustainable sustainable. Sustainable sustainable sustainable sustainable sustainable sustainable.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 day ago

It's an exponential (or rather, logistic) curve rather than a linear one.

[–] sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I bought my pets.com stock on this logic back in 1999, as well as my beanie babies.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

or crypto?

[–] sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 2 points 23 hours ago

My NFTs may be down 98%, but they're going to the moon!!!

[–] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

Oh, neat! Only about a century or so too late. 🤌🏼

[–] Quilotoa@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

In actual production of renewable energy, the order is 1. China 2. U.S. 3. Brazil 4. Canada 5. India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable_electricity_production

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The actual same metric is here. It is not surprising that large countries produce the most.

[–] Quilotoa@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Very helpful. I'm surprised by Canada at 64 %. We have such short days in winter when we need the electricity the most that solar and wind don't produce that much.

[–] sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 4 points 23 hours ago

Hydroelectric.

I always end up looking like I hate green energy because I'm critical of wind and solar, but geothermal and hydroelectric are actually super practical.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's because of the vast hydro power in PQ. Also, windmills work at night.

[–] Quilotoa@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 hours ago

Yeah, but the wind dies away at night.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

does the wind depend on long days?

[–] Quilotoa@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Partially. The wind dies down to almost nothing at night so a long night means a longer time with no wind production.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

ah. the wind is definately different near me. I sorta wonder though how constant or not they are at the elevation of the turbines. I almost always see them moving no matter the wind. I had heard they actually to much wind and they have to be turned off but I think anytime its been storming that bad I have not paid attention to them.

[–] Quilotoa@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 hours ago

Interesting. I never considered the height of them. I'll have to dig into that.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

But France is almost all nuclear or hydro.