this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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Yes, this is vitally important. Switching from petrol to EVs will be a net negative for the environment if all that energy comes from burning coal.
They have to clean up their grid, which unfortunately isn't happening at the moment. They're building new coal plants.
What….. China is literally by far the biggest installer of renewable energy in the world. Like orders of magnitude ahead of Europe and the US. It’s not even close.
They may be the biggest installer of renewable energy, but what percentage of their electricity comes from renewables? If they're installing more coal than renewables then it's still not better.
That’s such a weird position. They also grow much more than all other countries. But they are also bursting ahead of their (much more bold) goals for renewables.
It’s just a fact that China is transforming their energy grid much faster than any other country. From their infrastructure to cars to energy generation.
Like literally just google any of this. Like any metric.
China is shitty in many ways, but I never got this fixation on their “pollution”. Bro Europe and the US exported all their pollution there and imported the finished goods.
A good chunk of China’s pollution is really second-hand western pollution.
And even then, China is “greening” their energy and manufacturing grid faster than anywhere else. It’s just fucking massive, so it takes more effort in general right? That’s pretty logical.
It’s still a significant net gain because of the energy conversion efficiency of both EVs and large scale power generation. It also reduces pollution in densely populated areas which improves citizen health.
Still, they should clean their grid ASAP, but they are deploying solar faster than anyone else and it’s not close.
They're also deploying coal faster than anyone else.
I've heard this argument before about the efficiency of burning centrally, usually in a European context to defend running EVs on a grid powered mostly by natural gas, but not for coal.
Now I'm genuinely curious whether efficiently burning coal to power EVs is less bad for the environment than burning petrol in ICE cars. Is there any research on that?
I agree that ultimately EVs are the future, and I do drive one myself and strive to charge it on renewables whenever possible. However, in places with dirtier grids I'm not sure they're a great idea.
Here’s the study. If you don’t have access many articles that reference and describe it are only a Google search away:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0488-7
Natural gas releases more methane (which is a much more harmful GHG) than coal...
Well it's still a step in the right in my opinion. It's one less source of greenhouses gases. It's one less industry that needs to be cleaned up.