total electricity capacity of the planet— not just solar, but nuclear, coal, gas, and renewable energy, all added together — was about 10 terawatts. Now China can pump out a full terawatt worth of solar panels each year. The country’s solar capacity grew at a compound rate of 11.7 percent annually from 2020 to 2024. That’s nearly triple the global average of 4.24 percent over the same four-year period, a gap that points to something more like an industrial revolution than mere competitive advantage.

Definitely some sort of revolution involved in this growth rate.

On a global scale, the glut of Chinese solar panels has dropped the average cost of electricity to 4 cents a kilowatt hour, in what may be the cheapest form of energy we’ve ever seen. And keep an eye on that figure: it could easily keep coming down.

The global south stands to benefit the most from economy in the production of renewable and decentralized energy. In the first place, it can be deployed in areas with minimal electric grid development. Secondly it relieves the dependency on foreign oil and natural gas which famously are controlled for political reasons, and which disproportionately affects countries with weaker positions. Thirdly, the ecological impact of production is primarily local: pollution of the air, land, and water does not affect the foreign consumers but directly harms the health and wellbeing of the people in proximity to that production. In the developed countries, ecology is often perceived as an abstract moral issue, while it is an immediate practical problem for people in the developing countries to which the west has exported global production.

As of 2024, China was responsible for 64 percent of the world’s utility-scale solar and wind construction, with 339 gigawatt hours of renewable energy infrastructure in the works

Mixing up power and energy :pain:

The source they cite says "339 GW" ffs

the article image didn't need to go that hard but I'm glad it did

At what cost though?

there really is something going on - i feel amerikkka realized that they CANNOT compete with china on the new industrial/energy frontier so they've just given up and are hoarding the old one (oil) and building up a fortress mentality. europe is stuck in the middle - it would traditionally side with amerika but trump's tariffs, greenland, nato, russia etc have all made it much more insecure re:its own existence. so it could possibly also side with the rising east. as people living in the imperial core, life for us is gonna get rough (but ofc theres possibility of revolt). hope for the rest of the world tho.

It’s a stunning visual, but it doesn’t even begin to capture the staggering amount of solar power being produced by the People’s Republic.

The People’s Republic

Honestly, sounds like a cool name for a fully unified global communist nation. No need to put 'of X', just call it The People's Republic.