Despite China's rapid adoption of renewables, their fossil fuel usage is also still climbing, while it is declining in the US.
Both total and per capita
Fossil fuels also still account for a larger share of electricity generation in China compared to US.
their fossil fuel usage is also still climbing
Meaning that despite manufacturing 95% of the world's solar photovoltaic modules, having the largest hydro plants in the world (building even bigger ones) and being at the forefront of wind electricity generation and the spearhead of nuclear, it still grows its electricity usage faster than that. The alternative would be leaving people behind without electricity, keep in mind that China is in many aspects still a developing country.
I guess manufacturing 95% of photovoltaic modules is not enough to you.
As well as having 5 massive nuclear reactors currently under construction.
China is the world's factory. They produce the goods consumed by every other country on these charts.
The question becomes: given a country's usage of fossil fuels, what do they have to show for it? Western nations burn coal to run LLMs; China is burning coal to build eliminate poverty and produce 30% of the entire world's goods.
Also keep in mind, energy usage has a history. Its not fair to take a snapshot of 2026's energy splits and condemn China, given how western nations just spent the last 200 years destroying the planet.
Why are we pretending China doesn’t also run LLMs and datacentres?
The only reason they don’t have as much growth is import restrictions on Western GPUs.
With Alibabas new inhouse Zhenwu AI processors they are starting to be able to avoid that issue and production of new data centres will increase faster than the many they have already built or are underway.
Thank you for the info.
Renewables exceeded natural gas for power generation last month in the USA.
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/renewables-beat-natural-gas-us-grid-march-2026
Needs more labels. How am meant to know that the bucket has coal, and that the china bot has a solar panel and wind turbine.
That's something that has always struck me as a bit odd with US political caricatures, everything is labeled so there's no chance for reflection or interpretation. Basically soyjack vs Chad of the cartoonist world.
USbot doesn't have a label but ChinaBot does, I think the artist wasn't confident people would recognize the latter's flag
The US will have killbots too. Just their batteries will be charged with dirty power.
But we won't have the incredible infrastructure that China has built for their people, like Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge. Hell, seems like the only time we get a new, important infrastructure project here in the US it's because a tanker crashed into a bridge or we waited too long to modernize something and it collapsed.
And that feels like a massive theft from the next generations, at least to me.
Ha! They are going to be stuck with those ugly windmills! Hideous! Their landscapes will be ruined!
Don't forget the birbs
Isn't juxtaposing the future of energy with an unfeeling killbot against the past with a tinman – whose presence in popular culture is one of a loving, brave, kind-hearted man who thought he had no heart when he really had one all along and followed the yellow-brick road that he's rejecting but the killbot is taking – kind of weird symbolism?
I agree with the overall message; the imagery just seems kind of funny. (Also, did the artist need to pull a Ben Garrison and label the seeping barrel of oil "Fossil Fuels"?)
Yeah, the symbolism is shoehorned, and the hills of green behind them should be a smoking ruin with the wailing & dying droves as far as the eye can see, ngl. 🥲
O beautiful for smoggy skies
Insecticided grain
For strip-mined mountain's majesty
Above the asphalt plain!America! America!
Man sheds his waste on thee
And hides the pines with billboard signs
From sea to oily sea!
(Not to greenwash China, but Carlin didn't do a song for them.)
If you "don't mean to" do a thing, don't "apologize" beforehand and do it anyway, Jessica.
Carlin didn't "do a song" for China for any number of reasons, and this sloppy aside seems to imply that he wouldn't have bcz their gov't's so idyllic. Ick. 🤮🤌🏼
bruh is this ai gen? why do they use different fonts? why is china labeled but US isnt?
Complete bullshit. Trump may hate windmills, but the power companies love them
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67367
Meanwhile china is going all in on coal, and specifically coal to oil conversion.
https://clintel.org/chinas-massive-coal-to-liquids-expansion/
Meanwhile china is going all in on coal
A 6 month - 1 year plan doesn't mean much when there's multiple 5-10 year plans set fully in on nuclear and renewables.
You don’t build any of this in one year. Everything takes years, regardless of energy source. Plus I provided links that support my side of the argument.
Meanwhile china is going all in on coal, and specifically coal to oil conversion.
They are in the short-term, yes.
That'll happen when the US president literally blows up the global energy supply. Countries rely on what's at hand out of necessity. Just ask Venezuela.
They were doing this way before Iran. Does Iran push the idea harder, yes, but they were already ramping up. The reality is every energy source that can be exploited will be, in both countries.
Thank you for the info.
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