China Dominates Clean Energy Production and Devices, While India Consumes Little Energy Per Capita.
Without getting dragged into the politics and personalities of the Foxy Republican Chaos last night, the reemergence of climate change falsehoods has to be fact checked on an economic and scientific basis.
Having written about more than a million US deaths from the pandemic, we cannot again put into power any science deniers. This year was startling in disasters caused by global warming, which cause hundreds of billions of dollars of damage just to the US. The destruction of world crops also contributes to overwhelming immigration both to the US and Europe.
The old and disproven climate inaction excuse that China and India need to do more before the US lifts a solar panel came up and was unchallenged in the Chaos. We provide updated data to show that China is doing much more than the rest of the world, and that India is still a very power poor nation.
In energy use, China does lead in 2021 with 165 Quads, or quadrillion BTUs, but with 25 Quads being clean renewables, nuclear or other, which has to include hydro somewhere. The US used 98 Quads, but with less clean power, at 20 Quads. India used only 32 Quads, with 3.5 clean Quads.
India has a population of 1,408 million, compared to the US population of 332 million, or a factor of 4.24 times more. So the US used 300 million BTU per person, while India used 23 million BTU per person, or only 7.7% of the US per capita. Since in the US we buy energy per kiloWatt hour, and 1kWh = 3,412 BTU, these numbers are 88 thousand kWh per person in the US, and 6,740 kWh per person in India. So the US used 13 times as much per capita. We can’t put in power somebody whose math is off by an order of magnitude. Even as a country, India only used 1/3 the power of the US.
But China is also the leading provider of clean energy equipment. In EV batteries, China produces 75% of the world’s batteries, and does more refining of raw inputs than the rest of the world combined. That also includes 40% of Tesla’s batteries. They are also a major producer of EV vehicles.
In solar panels, China produces 75% of the world’s panels, and 80% of those used in the US.
In wind turbines, in 2021 China put up 70% of the world’s growth in wind turbines, as compared to the US only adding 14% of the world growth. China has 329 GigaWatts (billion Watts) of wind power as of 2021, while the US has 14 GigaWatts as of 2022. Talking of power, we can’t put into power anybody who can’t look up such facts on the internet in a couple of hours.
In 2021, 11% of China’s new vehicles were EVs, and an additional 2.4% were plug-in hybrids. In the US in 2022, 5.8% of vehicles sold were EVs. Considering the larger population of China of 1,412 million, China had 53% of world EV sales.
China has also taken over much of the energy consuming steel and cement production, which are then exported, and shouldn’t be counted against their greenhouse gas production.
We also can’t return to power someone who proposes a ten percent tariff on China on everything, everywhere, all at once, based on an evening meeting, with no studies, which we will all be paying for forever.
