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Australia not being number 1 should be a national shame
Australia only needs ~200GW of capacity to meet demand I believe (5882PJ --> ~1.6M GWh, 8760h/year --> 186.5GW) math might be wrong there, but even if Australia was fully solar powered it would still have only 50% of China's installed capacity.
They could be a green energy exporter. There's no reason to stop at 100%
To where? The ocean?
If there was infrastructure for electrified container vessels maybe, but even then those ships would likely use an onboard reactor.
To where? The ocean?
Undersea cables connect the UK with the rest of the EU's power grid, even going all the way to Norway.
I don't see any reason, other than political, why a similar system can't be engineered in Australia to connect its power grid to Papa New Guinea, New Zealand or Indonesia if it hasn't already.
That's ~400km to Papau New Guinea and ~700km to Timor, longest current undersea cable is UK to Denmark (764km). So definitely doable. They'd also need the power to be linked into those countries grids, and they don't control that.
Would be an interesting Mega project to wire up all of South East Asia to Australia to import solar energy.
The voltage drop on that must be unreal
But I thought China had dirtiest energy ever and China bad
China has 4x the population as the U.S. and this graphic says they have 3.69 as much solar power so that's slightly less per capita?
You also have to consider energy consumption per capita here which is far higher in US. And of course, solar isn't the only alternative energy used in China. Overall, fossil fuel use was already less than half of power capacity back in 2023.
iirc their new installations in 2023 exceeded the rest of the world's installed capacity. They’ve gotten that much solar only in the last few years whereas all other countries lag very far behind in new projects
Makes sense, but also lowcarbonpower . org places yearly electric energy per person at 7 MWh in China vs 12.8 MWh in the US. The percentage of solar in the electricity mix works out to 8.3% in China and 6.9% in the US. YoY growth relative to overall electricity consumption in China is definitely higher as well, but I haven't checked in detail. What really sucks in China is the high dependence on coal which results in way worse CO2 than the US. Similar problem to Germany but even more so, since theres almost no gas power in China.
A while ago I was surprised to learn China only really started installing solar panels around the year 2012, while in germany the trend started in around 2005. US in 2010. (I chose the year where solar passed a threshold of 0.1% of overall electricity according to my source.
that seems well low for australia
Rooftop solar has been popular for a long while. Maybe it's just because of the comparative populations?
Could it just be because Australia has a fraction the population of these other countries? One would assume that translates into less power consumption overall, even if not proportionate to population.
Nope. We are basically just a bunch of coal mines pretending to be a country, anything remotely good is spat on and villified by our media, which is majority Rupert Murdoch owned, and labor are spineless and the liberal coalition are straight up evil, so even the slightest positive change is hard fought and very quickly lost.
Domestic rooftop solar is super common and really cheap due to government rebates. a quick google search says that over 20GW is generated by rooftop solar (i.e. solar panels feeding into the grid from people installing solar panels on their roof). i wasnt expecting total power generation to be above China or us or maybe India, but definitely above most eu regimes.
they don't have enough sunlight don't you know
But at what cost?
our poor poor oil magnates 
how will they feed their families!
Surprised the UK is so high tbh. Given the particular focus on wind over solar.
For a high latitude nation without consistent clear skies it’s odd to be doing so much solar.
Now rate it per capita.
You'd have to rate relative to consumption per capita obviously https://www.statista.com/statistics/383633/worldwide-consumption-of-electricity-by-country/
China can support 55M citizens on solar alone, US can support 8.5M on solar alone
This is also skewed because China also has a much larger electrified transit system meaning that the power they are generating is being used in a way that offsets fossil fuels.
So let's see the relationship between per capita consumption and per capita production.....
Together renewables comprised 43% of total capacity in China. So, 43% of per capita consumption is backed by renewable energy.
Neat. Tho I wonder if those numbers are all just self reported, or have been independently verified.
After all, history has shown us that China, like most nations, tends to overinflate the good news to overshadow the bad, so as to keep themselves looking "good" to the people of the rest of the world.
I have never seen these numbers disputed even in western media. If you're suggesting these numbers are in question then do provide sources to substantiate this fantastical claim of yours.
Oh, no. Heaven forbid. We should always accept whatever the government tells us at face value.
This is a frustrating approach you've taken here. If you were just going to conclude that you can't trust the data anyway, why bother asking all these questions? You just kept moving the goalposts and then when you finally couldn't move them anymore, "well, it's just fake then". Sounds really familiar 🤔
First off, I didn't move shit. I was honestly curious about the fucking data, and it's source.
If only there were other numerous sources you could look up with a quick google in the time it's taken you to make a clown of yourself here. If only!
I'm not the one accusing someone of shit just because I'm a fucking data nerd, jackass.
A data nerd would've actually looked up the data instead of clowning around here. It's not exactly hard to find. You're just a dweeb.
oh go fuck yourself. I have lost every single bit of respect for your ass. I was genuinely curious about the data and the source and you start insinuating insults towards me. GO. FUCK. YOURSELF.
I'd be so insulted if I had a shred of respect for someone whose intellectual maturity peaks at a toddler’s tantrum. May your future arguments involve less shouting and more coherence.
China, like most nations, tends to overinflate
Which nations do not do this and how overinflated are most nations' statistics?
It's harder for governments in nations with a free press, but it still happens.
I'm not sure which ones don't, tbh. I am giving the benefit of the doubt that there are, indeed a few governments that actually never lie to their people. I can't think of any of the top of my head, though.
Politicians lie. Politicians are what make up a government. Ergo, governments lie.
Quite honestly, the best way to get to the real numbers of any situation is to aggregate the data from many different sources and compare them.
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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