It stands out to me how they make a specific goal on increasing renewable capacity but make no such goals to reduce fossil fuel production. My concern is that if we don’t consciously do the latter, the extra renewable capacity will, in effect, be used to increase power output without reducing the absolute quantity of fossil fuels significantly. There’s a lot of capital wrapped up in fossil fuel extraction, and we would be asking a lot of very power entities to take a haircut on their RoI by not continuing to use it. I think it’s a non-trivial problem that is really not being taken seriously enough in these kinds of talks.
China has dropped utilization of their coal power plants from like 70% to ~50%. They’re shifting towards using fossil fuels to manage peak power instead of base load.
It stands out to me how they make a specific goal on increasing renewable capacity but make no such goals to reduce fossil fuel production. My concern is that if we don’t consciously do the latter, the extra renewable capacity will, in effect, be used to increase power output without reducing the absolute quantity of fossil fuels significantly. There’s a lot of capital wrapped up in fossil fuel extraction, and we would be asking a lot of very power entities to take a haircut on their RoI by not continuing to use it. I think it’s a non-trivial problem that is really not being taken seriously enough in these kinds of talks.
China has dropped utilization of their coal power plants from like 70% to ~50%. They’re shifting towards using fossil fuels to manage peak power instead of base load.