Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout

Posted by mrtksn 1/15/2026

Photos capture the breathtaking scale of China's wind and solar buildout(e360.yale.edu)

775 points | 572 commentspage 2

snow_mac 1/15/2026|

I love this. I recently found a few solar panels dumpster diving that put out a good load. Just basic scratches and that is all. I am building out my own system to power my house and in the next 2 years will be energy off grid in the city.

johnlim 1/16/2026|

This sounds interesting, are you sharing your journey anywhere?

raffael_de 1/15/2026||

For a German none of those photos are particularly remarkable or impressive.

Especially wind mills - they are all over the place. Outside of cities and forests it would be difficult to not see at least one ... and they like to flock.

For example:

- https://www.google.com/maps/place/Energiepark+Witznitz+MOVE+...

- https://www.erneuerbareenergien.de/energieversorger/stadtwer...

MiSeRyDeee 1/15/2026|

> Last year China installed more than half of all wind and solar added globally. In May alone, it added enough renewable energy to power Poland, installing solar panels at a rate of roughly 100 every second.

When did German achieve that?

atomic_reed 1/15/2026||

How can German achieve it? It is 1 person?

How can Germany achieve it? It is 10x less people?

So what if you read his emotions correctly? It’s not like your response will change his mind?

In a world of 1 > 0, someone needs to be looked down upon. Why not look down on me? Why can’t others look down on China? And why would looking down based on “truth”, which you seem to so much value, change anything?

CuriouslyC 1/15/2026||

One neat thing is that solar/wind farms can be multi-use. You can position panels to provide shade and wind-break to provide micro-climates for plants and animals.

btbuildem 1/15/2026|

The fact that parking lots in the south of US aren't just covered in those makes no sense at all. Vast expanses of mostly empty pavement, bathed in sun all day? Shaded parking? No?

nomadpenguin 1/15/2026||

The Cincinnati Zoo covered all their parking lots with solar panels last year. Your car stays cool in the summer, and there's motion activated lighting under the panels after dark. It's awesome.

remus 1/16/2026||

The "100 panels per second" number sounded a little high so I did a bit more reading. Apparently this was the peak pace of installation around May 2025, when there was a change in pricing structures associated with solar power so developers were rushing to finish projects so they could get in on the old structure.

Average pace across 2024 was closer to 25-30 panels / second (which is still incredibly high!)

reeredfdfdf 1/16/2026||

One can only admire China's progress in this area. These days, if I got to choose between American and Chinese product, I always choose the latter for ethical reasons. I don't want to support anything American as long as its regime remains a puppet to fossil fuel companies.

tim333 1/15/2026||

They've got some impressive power cables too https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20241113-will-chinas-ul...

joejohnson 1/15/2026||

Meanwhile the US is using its remaining carbon budget to bomb and burn in one last effort to expand its dying empire. Eventually this system will fall, and the west will realize they wasted all their energy (literally) on non-civilian hardware that needs massive amounts of cheap oil.

1970-01-01 1/15/2026||

This is more or less what we thought the 21st century infrastructure would look like in the 20th century. The only minor detail is it was supposed to happen in this country first.

fuzzfactor 1/15/2026||

When you're not trying to act like the "richest" country in the world, the sensibility of asource of energy is a complete no-brainer.

Even though associated costs exist, a free source is the lowest of its kind you can find.

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