Looks like this is actual energy produced, rather than capacity. That’s impressive
Europe is killing it as far as greenhouse emissions. They’re actually trying to do something right, and they’ve been cutting emissions significantly.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-world-region
The US is more or less staying the course in terms of killing the planet, and China and India are busy trying to increase emissions to kill it even faster. If you want the TL;DR version.
China is by far the world’s largest installer of renewables. They are outpacing the rest of the world combined.
They are also the largest installer of dirty power like coal/oil. Ideally, and it sure looks like it from their recrbt power investments, they view coal/etc as stop gaps.
Their emissions per capita are skyrocketing, but their emissions per gdp and emissions per kwh are going down. The country is still developing, so it’s energy demand is going up. At least it doesn’t have large fossil fuel reserves, so pushes them towards renewables.
That last part isn’t true, unfortunately. China extracts more coal than the rest of the world’s top ten producers combined
Hmm yeah looks like China is number 2 in coal reserves behind the US. Is it in a more inaccessible part of the country?
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_coal_reserves
I believe it’s concentrated in the north, close to Beijing but far from many of the other large cities
Honestly India is not the problem. They produce less than half of the world average per capita
Ah the solution to climate change: have 5-10 children in the next 10 years!! Then our emissions per capita will drop way down and the world will be saved!!
They produced 4 billion tons CO2e last year, more than all of Africa and almost as much as the US. They’re not “the” problem but they are a significant problem and their emissions are rising sharply.
There are more people in India than in Africa, it shouldn’t be that surprising for India to also produce more emissions. However, going by your source India produced less than Africa in total and quite a bit less than the US in total in 2023, the most recent year it shows
India’s rate of increase is alarming, I agree with that. I just don’t think it’s very reasonable to criticise them in the same breath as the US, China, or Europe when they are so much less polluting per person and also suffering the impacts of climate change so much more
I don’t really care about per person. I’m concerned about where the problems in the world are, so they can be fixed.
I’m not saying the Indians are sinning for creating carbon emissions. I am saying that India forming a large part of the world’s emissions – and, in particular, that fact that its emissions are still rising sharply which even the US has managed not to do – means that it’s worth paying attention to.
I had thought that India surpassed Africa last year, but I can’t find the numbers. Maybe I am wrong.
For another way to look at it, look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita
- United States: 13 tons per capita per year, down 34% since the year 2000
- China: 9 tons, up 223% since 2000
- India: 2 tons, up 119% since 2000
- European Union: 8 tons, down 32% since 2000
Maybe that’s more of a complete / more accurate picture, in terms of what everyone’s doing and what directions everything is moving.
Based on the rate of increase I can certainly believe that India passed Africa in 2024. It’s close and India is rising while Africa isn’t
I think we do need to consider per capita, though, because in any fair world we should probably all share a somewhat similar level of responsibility. GHGs don’t care about national borders. If we reach a global net zero, that shouldn’t mean that Belgian people all still drive petrol cars just because Belgium is a small portion of the global population, right? And at the same time, I’m certainly not keen on trying any sort of directed birth control policy on a global scale because there’s just no way that turns out well
