China Consumed 10.4 Trillion Kilowatt-Hours of Electricity In 2025 - Double the US (reuters.com)
- Reference: 0180613034
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/01/19/063227/china-consumed-104-trillion-kilowatt-hours-of-electricity-in-2025---double-the-us
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/renewables-push-chinas-fossilfuelled-power-into-first-annual-drop-10-years-2026-01-19/
> China consumed totally 10.4 trillion kilowatt hours (10.4 petaWh) in 2025 according to [3]data from the National Energy Administration. That's the highest annual electricity use ever recorded by a single country, and doubled the amount used by the US and surpassed the combined annual total of the EU, Russia, India and Japan.
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> The surge in demand for power are results of growth in data centers for artificial intelligence (+17% over 2024) and use of electric vehicles (+48.8%)... However, on a per-capita basis, China uses about 7,300 kWh per person vs about 13,000 kWh per American.
[4]More details from Reuters :
> China's mostly coal-based thermal power generation fell in 2025 for the first time in 10 years, government data showed on Monday, as growing renewable generation met growth in electricity demand even as overall power usage hit a record. The data is a positive signal for the decarbonisation of China's power sector as China sets a course for carbon emissions to peak by 2030... Thermal electricity, generated mostly by coal-fired capacity with a small amount from natural gas, fell 1% in 2025 to 6.29 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh), according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). It fell more sharply in December, down by 3.2%, from a year earlier, the data showed... [Though the article notes that coal output still edged up to a record high last year.]
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> Hydropower grew at a steady pace, up 4.1% in December and rising 2.8 % for the full year, the NBS data showed. Nuclear power output rose 3.1 in December and 7.7% in 2025, respectively. Thermal power generation is unlikely to accelerate in 2026 as renewables growth continues apace.
[1] https://www.slashdot.org/~hackingbear
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-17/china-consumed-twice-the-electricity-of-the-us-in-2025-cctv
[3] https://content-static.cctvnews.cctv.com/snow-book/index.html?item_id=15008954358871891662&t=1768618145797&toc_style_id=feeds_default&track_id=905E913B-FBDB-40B2-94A1-5359189B9470_790311493310&share_to=wechat
[4] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/renewables-push-chinas-fossilfuelled-power-into-first-annual-drop-10-years-2026-01-19/
Why reframe the original article title? (Score:1)
The article title is "Renewables push China's fossilfuelled power into first annual drop in 10 years". Not a fan of China, but it's hardly surprising that a country of over 1 billion uses more power than a country of 350 million.
Re:Why reframe the original article title? (Score:4, Interesting)
> The article title is "Renewables push China's fossilfuelled power into first annual drop in 10 years".
To be fair, the Bloomberg title that I see is exactly "China Consumed Twice the Electricity of the US in 2025: CCTV" so the summary is basically using that. Why would Bloomberg / America reframe that? I think it's more about obsession with China overtaking the US in AI than about hiding the massive renewables success that it represents. However, that's a mistake for the American Oligarchs like Bloomberg because the reason that China is going to win the AI war is that in ten years time, renewables will give them electricity so much cheaper that they can actually afford to use the results of current research even though they are terribly power hungry and won't deliver nearly their full goals.
Renewable energy generation percentage should be understood as one of the key numbers in wining the AI war and all Western AI companies who are in it for the long term should be trying to relocate to Norway, Scotland and Sothern Spain to avoid getting killed off in the coming power collapse.
Re: (Score:2)
"....in ten years time, renewables will give them electricity so much cheaper...."
No it won't, this is nonsense.
First because intermittency, which means it does not provide reliable dispatchable power without being supplemented by other conventional sources.
Second because even without providing for intermittency, for what it does produce intermittently its far more expensive.
Want proof? Look at the recent UK auction.
People keep claiming wind and solar are far cheaper than gas or coal, but they nev
Why the surprise? (Score:3)
China has a population of almost 1.5 billion people and has indexed its economy on manufacturing and heavy industry. So it's got 4x the population of the United States at ~350 million. Even though China uses less energy per capita, they "make it up in volume."
Re: (Score:2)
> Do they want to slide down world rankings and be out-bred by India?
What does that mean? (Besides, the birth rates in India are also shrinking. The total population growth will also come to a halt in India, just a decade later.)
Re: (Score:3)
> Punctuation is important. Let's fuck, China.
Punctuation is the difference between "Let's eat, Grandma!" and "Let's eat Grandma!"
Capitalization is the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, you idiot assholes are getting reeeeeeally desperate if that lie is all you have. Even the most drastic real estimates still have them at around 1.25 Billion.
Re:Why the surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
"News for Nerds" - most of us could work that out with simple arithmetic from the numbers in the summary. Double the total usage with half the usage per person => 4 times the population. However it's an important point because the crucial thing is that through a mix of energy efficiency, renewables and some nuclear power, CO2 use in China has almost completely stopped growing and might even go down.
That means that China is now getting a huge amount of that from renewable energy sources which don't require expensive mining / transport / defense investment in the way that fossil fuels do. Since they use wind and solar power in huge amounts, they are will be able to provide this electricity much more cheaply than their competitors and they are locking in a huge advantage.
Think, for example, what happens if there's a Naval Blockade in the South China Sea and the Pacific. That's likely to start with China blockading Taiwan and the US Navy responding. However, with both sides having long range anti ship capabilities (LRASM/quick sink + stealth aircraft on the US side ; anti ship ballistic missiles on the Chinese side) it's trivial for shipping to be excluded from more or less the entire Pacific. Previously this would have destroyed China because they wouldn't have enough oil. As it is with them having started replacing oil with electricity their problems will be much smaller.
As another example, think of desalination and providing water for their deserts. As China starts to have massive excess renewable power where the marginal cost of running it during down periods is tiny, they can easily start creating huge amounts more water - start to irrigate large areas of desert and move much closer to self sufficiency for food. Again, that gives them both economic and similar military advantages.
Re: (Score:2)
That would be a, IDK, "rational view of things"? In the age of internet-fueled stupidity, "rational" is sooo outdated.
Not a China fan, but renewables coal (Score:1, Flamebait)
China is a disgusting dictatorship. The world would be a better place if decades ago we had refused to trade with them - and all other dictatorships - until they became a democracy.
Buuut, China's government is moving the country towards renewables, to SAVE THE PLANET WE ALL LIVE ON.
Whereas the demented US president is trying to prevent the move to renewables, and sometimes succeeding.
Re:Not a China fan, but renewables coal (Score:5, Interesting)
> China is a disgusting dictatorship.
The US is getting one of those too. Just a matter of time now.
Re: (Score:3)
> I'm getting tired of hearing this.
That just means YOU are part of the problem.
Re: (Score:2)
> Just because it isn't pleasing YOU doesn't men it's a dictatorship.
Just because some people like it doesn't mean its not.
Renewables GREATER THAN coal (Score:2)
My comment title was "Not a China fan, renewables greater than coal", but shitty Slashdot silently removed the greater than symbols.
Re: (Score:2)
> China is a disgusting dictatorship. The world would be a better place if decades ago we had refused to trade with them - and all other dictatorships - until they became a democracy.
I know an equally thin skinned group that sends masked secret police to terrorize people.
Re: (Score:2)
He's talking about Trump and ICE.
At 4.5 times the population (Score:2)
Seems to me the are consuming less, relatively speaking.
China reshapes reliance on fossil fuel (Score:2)
As others have pointed out, the original article was about a drop in fossil fuel usage.
Busy Chinese cities are still a smog infused cesspit of noxious fumes...but no one can deny that China is rapidly changing the reality from fossil fuel reliance to cleaner options and in a decade or two Chinese cities will likely have acceptable or even lower levels of air pollution.
When you do that with a village it's meh but when you have a population of 1.4 billion people it's an impressive achievement.
Fun fact ... (Score:1)
A joule is an amount of energy.
A watt is a measure of energy consumption over time (joules per second.)
A kW/h is a therefore an amount of energy from a number of joules per second for an hour ...
... Which is a discrete quantity of joules - full circle!
10.4 trillion kW/h = 37440000000000000000 Joules or 37.44 EJ (exajoules)
Which is a good thing! (Score:2)
China consumes 2 the USA but it's "not just" 2x USA population.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a few years since I've been to China, but when driving through the countryside we could tell when were approaching a city by the dark cloud in the sky above it.
Its not about renewables (Score:2)
The usual recent obsession on Slashdot, on an unimportant detail of the story.
The real story is the relative size of the US and China economies, and its the same story whether its electricity or steel. China is bigger. A lot bigger. And getting bigger yet all the time.
This is the important thing about this story, not how much wind they are using, which is an unimportant detail. This is what is changing the balance of power in the Pacific, this will lead to the fall of Taiwan one of these years. This is
US doing worse per capita (Score:2)
Given China has about 4 times the population of the USA and is a manufacturing powerhouse, to consume double of the US, means China is not doing too badly. In fact this probably shows how wasteful the US is in energy consumption.
This is slashdot? (Score:2)
Most of the posts are 16 yr old MAGAts, apparently, not a nerd among them.
I'm sure all of them want to have 10 kids, but not have to pay for them, or pay (horrors!) child support.
Wow, that's a lot of AI power (Score:2)
slopman, cuckerberg and the whitest African must be really envious.