China is now fully aware of solar's capabilities

A couple of interesting energy related stats came out of China via Davos this week; the first, that China installed 34GW of new solar capacity in 2016. The other, not unrelated, reports that the Chinese state has shelved 104 coal burning power stations which are already under construction. The combined output of these plants would be around 120GW.

This tells us two things; firstly, China is now fully cognisant of the reality that the cheapest way to provide new electricity generation for a fast growing economy is solar. Secondly, it suggests that the Chinese state is hearing the growing public unrest about pollution and air quality and has decided that poisoning the air its citizens breathe might not be good, long term politics. (To put the scale of this into context, the much discussed but little built Hinkley C will, if it's ever turned on, have a generational capacity of only 3.3GW. China, in a single year, has installed ten times this capacity from solar.)

You can read about it here.