China’s Energy Future Still Runs on Old Technology

From the way some talk about it, China sounds like a vision of a zero-carbon future: A clean utopia churning out millions of electric vehicles and billions of solar panels, connected by bullet trains, high-voltage power lines and sparkling metro systems, powered by an endless expanse of photovoltaic farms and wind turbines.

That portrait, of a solarpunk electrostate as rooted in the future of energy as the petrostates of the Gulf are wedded to the past, isn’t entirely wrong. China’s clean energy industry justifies most of the superlatives you could throw at it. But there’s still a troubling amount of 19th century technology propping up this 21st century reverie.