No it not lie. Its sad when presented with truth you do not like you resort to ad hominums.
See, one of the techniques in that book is changing up the units. As you write,
GDP growth 5% > Change in solar + wind 2%, therefore solar and wind aren't keeping up. Looks bad, right?
What you're missing (or deliberately misleading) is that the left side of the equation is year to year percentage growth and the right side of the equation is absolute change. To represent the situation fairly, you need to show year-to-year growth on both sides:
GDP growth 5% < Growth in solar + wind 23%
But that argument doesn't look so good for you, does it?
I tried to explain this in #1743, but you either didn't catch it or are deliberately misrepresenting me, so I'll try again. Solar and wind represented 12% of China's electricity generation pie in 2021. In 2022, the pie was larger because of increased generation due to GDP and population growth, but solar and wind still accounted for a larger share of the pie, increasing to 14% of the total. Because it's a larger share of a larger overall pie, the solar+wind slice from 2022 is 23% bigger than the solar+wind slice from 2021. Solar and wind are not just growing in absolute terms, they are also growing faster than power generation growth, so they are also growing as a total share of the market.
The Kaya's identity is very simple. If the decarbonization rate is less than GDP growth rate, emissions increase. If decarbonization rate is greater than GDP then emissions decrease. The constraint is GDP has to be healthy positive or political realities will come into play, like we are seeing now in the UK and Germany.
Do you ever think to yourself "You know what? I'm going to get fact-checked on this. I should make sure I'm right before posting." Because maybe you should. Let's set aside the Kaya Identity for a moment and look at actual emissions:
You'll note that actual emissions are a nearly straight line from 2016 to 2021, with a minor blip downward in 2020 from COVID. And would you look at that? 2022 showed a noticeable bending downward of the curve that was more significant than the COVID blip. And you know what, GDP growth in China was 3% 2021-2022 while it was 2% 2019-2020. So China managed a significant reduction in the growth rate of carbon emissions while also maintaining GDP growth.
Yes, it remains to be seen where this goes from here, and what happens if China's GDP growth returns to 8%. But given the fact that renewable production is largely filling the expansion from GDP growth and more renewables are planned (including 26 GW of installed nuclear capacity by 2028), things appear to be moving in the right direction.
If you want to talk about the Kaya Identity, please provide actual data for energy intensity of the GDP and emissions intensity of the energy.
The US has been very successful in reducing the carbon intensity/GDP since the 1960's (well before the climate movement started). The decrease is about a constant 4-5% a year. This trend was largely driven by expansion of nuclear power generation in the 60's and the substitution of natural gas for coal in thermal power plants in modern times.
The lessons learned in the UK and Germany (and NY and NJ) prove that wind and solar is not a viable path to decarbonization.
Provide sources. Hint: the failure of a few offshore wind fields is very small in comparison to the overall wind industry.
Wind and solar is not going to be capable of continuing as the "Green Wall" is starting to be hit in places like the UK, Germany and New York state.
Provide sources.
