> China adds as much capacity annually as the US totals.
This sounds like you misunderstood my point.
This isn't a China-renewables-vs-US-renewables problem, it's the total electrical supply worldwide from all sources that's only around 350 W/person.
With regard to renewables, the point is that *even though they're growing fast, even when baking in the assumption that we continue to deploy more at a sustained compounding genuinely exponential rate, then it's still a decade away from being relevant*. At which point, the effect of a combined efficiency boost to hardware and software also becomes relevant.
> People run 1kW PCs at home though so not that bad.
*Some* people run 1kW PCs. Even in the USA with relatively high energy supply per capita, were *everyone* to do this it would either cause brownouts, or increase energy prices by (best guess) something like 5x to reduce demand by the same degree elsewhere in the system.
This sounds like you misunderstood my point.
This isn't a China-renewables-vs-US-renewables problem, it's the total electrical supply worldwide from all sources that's only around 350 W/person.
With regard to renewables, the point is that *even though they're growing fast, even when baking in the assumption that we continue to deploy more at a sustained compounding genuinely exponential rate, then it's still a decade away from being relevant*. At which point, the effect of a combined efficiency boost to hardware and software also becomes relevant.
> People run 1kW PCs at home though so not that bad.
*Some* people run 1kW PCs. Even in the USA with relatively high energy supply per capita, were *everyone* to do this it would either cause brownouts, or increase energy prices by (best guess) something like 5x to reduce demand by the same degree elsewhere in the system.