Tornado Alley (PROG)

[janice shell]

Question is if sollar is so greaqt why doesn't China employ it
instead of selling all the panels?

Answer: What you say is untrue. China uses a great deal of solar power, but it still doesn't serve as much of the very large country as it could, and there are waste and disposal problems:

As of at least 2024, China has one third of the world's installed solar panel capacity. Most of China's solar power is generated within its western provinces and is transferred to other regions of the country. In 2011, China owned the largest solar power plant in the world at the time, the Huanghe Hydropower Golmud Solar Park, which had a photovoltaic capacity of 200 MW. In 2018, it held the record again with the Tengger Desert Solar Park with its photovoltaic capacity of 1.5 GW. China currently owns the second-largest solar plant in the world, the Huanghe Hydropower Hainan Solar Park, which has a capacity of 2.2 GW.[7] In 2023, China completed the world's largest hydro-solar power plant in Sichuan, which utilises the consistency in hydropower production to offset the variability in solar power.[8][9]

Solar power contributes to a small portion of China's total energy use, accounting for 3.5% of China's total energy capacity in 2020.[10] Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced at the 2020 Climate Ambition Summit that China plans to have 1,200 GW of combined solar and wind energy capacity by 2030.[11]. But China achieved 1308 GW of wind and solar by the end of 2024, six years ahead of the 2030 goal. China also added 210GW of solar and 50 GW of wind in the first six months of 2025.[12]

Solar water heating is also extensively implemented, with a total installed capacity of 290 GWth at the end of 2014, representing about 70% of world's total installed solar thermal capacity.[13][14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China