Many factors driving this: Domestically 1. Perverse incentives in some provinces still reward coal production. 2. Diminishing incentives for solar and other

Many factors driving this: Domestically 1. Perverse incentives in some provinces still reward coal production. 2. Diminishing incentives for solar and other renewable. 3. Pivot to interior development of interior regions, bureaucrats are adopting the same building + smoke stack strategies that worked on coastal cities. There's was some internal response - many of the proposed coal plants are being eliminated. 4. Keep in mind China is still at 60% urbanization rate. A lot of construction related CO2 is basically for modern housing stock - commonly referred to as "ghost cities" - but they get occupied eventually. 5. Renewable is still central to domestic energy security in response to US security competition. Previously, renewable was a response to air quality complaints, now it has to be balanced with security. US-SINO trade war 5. Increased pressure for Chinese energy security - China has access to essentially infinite amount of domestic coal. Now that US seems to be withdrawing from Gulf security because US is energy independent from shale, there's more urgency in China to build up coal security at least short term. 6. Reliance on construction to maintain growth. Related to 3&4. 7. Related to #3, economic pressures from trade war might motivate more coal plants to be built. There was also a resurgence in shadow banking after deleveraging campaign was cut short due to trade war. Globally 8. Exporting infrastructure capacity means more coal plants along Belt & Road. I'm of mixed feelings, cheap goal -> development. Eliminating poverty and development is more pressing than climate change. There isn't a climate change strategy that can handle uplifting the developing world into developed status. I think that's like 3/4 of the world. Doesn't mean we shouldn't do everything in the mean time to figure out how to mitigate, but ethically we should be working towards an end goal of X universal consumption baseline. X being much higher than global average now and probably much lower than western levels. If that's beyond global carrying capacity then I guess WW3. E: typos