>misses a lot of nuance OP is acknowledging the direction / trend. The nuance is whatever central gov incentivizes. Local gov have been (and still) incentivize

>misses a lot of nuance OP is acknowledging the direction / trend. The nuance is whatever central gov incentivizes. Local gov have been (and still) incentivized to use provincial power because it's in their control, it enables them to hit other good for promotion metrics without worrying about politics/dependencies. Coal is simply reliable and local gov don't even like depending on grid of adjacent provinces, especially when renewable generation has been fluctuating with extreme climate last few years. But if central gov starts hinting promotions is going to be based on enhancing cross border power, bureaucrats will start indexing on that. Economics of utility scale renewables projecting to cheaper than coal without considering externalities. Right now still in phase of building out enough renewables so grid is resilient. West-East Electricity Transfer Project is a multi decade project spanning back to the 10th 5 year plan in the 00s, once there's enough resiliency, central gov will push local gov to play better with state grid.