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There are several problems with this. First, you are ignoring gas. The US stopped building coal plants because of the fracking boom. That gave the US huge sour
by tzs 2mo ago
There are several problems with this.
First, you are ignoring gas. The US stopped building coal plants because of the fracking boom. That gave the US huge sources of natural gas which was cheaper than coal.
China has little natural gas but abundant coal, so when they need fossil fuel for something they cannot yet do with renewables they use coal whereas the US uses gas.
Second, you are looking at number of plants, but not looking at capacity factor (which is a measure of how much they are actually used). The new Chinese coal plants have lower capacity factors. They are being built as backups and peakers rather than baseload, designed (or retrofitted in the case of existing plants being upgraded) to be able to cycle up and down to balance wind and solar.
Many are idle so much that their owners have financial difficulty keeping them open, and the government has had to start paying them for their idle time so they won't go under.
Many are also built to replace existing plants that cannot not yet be replaced with renewables, so are at worst neutral on coal usage and are usually actually more efficient than the old plants so there is a reduction.
Their use will continue to decline because China is massively deploying renewables. They also are adding massive amounts of grid battery storage and UHV transmission lines (60000 km so far spanning the country with another 12000 km under construction or permitted--the US is a bit behind that at 0 km), which means the can move electricity from where renewables are strongest to places with high needs but fewer renewables much easier that most other countries can which is further going to reduce the amount of time those new coal plants run.
Third, for India, even if we compare by country rather than by the correct per capita measure (see other comments below for explanation of why per capita is the correct measure when comparing energy policies of different countries), India's current emissions are only 68% of US emissions even though the have 4.3x as many people. That 10% increase you cite that they plan for coal in 2025-2026 still leaves them doing WAY better than the US.
India is also expanding renewables rapidly. They have around 10 nuclear reactors under construction, and are adding lots of solar and wind. They are currently up to 136 GW of solar capacity (64% of US and 11% of China), and last year added around 38 GW (the US added 34 GW). They added 6.3 GW of wind compared to 6.2 GW in the US.
They are almost certainly not going to get anywhere close to the US total emissions. (And per capita where they emit 1/6th what the US does they are definitely not going to even remotely near the US).
- valeg 2mo agoIt is incorrect, PRC has abundant shale natural gas deposits and there is some work being done to tap them: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-taps-ultra-deep-sichuan-shale-push-boost-gas-output-2026-06-16/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-taps-ultra-dee...