That’s the official narrative out of China, and it’s a hopeful one. It doesn’t fit the data though, at least so far. China is constructing record amounts of coal power and consuming ever increasing quantities of coal. https://www.carbonbrief.org/chinas-construction-of-new-coal-...

But even if they manage to turn that around decades from now, the coal will go to India or Africa, it’s not going to stay in the ground until it’s really uneconomical (and even then more likely to be replaced by natural gas than renewables.) Again, some countries may achieve success with regulation in isolation, but what matters is what the whole world does. There I think regulation doesn’t work because we don’t have one government, but instead many competing nations. Tragedy of the commons rules more often than not. This is where we disagree. The data is currently on my side, fossil fuel consumption is at record levels and increasing still. I think your position is this will change at some point in the future, with the help of regulation.

Renewables are way cheaper than coal power in many places, but at the extreme they basically need backing by equal fossil fuel infrastructure as they come to dominate the grid. Because you have to have electricity when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. When you add that to the costs, then they don’t currently win. Fixing that is the innovation that can solve this, which I think we both agree on.

According to the same source (site), it looks like emissions in China have plateaued in Q3 2024 as compared to Q3 2023. So we’re already seeing some effects. https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-no-growth-for-chinas-em...

I agree with you that the coal capacity buildouts are worrying. The best we can hope is that China has just structurally misallocated a bunch of funds, and when it comes time to burn that coal, continued improvements in renewables and storage will make all those plants unprofitable. That’s what’s happening most other places.