Chinese demand is increasing just like everyone else's, and they're both retiring older less efficient plants and using fossil fuels as both peaker and baseline generation. But coal utilization overall, despite massive growth in energy demand, is basically flat in China. There's plenty of reason to build out coal capacity to keep grids stabilized while you transition to solar and wind (China finished their 2030 1200GW solar capacity target 6 years early in 2024 and continue to grow that number at an incredible rate).

I agree that new coal sucks but it's a very easy talking point for westerners like us to latch onto when our own contributions to emissions remain way over 50% higher per capita - despite much of the manufacturing and such not happening in our countries.

They are also building more solar panels and wind turbines than the rest of the world combined, and are the biggest investor in renewables. Their emission of CO2 just recently peaked. But they need a lot of power, and most of the new coal plants are there for days when there’s neither sun or wind.

China needs some form of dispatchable power and is basically using coal instead of gas because they have none. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47276338 for numbers/more detail.

They are building coal for things that cannot yet be handled by renewables because coal is the fossil fuel natural resource they have the most of.

It's the same reason it was the dominant fossil fuel for electricity in the US until the shale revolution made natural gas cheap and abundant.

The reasons Trump is a schmuck for pushing coal are (1) he wants it instead of renewals rather than as a way to help fill the gap between renewables and what we need until we can build enough renewables and storage, and (2) in the US that makes no sense because because natural gas can fulfill that role and is better in pretty much every way that coal.

Compare to China which is putting vast amounts of resources into building renewables, storage, and also a nationwide UHV distribution network (currently 40-50000 km compared to ~0 in the US) which means local variations in solar/wind can increasingly be covered by non-local renewables, which should reduce the need to fire up those new local coal plants.

> What excuse actually is there for building new coal plants

Just that they're still 'developing' and aren't even close to the historical contributions of the US?

Assuming you're American, it's a bit rich to have contributed more in absolute terms and then tell other countries what they can't do.

Explain me why the average car in the US is a tank with horrible fuel economy? In rural I can sorta see it. But in cities, why drive a truck? These are all choices that America makes.

⬆ what he said