In 2022, China built 2 new coal plants a week. A week!!! Even now, in 2025, China is building one coal plant a week on average. Trump talks a lot about coal but he certainly is not rolling it out anywhere near this scale.

I have seen recent messaging on this sub regarding China’s green energy push. It is true that China is building up renewable energy generation (solar). But that is not the whole story.

In 2023, China accounted for 95% of the world’s new coal power construction. (Carbon Brief, April 11, 2024 Report).

So when China rolls out their shiny new EV fleet, remember that the electricity is generated mostly by coal, which is significantly dirtier to burn than natural gas, like the U.S. uses. This is greenwashing too.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/27/energy/china-new-coal-plants-climate-report-intl-hnk?cid=ios_apphen

by Odd-Syrup2717

4 comments

  1. Coal as a percentage of China’s power generation has steadily declined over the years from more than 70% in the early 2010s to about 50% last year. If this is not progress, what is?

  2. Um, quoting a 3 year old study?

    Don’t current figures show that China’s coal generation has leveled off and actually showed a 5% drop this quarter despite rising overall power demands?

    They have built a load of newer cleaner coal plants but also shut a load of older dirtier plants. They are also using the plants themselves far less and the average capacity factors have dropped from over 70% to under 50%, meaning the average coal plant in the country spends more time off then on and many are only kept for backup capacity.

  4. There is some chance that we are at or close to the peak of Chinese coal consumption even with their economy still growing. The plants being built, so more than just approved, are newer and there are retirements of older plants, but that’s still not great.

    That last comment about EVs is silly though. EVs are better for emissions over their lifetimes than the equivalent contemporary ICE vehicle even if the power is generated via coal power due to the high efficiency of electric powertrains, regenerative braking, and the efficiency of power distribution compared to their gas vehicle analogues. The move to EVs is not green-washing and that last sentence commentary in your post was not reasonable.

    Really though, if we’re going to talk about transport of people, the most important thing China has done is having their cities being dense, walkable and well-serviced by mass transit. I do think it’s sad that they are not nearly as bikeable as they used to be.

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