Comment by matthewdgreen
1 year ago
The country leading the renewables transition right now is China. Since they’re also the country that (not coincidentally) builds everything, outsourcing goods manufacturing to them seems like an okay bet, for the climate at least. (And yes, I know they’re building coal, but their emissions are still set to peak because they’re building more renewables than industry can consume while paying to idle coal plants.)
Why are they building coal plants if they are not going to increase their coal fired output?
My guess is that their motive for moving to renewables is more to reduce their reliance on imported oil and gas (vulnerable to blockade in the event of war). Maybe they will reduce oil and gas and increase both coal and renewables use?
It is entirely reasonable to believe that China is transitioning away from fossil fuels in the medium term and that they're freeing themselves from vulnerable oil+gas supply lines in the short term, in preparation for a possible Pacific conflict. What alarms me (for both reasons) is that the US and its allies are not doing the same thing. (*Yes, I know the US itself has plenty of domestic oil, but plenty of our critical allies are equally vulnerable to blockade.)
>Why are they building coal plants if they are not going to increase their coal fired output?
Because 30% of their GDP comes from construction - building coal plants creates jobs. And as a marginal benefit, they even get a spare coal plant at the end. They've been building all sorts of infrastructure projects that don't make sense to build, coal isn't special here.
Or, more rationally - China has closed way more coal plants (small, inefficient, old technology) than it has built new coal plants (larger, new filters, scrubbers, adjacent to fresh coal fields with better grades of coal), in addition to having expanding demand for power.
Currently in China new nuclear construction is slightly below new wind+solar addons, and nuclear+wind+solar are together still a small fraction of total power due to coal.
Yes, China is phasing out coal - but it's a beast.
In the meantime old sulphur filled coal field are being retired, new fields are being opened, and new plants with cleaner burning technology is built next to new fields in order to minimise transport costs (and associated C02 from transport).
Theyr rebuilding, newer, cleaner, more flexible plants as in the Chinese system the coal plants need to perform the same role as gas plants in areas with easy access to gas i.e. running intermittently at low capacity factors.