Comment by Qwertious
1 year ago
>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).