Comment by readthenotes1
1 day ago
Point of politics: China is highly motivated to build coal plants until 2030 at which point they have agreed not to raise their CO2 emissions afterwards.
Of course that means that they have a perverse incentive to increase them as much as possible and tell then
Their emissions declined for the first time in the 12 months to May 25. Might be a fluke and you might be right, or they might have motivation to decrease them outside of the agreement you mentioned.
Chine built in a legislative and regulatory allowance for coal, before wind, hydro and solar took off, they have also connected to the russian natural gas pipe line network, with a second major line in the works. The final piece to there grid is a large cappacity ultra high voltage trasmission grid running east west that shipps excess solar ,wind+other, electricity accross multiple time zones, and therefore peak demand is met as one long continious wave, rather than spikes. China is putting in coal plants where there is a local demand that is somehow islanded from the main grid....big country, challenging geographical/topographical conditions, and pragmatic development, so coal(there own and others), American LNG, Irainian Oil, russian nat gas,etc, etc, etc.....but the hidden story is that just 10 years ago they were burning ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING for power, and met there develoment goals at the cost of the worlds worst air quality, which they have now been able to dramaticaly change.....all of the above is to suggest that China has not fluked out with "emissions"*
* "emissions" is a catch all word/concept that includes efficiency,all cost's, sustainability, scalability, local air polution, and CO², CO, etc, while serving a political purpose that has been embraced by every single person in China