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Comment by NoLinkToMe

6 months ago

The entire world gets the bulk of their energy from fossil. One country is leading the pack in defossiling their economy relatively rapidly, and that's China. Double emissions of the US translates to half-emissions on a per-capita basis. Much less if you include historical emissions. And China's emissions dropped in the previous period, the US increased.

The coal plants are known to be built to support economic growth for one (simple truth), and as baseload for renewable sources (you simply can't go renewable without this, at the moment). Coal plant utilisation rates have been dropping for two decades and are expected to keep dropping. [0]

[0] https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DJUu!,w_1456,c_limit...

China's coal plants aren't base load, they're peakers, which is what you need in a renewable heavy grid.