Comment by ralferoo

A few days late for the discussion, but I just happened to watch an interesting youtube video today [1] which seemed worth sharing.

A summary of some of the points early in the video: in 2025, China added 300GW of solar and 100GW of wind power. In comparison, between 2015 and 2014 China added a total of 78GW of coal power capacity, and for 2025 onwards an additional 161GW has been proposed or reactivated. So, clearly just one year of additional renewables capacity far exceeds the additional coal capacity over multiple years.

Around 5:25, the video then talks about the difference between capacity (maximum possible power) and generation (the amount actually produced) and another chart at 5:52 shows that even though capacity has increased by 6% from 2024 to 2025, actual coal power generation decreased by 1.2% over the same timeframe. So even though the headline is that China is building more coal power stations, in practice they're to cover peak load and to provide energy security and the actual energy production (and hence) emissions is decreasing. FWIW, the same chart shows a similar global trend.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qde4r4_uMU0