Comment by throwaway473825
7 hours ago
I don't think it's a coincidence that China has developed batteries that neuter the advantage that gas had over coal, but I can't stop wondering if we'd already have solved long-term storage if China hated coal as much as oil and gas.
China does not hate oil and gas.
To put things into perspective, China gets half its energy from coal, and about 10% from natgas (increasing to 15% by 2030) and about 20% from oil. China is rapidly increasing natgas use, primarily by building out new pipelines to get more natgas from Russia.
China is also increasing oil consumption as well as exploration, particularly starting with the 14th 5 year plan as well as a special seven year action plan to increase oil production, doing deep water drilling, unconventional (e.g. fracking) drilling as well as a massive shale oil boom. Over the course of that 5 year plan, China discovered more than 225 oil fields and oil production increased from 3.8 million barrels per day to 4.6 mbpd as a result of a ~500 billion CNY investment to increase production. Still China imports about 10 mbpd, so it has developed a massive 1.5 billion barrel strategic reserve, which allows China to weather disruptions in global oil supply even as it races to increase domestic production.
And China is also investing in battery capacity, with installed capacity now at 140 GW or 5% of their energy usage.
The statement that somehow "batteries neuter the advantage that gas has over coal" is not something I understand. Both coal and natgas are reliable forms of energy and are unaffected by battery capacity; you need batteries for unreliable energy such as wind or solar so that you can turn the variable output into something stable that a grid can consume.
> The statement that somehow "batteries neuter the advantage that gas has over coal" is not something I understand.
In thermal electricity plants it takes a lot longer to go from cold & dark to generating electricity with coal than with either Combined-Cycle gas or especially the Open-Cycle "peaker" gas plants. Both types of gas plant also AIUI have a lot better ability to "throttle" their power output.
This means if you have a bunch of CCGT like Britain, you can use those directly to "top-up" the power from your fleet of solar PV and wind turbines, whether that's 1GW of top-up or 20GW of top-up. The change from weather (sun goes down, wind picks up, clouds appear, etc.) is relatively slow compared to what a gas plant can do, whereas it's too fast for coal to keep up as I understand it.
Coal by it’s nature is much less amenable (from a physics/chemistry) perspective to automation and high resolution control. Less pure/refined, granular instead of a gas, harder to start and burns longer once started, etc.
Contaminants in the coal (due to it being a solid mineral) also means it burns with a lot often toxic ash that is hard to deal with.
On the plus side, you can often literally use an excavator to dig it up and put it in the back of a train and then burn it with minimal other capital equipment.
It all makes sense.
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Here's a detailed breakdown of China's energy picture since 2020 [1]. The big story is that fossil fuels are relatively stable or in decline and solar is exploding. Hydro is down because of drought and they're building an even bigger dam than the Three Gorges Dam (ie Medog) but it'll be ~7 years before it comes online.
There has been an uptick in coal this year to replace oil imports, which have fallen off a cliff because of the Iran war [2]. The real story of 2026 is how China essentially saved the world economy by doing this [3].
China is dependent on oil and gas imports but clearly sees the writing on the wall. All of these projects are an effort to wean themselves off of oil. So is a lot of domestic policy like the electrification of vehicles. This has had a global impact, reducing global oil demand by almost 2% in the last 5 years [4].
I agree with you on your point that I don't see the connection between batteries and gas vs coal either. If anything, batteries are to stabilize energy demands when the Sun is down.
[1]: https://energyandcleanair.org/china-energy-and-emissions-tre...
[2]: https://tradingeconomics.com/china/crude-oil-imports
[3]: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/10/china-crude-oil-iran-hormuz-...
[4]: https://www.intellinews.com/china-led-ev-boom-cuts-global-oi...
> I agree with you on your point that I don't see the connection between batteries and gas vs coal either. If anything, batteries are to stabilize energy demands when the Sun is down.
Because spinning a coal plant up or down is slower, the batteries let you make the gradient more gentle.
Suppose Alice's gas plant can go from 100MW output to zero in ten minutes. So if Sam's solar farm goes from zero to 100MW over ten minutes in early morning Alice's plant can mirror, between them Alice and Sam produce 100MW of power smoothly. Obviously real life is more complicated but this gets the point across
Now, Charlie owns a coal power plant, it can ramp from 100MW to zero, but it takes about an hour. This doesn't directly mirror the solar farm, Charlie and Sam can't really just work together to smoothly produce the same power
Bill's 100MWh BESS fixes this. An hour before the sun comes up, Charlie's coal plant begins shutting down, Bill's BESS puts out 100MW while consuming the gradually reducing coal power output and some of the gradually increasing additional power from the solar farm as that increases.
> The big story is that fossil fuels are relatively stable or in decline and solar is exploding.
This is true only in the sense that fossil fuels, as a percentage of total energy consumption, are stable or in slight decline. That is because total energy consumption is rapidly increasing, specifically as new forms of energy are added to the mix.
Fossil fuels in absolute terms are, however, increasing.
China is burning more coal today than ever before. Coal use is going up. Coal use as a percentage of total energy is going down.
China is burning more oil and natgas than ever before. It is increasing. But as a percentage of total energy, it is decreasing.
This also matches China's CO2 targets. China's plan is not to decrease CO2 emissions, those emissions will keep increasing. The targets are to decrease the emissions required to generate a dollar of GDP. By 2060, they want the ratio of emissions to GDP to be 60% lower than it was in 2020. If you look at historical trendlines, that is an easy target to meet, just with improvements in technology and energy efficiency, particularly when you are starting from such a high base. But people look at that goal and think that China wants to cut emissions by 60%. GDP in 2060 will be 10x what the GDP was in 2020, so a 60% cut in that ratio is still a 400% increase in total emissions. Everything is measured in terms of ratios, not absolute numbers. Ratios where the base is always rapidly growing.
This confuses a lot of people who see that the ratio of fossil fuel in the entire energy mix is decreasing, and think this means that actual fossil fuel use is decreasing. The charts, report, graphs that people cite, if you look carefully, are always ratios. Ratios with the denominator growing as the denominator is something tied to GDP, whether total output or total energy output.
It's more accurate to say that there are limits to how much additional fossil fuel capacity China can bring online, as these are mature industries, whereas nuclear, solar, etc, are young industries and there is a lot of capacity to bring online since you are starting from a low base. China's approach to energy is always "we want more of it, of any kind." The only reason that China's oil production is not increasing by 10% per year is because it's not possible for China to increase oil production that quickly. Same for coal. China is increasing all forms of energy as fast as possible.
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Username doesn't quite fit here
China can't hate coal (yet). In case of an armed conflict with the West, they will be cut off completely from oil and gas. Renewables don't cover all their energy needs. So they are building a lot of coal plants as backup.
> cut off completely from oil and gas
China is the world's 4th largest oil & gas producer. They're dependent on imports because they're the 2nd largest importer. However, they are simultaneously increasing production and decreasing consumption. Those two lines will cross some day. It might be a dangerous day for the rest of the world when China stops becoming dependent on imported oil.
> It might be a dangerous day for the rest of the world when China stops becoming dependent on imported oil.
Why? Would China just try to start a global war? If it's about Taiwan, I'm not sure that USA would care like 5 years ago. USA will probably do the same with South America
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China coal use has dropped below 50% [1], and they currently curtail renewable generation roughly total annual generation of Spain and the Philippines combined every six months [2] (~401 terawatt-hours of power). They are rapidly deploying battery storage to accelerate electrification and making use of energy that would otherwise be curtailed, which should continue to drive down coal use (their electricity markets are currently reconfiguring to use market signals and incentives to encourage this outcome).
They will, in the next five years (at current renewables and battery storage deployment rates [60% of their energy currently comes from renewables, and this increases 10% YoY]), become a low carbon (hard to say net zero yet) electrostate [3] that will continue to scale manufacturing clean tech for the world [4] with minimal carbon footprint.
It cannot be overstated how fast they are going.
[1] China Crosses Energy Milestone as Coal Falls Below 50% of Power - https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...
Can they procure their own uranium? Coal still has the advantage of being more local, much simpler, faster to get up and running. Smaller plants also means smaller distribution radius etc. so more infrastructure decentralization. I imagine that's part of the thought process too.
> Can they procure their own uranium?
Nuclear power in China peaked around 2021 at ~5% of the total electricity mix. I don’t think it’s a factor.
China likes renewable and batteries because it’s the cheapest way to generate power. It’s cheaper to build solar plus battery storage, than building new coal plants.
In the case of armed conflict with the West all Chinese inverters will be weaponized to burn homes in the West. The shops will be empty in the West and West will be in very ugly situation outsourcing all the manufacturing. Better it doesn’t happen.