[hummingurban]

china and india have pollution from burning coal to generate electricity. China and India alone makes up 70% of the world's top 10 biggest coal powered generator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_power_stations...

It's also not a simple matter of getting rid of these plants, there's an entire political stake in seeing these continue to run, and there simply is no other way to scale up quickly and at a lower unit cost using alternative renewable sources of generating electricity.

You can always burn more coal or some non-renewable sources to meet your varying peak demands. Not so with other sources like solar panels or hydroelectricity.

[thinkcontext]

Coal is certainly a big factor in China and India's air pollution. But that does not discount that they are both going after other sources of pollution, particularly vehicles, which is the subject of this discussion. China is being particularly aggressive, as the article points out the biggest chunk of displaced oil consumption is electric buses of which China has 90+% of the world's total.