[carefree-bob]

China is using more coal, gas, and oil than ever. They went from using 1.5 billion tons of thermal coal in 2000 to 4.6 Billion tons today and they will reach 4.7 Billion in 2027.

They did "pledge" to "limit increases" in coal, but there is a big difference from limiting increases to "moving away from" coal.

As for oil, it is a similar story. Oil use doubled from 2005 to 2025, but they pledged to "slow increases" of oil to something less than the 7% annual increases per year that were the last 10 years average (over the business cycle).

Natural gas has tripled from 3 to 9.3 billion cubic feet per day from 2014 to 2023.

The prescient part was building a pipeline to deliver oil and gas directly from Russia as well as building trade routes through Russia and the central Asian nations that give them a direct route to their energy suppliers (Including Iran, which can supply China without ever going through the straight of Hormuz).

Energy security is very important, and China has invested heavily to build pipelines and trade agreements that keep the oil and gas flowing, and they have moved away from buying Australian coal to increasing their own domestic coal production, reaching 4.8 Billion tons mined and on track to hit 5 Billion tons in the next few years.

[tpm]

> China is using more coal, gas, and oil than ever.

Well, no. Coal peaked at 4.9 billion tonnes in 2024.

https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-2024/executive-summary https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi...

> Oil use doubled from 2005 to 2025

yes, and gasoline production is trending down too:

https://www.mysteel.net/news/5109188-china-2025-gasoline-pro...

[carefree-bob]

Coal did not peak in 2024, but 2024 is the last year for which we have complete data, the other years are estimates.

This is how you get some people predicting drops of coal and natgas. You need to be very careful with recent data esp. from China as it takes time to collect data and you are usually 2 years behind.

But really stop and think - 2026 just started. Data from 2025 is now just coming in, and you are claiming that there was a "peak" in 2024. Even given the natural variability of this stuff across the business cycle, please, please know what you are doing with this stuff.

1. Measure from business cycle peak to business cycle peak

2. Wait until the data is in.

Thank you.

[tpm]

> Wait until the data is in.

Ah but you yourself didn't, did you:

> They went from using 1.5 billion tons of thermal coal in 2000 to 4.6 Billion tons today and they will reach 4.7 Billion in 2027.

Whatever would 'today' mean and why even mention a very uncertain future estimate. And in any case that 4.7 is lower than the 4.9 from 2024.

[jasomill]

I have to laugh as progressively higher time derivatives are invoked to claim improvements. "The rate of increase in the deficit slowed this month" and the like.

[carefree-bob]

Yes! I see this everywhere.

[thephyber]

Russia paid for the pipelines because they were desperate for customers in the post-2022 sanctions era. China has remarkably little ability to refine the crude domestically and they aren’t even using most of that domestic capacity.