Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by tooltalk 76 days ago
IMO, that remains to be seen. China is still adding new coal capacity roughly equal to America's entire coal capacity, or about ~160+GW, just in 2025(74GW)/2026(90+GW expected) while retiring almost none.
1 comments

Capacity is less relevant than usage. It's not like you drive a combustion car by putting your foot to the floor on the accelerator and only modulate your speed with the clutch and breaks.

Chinese coal *consumption* seems to be trending down, not up, regardless of capacity: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...

Sure, but China isn't building new coal plants, just for decorative value, but because renewables aren't stable.

Sure, we've seen this rodeo before, circa 2015 -- when it dipped a few points, then it continued on its march toward coal supremacy since.