I don't get why people feel the need to just start lying when talking about renewables. It's probably a large reason why people are always skeptical of 'rewnewables are cheaper than x' claims.
They get built because their market has messed up pricing for providing generation capacity, far in excess of the need for capacity. So the coal plants get built, and not used much.
In particular, they are replacing coal plants meant for baseload with newer and far more efficient coal plants meant for more intermittent use, but that amount of use will go down drastically in coming years as cheaper batteries and renewables flood the grid.
There's also a smattering of coal plants being built elsewhere in the world, but that's usually due to corruption in the process of regulatory approval. It's far easier to hide bribes in large coal plants than it is in tons of small renewables projects.
Edit: and I just realized that I was only talking about developing countries with those corruption accusations; I'd heard of many such instances in places such as Africa and India. But now I guess I must add the US to the list. We don't know what payments are going on behind the scenes because of Trump's cryptocurrency, but undoubtedly that's a big part of these new coal generators too.
They get built because their market has messed up pricing for providing generation capacity, far in excess of the need for capacity. So the coal plants get built, and not used much.
In particular, they are replacing coal plants meant for baseload with newer and far more efficient coal plants meant for more intermittent use, but that amount of use will go down drastically in coming years as cheaper batteries and renewables flood the grid.
There's also a smattering of coal plants being built elsewhere in the world, but that's usually due to corruption in the process of regulatory approval. It's far easier to hide bribes in large coal plants than it is in tons of small renewables projects.
Edit: and I just realized that I was only talking about developing countries with those corruption accusations; I'd heard of many such instances in places such as Africa and India. But now I guess I must add the US to the list. We don't know what payments are going on behind the scenes because of Trump's cryptocurrency, but undoubtedly that's a big part of these new coal generators too.