China's coal usage is poised to peak around 2024-2025 - earlier than analysts expected as while they're increasing generation capacity, actual coal usage is not keeping up:
Buried in the details there's a twist often missed.
China has shut down thousands of small, old, relatively inefficant coal plants while at the same time building fewer, larger, more efficient, less polluting coal plants and while doing more than any other country to advance solar and related technologies.
They have a massive population, which they worked hard (in questionable ways) to keep in check, as the associated energy demand has grown they've worked hard to meet it with the technology they had (coal) while also working to make that cleaner and working to replace it as rapidly as possible.
> Between 2000 and now their coal plant capacity factor dropped from 70% to around 50%.
I'm unsure of your specifics here, I agree they're working hard to use less, FWiW though, the most recent IEA figure for China coal use was 60.6% of total energy supply in 2021
The IEA also asserts that globally we've reached "peak coal use" planet wide, despite the apparent foot dragging of China and India who are still bound by large populations, large energy demands, production energy usage for goods for much of the reast of the planet, and the difficulty of fast transition.
Remember that 60% of primary energy supply includes the half of that energy that gets thrown away as heat when making electricity. So you'd only need to replace the actual useful final energy.
China is approving new coal power projects at the equivalent of two plants every week, a rate energy watchdogs say is unsustainable if the country hopes to achieve its energy targets.
You're suggesting that this regulation will be effective in its stated goal and lead to unexpected outcomes.
I'm suggesting it's pointless because the coal plants are already uneconomic, and this rule is only impacting things in 8 years.
Developing nations might want to import cheap coal because richer nations no longer want to poison their children and want their fish to be edible during pregnancy and reason that they don't have that luxury yet.
But when America, Australia etc. are all trying to sell them exported coal because they are running cheaper solar at home, they might see another option.
China is building renewables and nuclear at a rate faster than the entire world, and their emissions are set to peak years earlier than expected. I wish the US was moving anywhere near as quickly.
