For the first time, the growth in China’s clean power generation has caused the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to fall despite rapid power demand growth.
They keep building coal power plants because the total need of electricity in China is rapidly increasing, but they are also building everything else at an even higher rate so less of the total is actually generated by coal. Also many of them are replacing old obsolete plants with cleaner more efficient ones.
Many of them are also being built specifically because of the increase of renewable sources, to stabilize dips and provide reliability, so the overall usage of those plants has decreased.
And due to their economic system, they don’t have to profit maximize those coal plants or even use them until the end of their lifespan. They’re free to decrease their utilization or even shut them down as the the need decreases.
They (IIRC) intentionally increased coal energy production because it’s cheap and easy to spin up.
But at the same time they’re using that power as a stopgap for renewables.
Kinda what Germany is trying to do
They keep building coal power plants because the total need of electricity in China is rapidly increasing, but they are also building everything else at an even higher rate so less of the total is actually generated by coal. Also many of them are replacing old obsolete plants with cleaner more efficient ones.
Many of them are also being built specifically because of the increase of renewable sources, to stabilize dips and provide reliability, so the overall usage of those plants has decreased.
And due to their economic system, they don’t have to profit maximize those coal plants or even use them until the end of their lifespan. They’re free to decrease their utilization or even shut them down as the the need decreases.