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this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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That says nothing about reducing total energy output, though. They're only talking about paying back installation costs for additional capacity. Adding 50% more capacity and then running everything at 80%, for example, still means burning more coal and making more power. And, often, running a plant at below optimal will decrease it's efficiency, leading to a higher CO2 load for every kWh. It's an incentive for growth and surplus capacity, not an incentive to lower carbon emissions.
China has already decreased their coal power plant utilization from about 70% to about 50%. There's no reason to expect that trend to stop.
You're projecting without evidence based on what you think your country would do.
China has increased their coal generation in terms of absolute GW, and increase the coal usage per GW this year. I'm not sure where your data is from. Here's mine:
"China’s CO2 emissions have seen explosive growth over recent decades, pausing only for brief periods due to cyclical shocks." and "...CO2 is rebounding in 2023 from zero-Covid lows (see: Why emissions grew in Q3 of 2023)..."
both from a link in the original posted article, https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-emissions-set-to-fall-in-2024-after-record-growth-in-clean-energy/
"Domestic coal output tonnage has continued to grow in 2023, following the steep increase in 2022 resulting from government efforts to boost output. However, coal quality has declined, resulting in a much smaller increase in energy supply from domestic coal. Poor quality of coal supplied has also pushed users to shift to imported coal for blending, the result being a record surge in imports."
https://energyandcleanair.org/china-energy-and-emissions-trends-june-snapshot
The analysis points to a reduction in 2024, but that is speculation. What is clear is that 2023 is higher. And if the Chinese economy should pick back up and steel and concrete production come back up to recent historic levels, the CO2 is definitely going go continue to go up for a while. They're bringing renewables online, yes, but if we look at what is actually happening the CO2 is currently increasing. Both of us would be speculating beyond that.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-new-coal-plants-set-become-costly-second-fiddle-renewables-2023-03-22/#:~:text=More%20than%20half%20of%20the,rate%20inched%20down%20to%2052.4%25.
This past year, China couldn't run their hydro at peak capacity because of a drought. That's why fossil fuel consumption went up. It's not exactly rocket science. China will deploy more solar capacity this year than the entire US has done... Ever. Because of that (and the massive EV transition), China is expected to hit peak oil this year and peak coal next year.
Meanwhile, US fossil fuel-based energy production is growing YoY at a faster rate than China's coal consumption is - it's just that the US is replacing coal with natural gas... And it's very VERY iffy as to whether natural gas is actually better than coal.
Well, yes. The simple facts we have are that fossil fuel use is up. What happens next year will be speculation, but what we know is that they are using more coal this year, and they are hedging their future bets by building out their coal generation capacity. So if climate change means a further drop in hydro output, or more cloud cover where they install solar, or they need to make more power than they're installing because the world wants more steel (I'm in the building industry and steel supply is still a bit tight) - they can start belching out a massive amount of CO2.
Only time will tell - and I hope you turn out to be the one who is right :-)
China building out future coal capacity is more or less independent from expected future coal consumption.
That sounds like a crazy claim, so let me clarify: China is actively shrinking coal power plant utilization. The only reason, then, to build more capacity is to better manage peak loads. If you were following the rolling blackouts, you'd know that these are a huge problem in China in the summers.
So... Yeah, the first-order data itself isn't great, but the second-order data tells us that coal isn't a first class citizen anymore.
My only reason to believe that is not what is happening is that China, and the Chinese, are too smart to using coal as a peaking or emergency source of power. The only thing worse than coal for peaking is nuclear. Oil, Gas, and hydro are all much better for short-to-mid term peaking and batteries - something they're very good at and have vast resources for - are perfect for short term emergency/failover loads. I believe (without documentation) that they are building extra capacity for the possibility of another expansion - the incubation of so many "third world" economies and partnerships across Asia and Africa to spur demand for their domestic production. If they don't use it, it was a jobs program; if they find they need it, they will accept short term cash and economic power for a worsening of the world environment. In a way, the largest communist country on earth is also the largest capitalist power. Ironic.
China doesn't have much domestic O&G supply and nuclear reactors are so expensive they might as well use them for base load. You play the hand you're dealt.