Why Is China Building So Many Coal Plants Despite Its Solar and Wind Boom? (apnews.com)
- Reference: 0180755468
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/02/08/0233236/why-is-china-building-so-many-coal-plants-despite-its-solar-and-wind-boom
- Source link: https://apnews.com/article/china-coal-solar-climate-carbon-emissions-242abe76eb69f5a362e977de74ff3254
> Even as China's expansion of solar and wind power raced ahead in 2025, the Asian giant opened many more coal power plants than it had in recent years — raising concern about whether the world's largest emitter will [3]reduce carbon emissions enough to limit climate change.
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> More than 50 large coal units — individual boiler and turbine sets with generating capacity of 1 gigawatt or more — were commissioned in 2025, up from fewer than 20 a year over the previous decade, a research report released Tuesday said. Depending on energy use, 1 gigawatt can power from several hundred thousand to more than 2 million homes. Overall, China brought 78 gigawatts of [4]new coal power capacity online, a sharp uptick from previous years, according to the joint report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which studies air pollution and its impacts, and Global Energy Monitor, which develops databases tracking energy trends. "The scale of the buildout is staggering," said report co-author Christine Shearer of Global Energy Monitor. "In 2025 alone, China commissioned more coal power capacity than India did over the entire past decade."
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> At the same time, even larger [5]additions of wind and solar capacity nudged down the share of coal in total power generation last year. Power from coal fell about 1% as growth in cleaner energy sources covered all the increase in electricity demand last year. China added 315 gigawatts of solar capacity and 119 gigawatts of wind in 2025, according to statistics from the government's National Energy Administration...
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> The government position is that coal provides a stable backup to sources such as wind and solar, which are affected by weather and the time of day. The shortages in 2022 resulted partly from [6]a drought that hit hydropower, a major energy source in western China... The risk of building so much coal-fired capacity is it could delay the transition to cleaner energy sources [said Qi Qin, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and another co-author of the report]... Political and financial pressure may keep plants operating, leaving less room for other sources of power, she said. The report urged China to accelerate retirement of aging and inefficient coal plants and commit in its next five-year plan, which will be approved in March, to ensuring that power-sector emissions do not increase between 2025 and 2030.
[1] https://www.slashdot.org/~schwit1
[2] https://apnews.com/article/china-coal-solar-climate-carbon-emissions-242abe76eb69f5a362e977de74ff3254
[3] https://apnews.com/article/china-climate-2035-un-ndc-goals-c5e1db2dec473b5ca3763bc4c5c6e5cb
[4] https://apnews.com/article/china-coal-power-plant-carbon-climate-change-ba86e7584e3afe1826eed5cffa25354a
[5] https://apnews.com/article/china-climate-solar-wind-carbon-emissions-ab119c39f226cfbeb2f5c1449747cae9
[6] https://apnews.com/article/china-droughts-economy-chongqing-13e7b32da8113aea92e4f69b4aaf62cd
Because... (Score:5, Insightful)
...industrial countries need reliable power.
Re:Because... (Score:4, Insightful)
China is already the third-largest producer of nuclear power. I presume coal plants take much less time to build.
Re: (Score:3)
It's basically the "fast to build" thing with fuel also being cheap and available.
While there are some things the same, such as concrete, between coal, nuclear, wind, and even solar, they all require different manufacturing facilities. I remember reading somewhere that at least some of the coal plants China is building are designed to be easy to convert to nuclear if that comes up.
So until those manufacturing capabilities catch up with China's demand, coal will continue to be built. I also remember that a
Re: (Score:3)
I'd say jobs [1]https://www.reuters.com/sustai... [reuters.com]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/facing-sinking-coal-demand-china-asks-power-plants-just-buy-more-sources-say-2025-05-28
Re: (Score:2)
Also b'cos they don't give a rat's hiney about climate change. They simply build whatever power plants they need to for any project
AI needs power (Score:3)
Very simple. AI needs power, and they want to win global supremacy in that space. Their communist government can and will do anything they want regardless of things like the environment, human rights, etc.
Sometimes we need to remember on a global scale this is what we compete against, whenever we hobble ourselves a bit too much thinking that the rest of the world will play along.
Re: (Score:3)
1) You are correct that China is building coal for the AI boom.
2) You are incorrect in thinking the US hobbles itself. Having more expensive electricity but cleaner air is not a hobble, it is a competitive advantage. Long term cleaner air = smarter people and lower health costs. Coal pollution in particular is known to settle to the ground, rather than to spread throughout the world.
3) Communism leads to quicker action but also less innovation and singular action. This is really good when following the
Re: (Score:3)
Coal is a short term benefit, cleaner air a longer term one.
If you lose in the short term, you might not be around to reap the long term benefits.
Why aren't they building nuclear? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nuclear seems to me like the logical choice for a country like China to be building. Doesn't pollute the way coal does, they have a well established nuclear power industry, they don't have all the red tape and anti-nuclear BS that western countries do (anyone who complains can be thrown in the Chinese version of a Gulag or whatever it is the Chinese government does to people they don't like these days) and they have plenty of places they could put the nukes that are away from populated areas and big cities.
Re:Why aren't they building nuclear? (Score:5, Interesting)
China IS building nuclear power plants, typically six new starts each year. They're also building lots of solar farms and wind farms and developing more hydro-generation dams. They need the electricity.
The new coal-fired plants are mostly replacing older less efficient and more polluting coal-fired plants. I think the Central Planning Committee is aiming for coal to be about 50% of China's expanded generating capacity in the next couple of decades. Security of energy supply is a large part of that decision, no global hegemon can restrict their coal supplies via sanctions or military action since they are almost all derived from mines within their own borders.
Re: (Score:2)
This.
Primarily the energy security aspect. I'm not certain what China's domestic nuclear fuel supply looks like. But even if they have 100% of the needed resource within their borders, there's always the political (proliferation) aspects to be considered. It's still easier to deal with the AGW loonies for coal than the NPT authorities and entrenched nuclear fuel producers.
Re: (Score:2)
China has plenty of thorium, it is a by-product of their rare earths production, so it is probably almost cheaper for them to use it for electricity production than to dispose of it.
Re: (Score:2)
Thorium cycles have been demonstrated. But I suspect that there's still some R&D to be done at scale. To figure out the economics. China is undoubtedly working the problem, but not making press releases.
Re: (Score:2)
Because nuclear is too slow and expensive to build, and China needs the energy today. Just look at the numbers. In the last year China spent $400 billion to add 434 GW of renewables to reach 1840GW capacity, $100 billion to add 78 GW of coal to reach 1180 GW, and $15 billion to add 4 GW of nuclear to reach 65 GW.
Because they can (Score:3, Insightful)
They can over supply electricity, have excess capacity for building stuff, can reallocate resources as they deem fit. If one part fails or falls short, some other part will offer redundancy.
This article will end up having a long thread about whether China is more Communist, Socialist or Capitalist and nobody will admit that the effectiveness of their planned economy is more relevant that such distinctions.
Um ... (Score:2)
... because they want reliable power, and they aren't idiots?
Oh, why yes, that is why:
> The government position is that coal provides a stable backup to sources such as wind and solar, which are affected by weather and the time of day.
Solar and wind are intermittent (Score:2)
This isn't complicated. This is also why we need as much new nuclear energy as possible. So stop stopping us you evil scumbags.
Re: (Score:1)
Solar and wind are quick to build and cheap.
Re: (Score:1)
Which is why they're building a lot of it, but it's also not reliable and cannot be the sole power source. They need things like coal for backup when wind/solar fail due to a lack of wind and sun.
Re: (Score:2)
> Solar only works for half the day or less. Covering the other half reliably gets expensive fast.
solar plants can earn money even when not producing power through grid services, specifically by providing reactive power through their smart inverters
Re: (Score:2)
Not if one factors in their real estate footprint that they require
Perhaps they're just lying about green energy (Score:2)
Or they're building more generating capacity to charge up all those advanced sodium battery EVs and city buses I keep reading about. Which would still be a lie about green energy, just a more elaborate one.
Kind of like when California mandated electrage drayage trucks at its ports...so the port operators promptly complied and ordered up industrial diesel generators to charge up their trucks overnight since they couldn't get enough power from the utility for the purpose.
Re: (Score:2)
I feel like every China story this comes up and I post a link about the fact that CO2 emissions are monitored from space, and people still raise the same objection every time.
Re: Perhaps they're just lying about green energy (Score:2)
You underestimate the size of the ignorance reservoir and also its generating capacity.
Re: (Score:2)
> Kind of like when California mandated electrage drayage trucks at its ports...so the port operators promptly complied and ordered up industrial diesel generators to charge up their trucks overnight since they couldn't get enough power from the utility for the purpose.
that was 6 years ago and a temporary measure until more fast chargers could be built. at the time the state had about 3000 large diesel gensets for emergencies.
CA has plenty of reserve utility power. apart from the 52GW summer peak of 2022, the grid max hasn't usually exceeded 46GW since 1998.
[1]https://www.caiso.com/document... [caiso.com]
their stats right now at 4:45 pm PST are:
48,505 MW
Current capacity
23,020 MW
Current demand
24,518 MW
Forecasted peak
18,694 MW
Current renewables
81%
so not even at 50% load. granted it's a Su
[1] https://www.caiso.com/documents/californiaisopeakloadhistory.pdf
Still not enough to meet energy demand (Score:1)
[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2026/0... [nytimes.com] [2]https://www.scmp.com/news/chin... [scmp.com]
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/world/asia/china-coal-ban-air-pollution-heating.html
[2] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3339631/north-china-farmers-pay-heavy-price-winter-beijings-clean-air-success
Answered on "Volts.wtf" last year (Score:4, Interesting)
[1]https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-... [volts.wtf]
David Roberts of the Volts podcast asked full-time, full-career China expert Lauri Myllyvirta in April 2024, this exact question and got a clear answer: they're building them because they are forced. To get local permission for other projects, from the local regional boss (think "Duke") whom Xi needs to keep power. They can defy the national direction to some extent.
To build your solar/wind farm in China, you often have to build a coal plant, and buy coal, since the local Duke sells the stuff and hates the whole solar thing. So you get a lot of coal plants. What you don't get is more coal sales than they can get away from. The plants are often at very low capacity factor, sometimes under 20%.
Volts.wtf is strongly recommended for anybody wanting to keep up on the transition, the bad news as well as the good.
[1] https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-going-on-with-china-these-days
Where are the protests in China? (Score:2)
Why isn't Greenpeace and the other green groups not protesting outside of all of the new Chinese coal plants?
Re: Where are the protests in China? (Score:2)
Chinese constitution guarantees freedom of speech: just as you can stand on the Mall in DC and shout "Down with Trump" you can stand in the middle of Tienanmen Square and shout "Down with Trump."
Chinese constitution and American constitution both guarantee freedom of speech. Only slight difference is the American constition also guarantees freedom after the speech.
Coal Tech Can Quickly Rebuild After Nuclear War (Score:3)
whereas the high-quality materials (and engineers/scientists) for nuclear plants would not be available, nor could they be created for decades after a war. But coal is a well-known proven tech, can be used to produce steel and get the manufacturing base back up to speed quickly, even if there is no sunshine (due to nuclear clouds around the earth).
It's really because (Score:2)
China imports 80% of their oil, when that gets blocked when they start a geopolitical conflict they will need to rely on what they have. Coal is easy to store, you can pile it on the ground, and have years with it backup energy in a few acres. That's the real value of coal, oil is much harder to store. Nuclear is also easy to store, but much more expensive
Simple Redundancy (Score:1)
To me, it's simple redundancy. One fails or becomes unreliable for any reason, there's two other methods to back it up. Should the more natural processes prove unreliable, coal is the backup. Makes simple economic sense to me.
One sided statistics. (Score:2)
China may have built more than 70GW of new coal capacity online, and may have installed more than 50 new turbines, but if I go out and buy a new car that doesn't mean I have more cars standing in the garage. The other side of the equation is, what is shut down?
China's coal construction program has been largely replacement, and in doing so improved efficiency. China built new coal capacity in 2025? Sounds, bad. Except China's coal consumption and coal energy generation *DROPPED IN 2025* by 1.6%.
Yeah it sucks
Ob: hank green (coal is extremely dumb) (Score:3)
In which Hank Green argues why coal is such a bad idea. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfvBx4D0Cms