China has continued to rapidly increase their use of coal for power generation. Just a few days ago there was an article about them hitting an 18-year high of new coal power installations [1]
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/katharinabuchholz/2026/02/27/ch...
It is deceptive to compare coal % of power generation, because China specifically substitutes coal for gas because they have none of that (and no reliable source). This also means those coal plants run at lower/decreasing utilization because a big part of their role is to provide dispatchability. So for China you have 55% coal and 3% gas while the US uses 16% coal and 40% gas for electrical power.
If you compare numbers, you will also find that lower per-capita consumption more than compensates for currently still higher CO2 intensity of chinese electricity (3000kWh/person * 0.5kgCo2/kWh for China vs 5500kWh/person * 0.35kgCo2/kWh, i.e. 1.5 vs 1.9 tons of Co2/year/person from electricity for China vs the US).
> It is deceptive to compare coal % of power generation
It isn't, because coal emits significantly more CO2 per unit electricity than natural gas, since it's pure carbon instead of a hydrocarbon, and therefore should be getting discontinued by everyone rather than installed by anyone.
The "it's a developing country" arguments seem like a dodge when the real reason is that they'd rather emit 80% more CO2 so they can burn coal instead of buying oil or building enough nuclear and renewables to not do either one.
> This also means those coal plants run at lower/decreasing utilization because a big part of their role is to provide dispatchability.
Those percentages are for power actually generated and already take into account capacity factor.
> you will also find that lower per-capita consumption more than compensates for currently still higher CO2 intensity of chinese electricity
What excuse is that for burning coal? Should Germany and the UK be justified in burning more coal too, since they have lower electricity consumption per capita than China?
While power consumption per capita is sometimes useful, I don't think it fits here. They continue to invest heavily in coal, that isn't leading in green energy.
New coal power installations != increased use of coal for power generation. You have to stop this lie by omission.
Their new coal plants either replace older ones. Or they are left idle. Close to 90% of all their generation growth comes from solar and wind.
They use coal because they have coal. Just like the US uses natural gas and then pats itself on the back for "reducing emissions" by switching from coal to gas. But their current trajectory will see them going to burning very little coal. It's a national security issue for them.
They have also increased total coal use as well. I don't have the stats handy which is why I didn't include an unsourced link, but I will add that here if I have time to find a solid source for that before this thread goes stale.
https://www.theenergymix.com/u-s-emissions-rise-chinas-fall-... Their emissions fell in the first half of 2025.
I'd guess that this is in large part due to the sheer amount of datacenters they plan to bring online in the coming years and the fact that they can't scale up green energy quickly enough to meet the expected demand.
In an ideal world I think they'd prefer to be powered by 100% clean energy but not at the cost of losing the AI race.
China's coal consumption has been pretty much flat for the past decade. That's certainly not ideal, but it's not a rapid increase.
Where are you seeing their coal use as flat? Even the related wikipedia page[1] shows a pretty steady increase over time.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_China
Where do you see a steady increase on that page? There’s one fairly unreadable graph at the top.
Clicking through to the source for that graph, we can see that consumption was 22.8TWh in 2014 and 25.6TWh in 2024, a pretty modest increase.