My understanding is that China is planning to build a coal-backed renewable grid. Renewables, including storage, will provide the majority of the electricity generation, and then coal will step in when renewables aren't available. This involves building modern coal plants that can be spun up and down as needed, and then paying them not to generate. This is why actual emissions have plateaued and dropped, even as new coal capacity comes online.

We are (or were) doing something similar in the US, just using natural gas as the fuel rather than coal.

- They need something to provide electricity when the sun is not shining, while they install enough batteries and more than enough solar to use during the day and charge those batteries.

- They need some backup in case the Sun is dimmed for a few days, while they install enough solar to not need this anymore.

- They need some backup in case they grow too fast and the solar installations don't keep up.

- They need some backup in case there's some natural catastrophe, or some stupid dictator somewhere decides to start a war or something and destroy some vital energy infrastructure.

Their government has explained this a few times, but not on those words. It probably helps that those are government projects, and failing to deliver government projects is a very rude attitude that can end people's careers. But the rationale is sound too.

Part of China's "new" coal capacity is modern, efficient coal plants with lower emissions being built to replace old, inefficient, highly polluting ones.

There's a recent AP article talking about this some (I don't know enough to know the quality of the article): https://apnews.com/article/china-coal-solar-climate-carbon-e...

Inertia I imagine. Planning cycles can be 10, 20 years, perhaps longer for big infrastructure projects.

[dead]