1. There are coordination issues that have caused them to overestimate the need for such plants, which have been running at low capacity. There have also been perverse incentives to build plants that weren't needed, in order to placate the relevant stakeholders.
2. Battery storage (including pumped hydro) is being pursued aggressively, specifically (among other things) to address the reliability concerns that motivated the recent new coal plant construction. Government policy, furthermore, is clearly focused on "new energy", i.e. not fossil fuels.
3. Coal power generation in China has been level or declining for a little while now. Generation from new renewable plants is outstripping the overall increase in demand for power. There is a graph titled "New coal power has no predictive value for future coal power generation".
4. Historical, global evidence shows a persistent trend of capacity reduction lagging behind generation reduction. As should be expected. It takes effort (= money) to decommission a power plant, and an inactive (or less-active) one is a safety net. "In most cases, what ultimately stopped new coal power projects in those countries was not a formal ban, but the market reality.... In China, the same market signals are emerging: clean energy is now meeting all incremental demand and coal power generation has, as a result, started to decline."
5. As a share of total power generation, coal power in China has dropped substantially (from nearly 3/4 to scarcely half) over the last decade or so. In absolute terms, it is likely near or even past the peak.
6. The article concludes: "While China’s coal power construction boom looks, at first glance, like a resurgence,it currently appears more likely to be the final surge before a long downturn. The expansion has added friction and complexity to China’s energy transition, but it has not reversed it."
You asked:
> So are China, generally shifting away from coal?
Your own source clearly argues that they are, in fact, shifting away from coal. Presenting an article that refutes you as if it supported you, while employing this style of repeated "pointed" questions, is disingenuous and obnoxious.
Not sure how this refutes my rhetorical question whether China are building more coal power stations. Nothing disingenuous about giving an answer deliberately picked from a source favourable to the carbon scare mongerers. As for obnoxious, I replied in the manner the question was asked.
Do you understand that whether or not "China are still building coal power stations" is completely and utterly irrelevant to answering the question you asked in that comment?
What have you assumed was my original position and why is that relevant when my next rhetorical question was a follow up to being asked if I had any other questions?
This is getting tedious now. The basic facts are China has something like 1200 coal powered stations and is still building more.
I would not congratulate myself just because my cigarette to beer ratio was dropping if only because I was drinking alot more beer but hadn't increased my smoking by as much.
The only conflation is coming from you - the first question was not rhetorical, the second was, hence the link sent with it. If asking questions is obnoxious, I suggest you get out more. I am finished explaining.
>> Other than by corrupt criminals and mafia types who have a need to covertly hide cash.
I’ve got an Argentinian friend who sends crypto to his mother because he pays less than 0.5 % in fees and exchange rates instead of close to 5% using the traditional way. From now on I’ll call him a corrupt criminal.
Really? For such an obvious use case, it sounds like everything you know about the topic is what you've heard from emotionally manipulative social media users. You should work out ideas yourself instead of just copying popular rhetoric which is often wrong, despite being popular.
100%- which is what I'm telling everyone. I am in big tech and it doesn't matter that I can write what I used to in 1 week in 5 minutes. Meetings, reviews, design docs, politics, etc. etc. mean how much code is written is irrelevant. Productivity in big tech is pretty low because of organizational overhead. You just can't get anything done. Being able to get more work done with less people is the real game changer because less people don't suffer from those "coordination headwinds".
Bingo. Most of my employees come from big tech (not faang, but big corps ) where they felt they couldn't really deliver what they wanted and what they're capable of. These guys love to not just code, but to create and deliver stuff.
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