Yet China continues to expand use of coal power and mining their vast reserves in the western part of the country.
- Cleaner air
- More electricity production
- Developing energy technologies with a substantial export market potential
- Maintaining employment and social stability
The last goal can override the others, depending on current economic conditions and public sentiment. Provincial officials may hew to the last goal even more closely than the central government would like. Provincial government also sometimes faces perverse incentives like getting tax revenue from each ton of coal mined locally but no tax revenue from renewable electricity generated locally.
45 year old Chinese coal miners don't like switching careers and locations much more than 45 year old American coal miners do. China has also faced more and more-recent civil war than America. They will build a bunch of surplus coal plants and keep having coal miners perform make-work to fuel them if that's the price of social stability.
It's a smart thing to do, essentially they're leveraging the existing transmission line infrastructure for coal for future wind
And I thought the walney wind farm in the UK (just under 1 GW) was massive.