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Comment by ComputerGuru | Hacker News Reader

This is old and incorrect. China is leading the way in terms of electrification and EV-adoption, ahead of even the darling child Norway.

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China does not produce enough oil to run its current fleet of cars and trucks. They get most of their oil from the Persian Gulf and they correctly worry that that supply line will be pinched (or cut off entirely) if the US gets angry at them (similar to how the US is angry with Russia now) or if some actor like Iran stops the flow of oil out of the Gulf. Most of the oil and oil products China gets from Russia leave Russia on ships from Russia's European ports -- another long supply line.

So for sensible national-security reasons that do not apply to the US (namely, making sure it can continue to transport things like food to all its citizens if its national-security competitor gets angry at it or if the Persian Gulf becomes unstable) China is interested in electrifying its vehicle fleet since China has plenty of coal with which to generate electricity.

Because coal is the fossil fuel that produces the most carbon dioxide per unit of heat produced, it might be the an electric car in China will more greenhouse gas than a gas-powered car in the US.

China is building more new coal power plants than rest of the world combined.

That’s a bit of a red herring. Their rate of growth in coal has fallen dramatically over the last 15 years and other sources are growing rapidly. As a share of the total coal is declining as is oil and renewables is increasing. Assuming this trend continues over the next 20 years coal will become a distinct minority share. But their overall demand for energy is so immense that they’re still adding more coal power plants - and every other source of energy as well. The metric you quoted is pretty devoid of broader context and tells a story that’s pretty skewed when the reality is fairly nuanced.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

Reality is G7 is getting rid of coal and have carbon taxes, China and India are still building new coal. China is already first world polluter and will be much more with new coal. There are no nuances in this.

And more renewables.

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