China specifically is decarbonizing fast, and at some expense to their own economy over the last decade or so.
By comparison China added 217 GW of PV in 2023 alone which came online over the year. IE adding ~20GW in December has 1/12th impact in 2023, but it’s now online for the next ~25 years. Which is why some predictions have China using less coal in 2024 despite bringing new power plants online in 2023.
China alone represents 30% of the world’s electricity production/consumption so it has real impact, but they just don’t have the natural gas supplies which the US has used to ween itself off coal.
If they need to get used a lot for whatever reason, no one is unhappy either, you avoid shortages and discontent.
Whereas coal stopped being built in market economies roughly as soon as it became uneconomical.
They can build physical grid connections much more easily than we can manage (for the usual values of “we”), but they manage interprovincial transmission according to fixed schedules rather than responding to demand.
I mean, the US doesn't exactly cover itself in glory in its own utility regulations. "cost-of-service" regulation means that monopoly utilities are allowed to charge such that they make a regulated rate of return on the cost of providing the service. So the more they increase their costs, the more money they are permitted to make!
That doesn't sound all that misleading then? If they've installed 20 times more coal generating capacity than the rest of the world and are operating it 50% of the time then they're still adding 10 times more emissions than the rest of the world combined, and that's assuming the rest of the world will all be operating their coal-fired power plants fully 100% of the time.
> By comparison China added 217 GW of PV in 2023 alone which came online over the year.
217 GW of nameplate capacity or of average generation? These are very different numbers for solar because of the low capacity factor.