conversely, china has installed more solar than the US has in total capacity - every year for the past several years
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/07/10/1119941/china-en...
https://apnews.com/article/china-climate-solar-wind-carbon-e...
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/07/10/1119941/china-en...
https://apnews.com/article/china-climate-solar-wind-carbon-e...
Edit: I’m 100% for renewables. Unfortunately half my country is against them and they won last time.
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/06/05/americans-vie...
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/07/07/china-moves-to-curb-s...
It's no different from Fox News headlines saying Medicare for all would cost X billion and not mentioning that business as usual would cost twice that.
An attempt to turn a popular, cheaper option into a scary bogeyman with selective lies.
the same interests that prevent it today would still exist
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s...
The US is far, far worse than China.
In other words: China is building enough renewables to both cover the grid expansion and offset existing coal usage.
That's not what the data I had linked above seems to indicate (2023 to 2024 it went from 5.7 to 5.8 TWh)
And it keeps building coal power plants: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants, though the article is also optimistic that China is at/about to reach peak coal.
And it's also funding coal power plants abroad, thought the scale doesn't seem that big compared to their domestic production: https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/China-Con...
> From December 2024, coal power generation declined for five straight months before ticking up slightly in May and June, mainly to offset weaker hydropower generation due to drought. Coal power generation was flat overall in the second quarter of 2025.
> The chart below shows growth in monthly power generation for coal and gas (grey), solar and wind (dark blue) and other low-carbon power sources (light blue).
> This illustrates how the rise in wind and solar growth is squeezing the residual demand left for coal power, resulting in declining coal-power output during much of 2025 to date.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-china-is-still-bu...
What they are doing is ensuring energy reliability and phasing out old nasty coal plants in favor of modern ones expected to have peaker like capacity factors.