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Comment by energy123 | Hacker News Reader

China and India coal usage dropped for the first time in 52 years[1].

It's also silly to look at anything other than per-capita metrics. If China arbitrarily splits in half or expands, the per-capita metric remains invariant to the historical luck factor behind why national borders are the way they are.

[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi...

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>China and India coal usage dropped for the first time in 52 years

Isn't it because they're now getting Russian oil and gas at rock bottom prices from western sanctions?

No.

Re: China, see: [1] which goes into some detail. There's also various IEA energy reports which anticipated a fall for India and China after the fall in every other country (save, apparently the US which is bucking the trend).

No, it's because of renewables. Share of oil in total energy consumption hasn't increased since the sanctions, while wind and solar have been consistently increasing. Coal is down (again, as a share of total energy consumption).

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-energy-source-sub?c...

gas (ofss fuel) is increasing a lot... So yeah, there is some renewables, but we're still pretty far from what is needed...

China is trying to eliminate oil because of the Malacca Dilemma. The US and allies control the seas as part of containment policy. The US also has the Middle East on lockdown, every gulf country in particular. China has a little base in Djibouti and influence over a collapsing IRGC I guess, but not enough to secure any routes. China only has land-based power projection in Eurasia which exerts some limited but insufficient control over land corridors. This is the real incentive behind China's renewables and electrification efforts. That it also addresses global warming is a very welcome side-effect.

> Malacca Dilemma.

I was unaware of this - thanks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malacca_dilemma

Also China has invested a lot into liquid fuel production from coal. With latest process improvements the relevant cost is like 80-90 USD per barrel. So in few years they will be mostly independent from oil and natural gas imports.

China is also getting coal from Russia at rock bottom prices. Coal is no longer cost efficient source but for a big country like China shifting away will take time.

Most of the Russian Oil is refined and ironically a lot exported to Europe.

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