In the US there are several states where hydro is the majority source of baseload electricity: Washington, Idaho, Vermont, Oregon, etc.
Outside of the US there are several countries that source more than 90% of their electricity from hydro - at higher percentages than Norway even: Paraguay, Albania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nepal, Namibia, Zambia, Tajikistan.
You also don't have to build mountains to utilize hydro. There are areas that are utilizing pumped hydro to store the kinetic energy to smooth the baseline.
Even China has seen a stark reduction in the percentage of electricity generated from coal plants over the past decade. Are they deindustrializing?
Everyone knows coal is a dead end. Maybe you should run the numbers again.
That's a funny statistic to focus on when the actual use of coal for electricity has increased by 50% over the same period.
It's almost like they are using it to cover baseload or something.
It shows that the percentage share of electricity generated from coal in China peaked at ~80% in 2007 and was at ~54% last year.
Quebec produces far more electricity via hydro than any single US state, some of which gets exported to the northeastern US.