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Comment by ShinyLeftPad | Hacker News Reader

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ShinyLeftPad

> China has 350 million electric two-wheelers, 20 million EVs.

And yet they have the most coal plants, and the most coal plants under construction. This comparison includes India.

This is PM2.5 map of Beijing today: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2026/08/20/0200Z/particulates/...

This is London: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2026/08/20/0200Z/particulates/...

This is East USA: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2026/08/20/0200Z/particulates/...

They are not even close.

For the kicks, here is Delhi today: https://earth.nullschool.net/#2026/08/20/0200Z/particulates/...

Also lower than Beijing. (There's a hotspot to the west of Delhi due to wildfires.)

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Those electric 2, 3 and 4 wheelers and electric busses even if powered by coal fired electricity, will do less damage to city dwelling kids lungs than traditional engines would.

And if the trend of China cleaning up their electricity supply continues (they just slipped under 50% coal) then even existing EVs will get cleaner every year with less pollution created at distant powerplants.

Pollution map don't lie... and what about kids who live near plants

Let's not compare Delhi or Mumbai in monsoon season. Get the readings from Delhi in summer or winter and then see the pollution yourself.

Meanwhile I was replying to a comment that just cherry-picked a day. Yes, autumn is the brief good time in Beijing due to prevailing winds, shrug.

Cherry picking a single day to try to demonstrate a widely accepted trend is lazy journalism.

Cherry-picking to try to portray the opposite of the generally accepted truth is much more problematic.

I agree. Some guy picks some specific a day in the past, says "look China good". Another one picks a random day (today) and it paints a diff picture. Meanwhile generally accepted truth rooted in facts is the number of coal plants and generally policies that put manufacturing first. individuals using EVs don't make a dent

Glad to hear Delhi solved its air pollution by doing nothing. Delhi's success stody is being studied by experts.

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

I didn't say Delhi solved pollution, I said Beijing didn't

Now compare the amount of renewables China is putting up?

They add coal power because it's super fast to build, but it's not a permanent solution.

Very few things built in china are designed to be permanent

Coal power is not a permanent solution, because there are only finite reserves of coal in China. At current rate of current rate of consumption (2,300 Mtoe of coal in 2025) they have still have reserves for 70 year.

https://chinadata.live/data/coal-consumption-china-vs-world/

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

We can look at more concrete promises by leadership of China:

"In a video statement to the UN in New York, President Xi Jinping said that China would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions across the economy by 7-10% by 2035, while "striving to do better"."

Too little, too late.

"Most scenarios to limit warming to 1.5C - or even well below 2C - would require China to make much greater cuts than that by 2035"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj4y159190go

You are very optimistic. I see 35 years at current rate of extraction and if we assume 7% growth (like in 2022-2025, nothing crazy like a war) that would be just 17 years or so. At least this is what Google search overview tells me

It's convenient to say they will reduce reliance on coal if they forecast their coal reserves might run out in meantime:) But people here are persistent at praising PRC for their green achievements

> And yet they have the most coal plants, and the most coal plants under construction. This comparison includes India.

Well yeah, but not in Beijing

So what's the reason for those pm2.5 levels?

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