Hacker News Reader

Comment by defrost | Hacker News Reader

Coal in China: dropping year in year out for past two decades as percentage of total energy consumption.

It only started dropping last year and by dropping you mean total % of energy generation because total coal energy production is still going up.

I appreciate the input, maybe tighten up your commentary.

Check the source we're discussing: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?coun...

As you can see it is percentage of coal as part of total energy mix that has been dropping for two decades.

As already stated above. Perhaps you missed that?

You're correct that absolute tonnage of coal use is still climbing, - but at an ever decreasing rate and was predicted to peak .. of course, thanks to some shenanigans by the Hegseth's of the world that may be deferred for a while, thanks USofA!

Of course on the plus side (for the atmosphere) there's been a drop in global fossil fuel consumption, so swings, arrows.

China, of course, is still well short of total CO2 tonnage lofted over the past century in comparison with the US - even allowing for a vastly greater population.

I understand you're talking about % of energy generation and its fine to highlight it but people here are talking as if % of energy generation means less coal emissions when its actually the complete opposite. There is almost no reason to care about % of energy generation by coal when they add the level of coal production that they've added over the past 15 years. CO2 output producted after 2010 is completely different to CO2 produced pre 1950. The difference is once the world started addressing climate change china went the complete opposite direction and because they can highlight a few stats people endless sweep for them as if they're actually doing something good. They have objectively destroyed the world.

And yet, the single vastly dominant source of electricity at around 55%. It's a long way you go and a long shot to call it clean.

And yet dropping - by a series of deliberate 5 year plans with the goal of building out sufficient renewable energy to phase out coal use altogether.

Kind of like what absolutely isn't happening with the current US administration.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com