Why Is China Building So Many Coal Plants Despite Its Solar and Wind Boom?
6 71Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this article from the Associated Press: Even as China's expansion of solar and wind power raced ahead in 2025, the Asian giant opened many more coal power plants than it had in recent years — raising concern about whether the world's largest emitter will reduce carbon emissions enough to limit climate change.
More than 50 large coal units — individual boiler and turbine sets with generating capacity of 1 gigawatt or more — were commissioned in 2025, up from fewer than 20 a year over the previous decade, a research report released Tuesday said. Depending on energy use, 1 gigawatt can power from several hundred thousand to more than 2 million homes. Overall, China brought 78 gigawatts of new coal power capacity online, a sharp uptick from previous years, according to the joint report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which studies air pollution and its impacts, and Global Energy Monitor, which develops databases tracking energy trends. "The scale of the buildout is staggering," said report co-author Christine Shearer of Global Energy Monitor. "In 2025 alone, China commissioned more coal power capacity than India did over the entire past decade."
At the same time, even larger additions of wind and solar capacity nudged down the share of coal in total power generation last year. Power from coal fell about 1% as growth in cleaner energy sources covered all the increase in electricity demand last year. China added 315 gigawatts of solar capacity and 119 gigawatts of wind in 2025, according to statistics from the government's National Energy Administration...
The government position is that coal provides a stable backup to sources such as wind and solar, which are affected by weather and the time of day. The shortages in 2022 resulted partly from a drought that hit hydropower, a major energy source in western China... The risk of building so much coal-fired capacity is it could delay the transition to cleaner energy sources [said Qi Qin, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and another co-author of the report]... Political and financial pressure may keep plants operating, leaving less room for other sources of power, she said. The report urged China to accelerate retirement of aging and inefficient coal plants and commit in its next five-year plan, which will be approved in March, to ensuring that power-sector emissions do not increase between 2025 and 2030.
6 comments
Because... (Score: 5, Insightful)
by 0123456 ( 636235 ) on Sunday February 08, 2026 @12:43PM (#65976210)
...industrial countries need reliable power.
Re:AI needs power (Score: 5, Interesting)
by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Sunday February 08, 2026 @01:10PM (#65976248)
1) You are correct that China is building coal for the AI boom.
2) You are incorrect in thinking the US hobbles itself. Having more expensive electricity but cleaner air is not a hobble, it is a competitive advantage. Long term cleaner air = smarter people and lower health costs. Coal pollution in particular is known to settle to the ground, rather than to spread throughout the world.
3) Communism leads to quicker action but also less innovation and singular action. This is really good when following the lead of more advanced cultures but prevents you from ever really taking the lead. You end up as second fiddle. When you try to take the lead, you do stupid crap like, say, killing all the swallows (Four Pests Campaign) because they eat grain, seeds, and fruit. Major problem if they also eat insects, specifically locusts. Locusts that ate ALL the grain, seeds, and fruit rather than merely 10%.
Why aren't they building nuclear? (Score: 5, Interesting)
by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Sunday February 08, 2026 @01:04PM (#65976238)
Nuclear seems to me like the logical choice for a country like China to be building. Doesn't pollute the way coal does, they have a well established nuclear power industry, they don't have all the red tape and anti-nuclear BS that western countries do (anyone who complains can be thrown in the Chinese version of a Gulag or whatever it is the Chinese government does to people they don't like these days) and they have plenty of places they could put the nukes that are away from populated areas and big cities.
Re:Why aren't they building nuclear? (Score: 5, Interesting)
by nojayuk ( 567177 ) on Sunday February 08, 2026 @01:24PM (#65976260)
China IS building nuclear power plants, typically six new starts each year. They're also building lots of solar farms and wind farms and developing more hydro-generation dams. They need the electricity.
The new coal-fired plants are mostly replacing older less efficient and more polluting coal-fired plants. I think the Central Planning Committee is aiming for coal to be about 50% of China's expanded generating capacity in the next couple of decades. Security of energy supply is a large part of that decision, no global hegemon can restrict their coal supplies via sanctions or military action since they are almost all derived from mines within their own borders.
Answered on "Volts.wtf" last year (Score: 5, Interesting)
by rbrander ( 73222 ) on Sunday February 08, 2026 @02:15PM (#65976328)
https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-... [volts.wtf]
David Roberts of the Volts podcast asked full-time, full-career China expert Lauri Myllyvirta in April 2024, this exact question and got a clear answer: they're building them because they are forced. To get local permission for other projects, from the local regional boss (think "Duke") whom Xi needs to keep power. They can defy the national direction to some extent.
To build your solar/wind farm in China, you often have to build a coal plant, and buy coal, since the local Duke sells the stuff and hates the whole solar thing. So you get a lot of coal plants. What you don't get is more coal sales than they can get away from. The plants are often at very low capacity factor, sometimes under 20%.
Volts.wtf is strongly recommended for anybody wanting to keep up on the transition, the bad news as well as the good.
One sided statistics. (Score: 5, Interesting)
by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Sunday February 08, 2026 @05:57PM (#65976576)
China may have built more than 70GW of new coal capacity online, and may have installed more than 50 new turbines, but if I go out and buy a new car that doesn't mean I have more cars standing in the garage. The other side of the equation is, what is shut down?
China's coal construction program has been largely replacement, and in doing so improved efficiency. China built new coal capacity in 2025? Sounds, bad. Except China's coal consumption and coal energy generation *DROPPED IN 2025* by 1.6%.
Yeah it sucks that they don't have perfect replacement programs that all old generation is replaced with green generation, but the reality is China's coal energy production largely peaked. A massive rise in the 90s and 00s and early 2010s has given way to a plateau over the past 10 or so years where China's coal consumption has remained largely unchanged and while the numbers sound bad for new capacity, the total capacity of coal on the grid has barely increased (it's not new, it's replacement capacity) and the share of coal is on a decline on the grid overall.