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China has been ramping up building of coal power plants, many of which are operating at 50% capacity: https://lemmy.ca/post/49779092
coal and NG electricity production declined in 2024. Building new coal plants doesn't mean using them. Another 1tw of solar this year will reduce this further.
That's right - that's what the article is pointing out, and what my comment was pointing out: that despite usage of 50% capacity on current coal plants they are still building more. They are building capacity for the long term - for AI data centers which are giant power consumers. Power generation and transmission capacity can't be built over night. That's where top-down planning comes in.
China builds coal plants for resilience, and national security. Its possible assholes will cut off their NG supplies, and Hydro is not guaranteed every year. Still, at 1TW new solar per year (10000 coal turbines equivalent), that capacity rate will keep going down. It does mean that China has no power constraints for AI/datacenters, and then no constraints on more solar or chip manufacturing.