this is more of a really screwed up stimulus package by provincial governments desperate to impress to central government that they're growing by X% a year. It certainly isn't to satisfy a demand - I imagine in ten years down the line the Chinese power companies are going to have a crisis on their hand maintaining these white elephants.
Really? How do you know?
At the same time, Chinese power firms have been continuing to add new coal-fired power plants to the grid at a rate of one large plant every two weeks. This has driven coal-fired power plant utilisation rates – the share of hours in the year when they are running – back down to record lows of 48.6%. This is the fourth year in a row that the Chinese national average has been below 50% – and also below the global average, which stands at 54%.
Nobody is saying that China is weaning itself off of coal. Not yet anyway.
But its misleading to only look at added capacity. China is building coal plants even though they already have too much capacity. More to that, these new coal plants are idling the majority of the time. That makes the new plants unprofitable. Renewable and Nuclear energy are also continuing to become more attractive options.
China is also facing a slowing economy, with its slowest growth in 30 years. Usually, Chinese leadership tries to build its way out of slow economic growth, ghost cities being the most notable example. But ghost coal plants have also been an option this go around.
