A plant doesn't have to be expressly a 'peaking' plant to drop it's capacity or increase it. All coal plants have this capability. Certainly it takes longer for coal plants to do this vs a dedicated gas peaker plant.

At any rate, the data plainly shows that the percentage share of renewable electricity in China is going up. I've never denied that coal plants are being built in China, but the data shows that China is using renewables in preference to other sources of energy, with a very clear and sustained growth rate.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-renewab...

And if you're still unconvinced, this article by Hannah Ritchie details the phenomenon much better than I can regurgitate it here.

https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants

And that's it from me. Feel free to have the last word.

It's not about coal plants being built, it's about how many are being built and long term planning behind it. This interview with Hannah shows how difficult it is to make China look good (it looks like she tries hard though, for some reason) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/podcasts/transcript-ezra-....

They ban coal burning in houses and they move plants out of big cities where tourists go but they still build more and more plants. "oh but they'll use them less surely and burn less coal" would be great but sounds rosy

> using renewables in preference to other sources of energy, with a very clear and sustained growth rate.

Note that it's for electricity. How is it calculated? If it's used to power their pump based water energy storage then does it count? If it's used to heat then does it count? Does it rely on CCP provided metrics here while pollution, coal plants and fossil burning can be measured independently (just look at satellite based pollution map)