Good News & Bad News, page-42422

Wow! Your contacts on X are really good researchers with the great explanation they give. They must be much more informed than these guys: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-coal-plants

However, you can also try to do some independent thinking.

For example, until recently China was considered an emerging economy. Now with their economic boom, and instant communication, WeChat and TV everywhere it is natural to expect the people in China, as they rapidly get wealthier, will want to have TVs, fridges, washing machines, air cons, modern houses etc like the westerners. Currently their GDP is a fraction of ours, but it has been growing much faster than ours.

So, do you think they will deny themselves all these new commodities? No. Therefore they need more energy, very quickly, to match their economic growth. Right now Coal and Gas are the fastest way of achieving that.

Look at the following chart: the important line is the green one. (Do you know why?)



Now look at these tables - since we are interested in Lithium, (and most Lithium goes into EVs):
from https://www.visualcapitalist.com/vehicles-per-capita-by-country/



At the moment in China its the wealthier end of town that is buying cars, and that might help explain why EV sales are so high. But, to move the 223 cars/1000 people up higher to match the westerners, and with about 20% of BEVs, would require an enormous amount of electricity generation - so for now they need to burn coal.

see if you can work out from this chart:
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2024/trends-in-electric-cars
that in China over 20% of cars sold in 2023 were BEVs. And that is increasing at a very fast rate.

So now with this context go back and read the first article I quoted.