“... coal remains king—and this is not about to change anytime soon…India’s coking coal imports surged to a six-year high over the first half of the country’s latest fiscal year.
Meanwhile, in neighboring China, coal remains the largest contributor to the country’s power supply despite China being the largest developer of wind and solar capacity in the world—and by a wide margin. The latest domestic production figures point to an increase. The latest demand figures point to an increase in coal in response to growing demand. Coal accounts for 60% of China’s power generation, and this is not about to change soon.
Both India and China have stated quite plainly that they will not be following the example of the UK and shutting down any coal power plants in the observable future. Both India and China have officially prioritized energy supply security and affordability over emissions, even as they both pursue a more diverse grid.
Ironically, it is coal power that is essentially fueling the energy transition. Coal power provides the cheap energy that Chinese and other Asian manufacturers of wind and solar components and equipment—not to mention EVs—use to keep their products cheap. Also ironically, the surge in demand for electricity from data centers will quite likely add a boost to coal demand in some parts of the world where natural gas is not as cheap as it is—for now—in the United States…
… no one outside Europe and the Anglosphere is giving up coal—not least in order to keep supplying Europe and the Anglosphere with the components of their top-priority electrification of everything. As Bloomberg’s Javier Blas put it, the energy transition is powered by coal.
It wasn’t hard to see where that urge to electrify everything would end. The visions were that the electrification of everything would be covered by surging wind and solar capacity that would have the decency to deliver the supply when there is demand for it. China, however, quickly realized this was not going to happen, and as it built huge solar installations after a huge wind park, it also built coal power plants. This is what India is doing right now, too. These two countries will be driving coal demand growth over the near to medium term. That’s because they know that supplying the power that their economies and voters demand is more important than counting CO2 molecules.
Meanwhile, the UK is preparing scenarios for blackouts because its baseload capacity just got decimated with the shutdown of the country’s last coal power plant.
Billions are being slated for investment in things like batteries and flywheels to store energy from wind and solar installations, but the realization that this cannot work without baseload capacity is yet to dawn on the Starmer government—as it is on the European authorities that are still pushing for an end to coal.
If there is a perfect time to learn something important from China and India, that time is right now.”
– https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/coal-remains-its-throne-despite-transition-push
The article above has it right, but will Ottawa County only recognize its truth after our Campbell plant has already been demolished and we have played the fool?