Transition Fantasies

Speaking of harmful fantasies, from Scott Grout:

China commissioned 30 gigawatts of new coal power in the first half of 2026. That is the highest first-half total since 2016, up 43 percent year on year, and it ran directly against the rest of the world, where coal commissioning fell 46 percent over the same six months.

The China coal pipeline behind it is larger still. Another 25.4 GW broke ground in 1H26. Roughly 204 GW is under construction and 70 GW is permitted but not yet started, a combined new coal plant build of 274 GW over a fifth of China’s existing operating coal fleet. Developers proposed 70 GW of genuinely new projects and revived 20 GW of shelved ones, a 25 percent increase year on year. Total operating capacity rose 6 percent to roughly 1,263 GW; complete the coal new-build pipeline and it reaches 1,565 GW.

Now the "clean" side of the grid;

Through the first five months of 2026, while new thermal power commissioning hit a record high, growing 84% year-on-year, solar and wind capacity additions fell 70% and 46% respectively.

For the wind and solar already deployed, estimated curtailment reached 360 terawatt-hours in the first half of 2026, up 49 percent. China’s wind and solar curtailment rate climbed from 19.7 percent to 26.1 percent. China is discarding more than a quarter of what its wind and solar fleet is capable of producing. For scale: Mexico generated about 352 TWh of electricity across all of 2024. China threw away more than that in just six months.

I see at least three or five ‘hero’ posts about China’s green energy success each week, about how they are the role models for clean energy, about how we should all be embarrassed we are not following/keeping up with them.

As usual, the green narrative feels good, the facts do not.