"Old king coal fuels China’s new tech revolution"

From the Asia Times, January 6:
The world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter ramps up its fossil fuel power plants

President Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Dream” is being fuelled by an addiction to coal.

Behind the headlines of high-tech prowess in 5G, AI, or artificial intelligence, and smart factories is a dirty secret linked to fossil fuels. To cope with an insatiable appetite for energy, the sectors of the future are being generated by the power of the past.

Despite assurances from the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter after the Paris Agreement in 2016, China is building even more smog-choking coal-fired plants to counter the rising demand for electricity.

Last month, Beijing’s 10-year energy plan came under scrutiny before the United Nations climate change conference in Madrid. Concerns circulated that Xi’s administration was back-sliding on original pledges to cut CO2 emissions.

Zhao Yingmin, the deputy minister of the environment and in charge of climate negotiations, failed to ease those fears during a media briefing.

“We continue to work hard to advance the fight against climate change, but on the other hand, we are indeed facing multiple challenges such as developing the economy, improving the people’s livelihoods, eliminating poverty and controlling pollution,” he said.

A slowing economy in 2019 has added to the problems facing policymakers. Even a brief upturn in the past two months has failed to hide the economic cracks which have ripped through a raft of sectors, including domestic consumer spending, factory production, investment and trade.

Far-reaching complications in realigning the state-backed economic model to high-tech manufacturing and internet-based services have also created challenges. Consumption, not cheap low-value exports, are pivotal to Beijing’s blueprint as the urban population soars.

Clearly, this will require ramping up electricity capacity. Since the start of 2018, China has built 42.9 gigawatts of new coal-fired power plants with another 121.3 GW under construction.

To put that into perspective, that compares with the 35 GW of coal-fired power added in 2017 and 38 GW a year earlier. It also outstripped plant closures in the rest of the world in 2018, data highlighted.....

....MUCH MORE, including a couple links that any policy wonk should have close at hand.