It's all true ..

they have a large population, largest in the world, India second (or not, I don't recall) and with a growing middle class (it alone now larger than the entire population of the US) with western consumption patterns and expectations they have insane power demands and projections.

So, more renewables than anywhere else, more nuclear than anywhere else, and more coal than anywhere else.

That said, they build new coal plants that are state of the art and "less bad" than the many older coal plants they are ripping apart. They also use coal power to supply energy to transition off of coal and create solar farms, etc.

"It's complicated"

See:

https://www.iea.org/countries/china (and drill down)

https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-investment-2024/chi...

https://www.iea.org/reports/meeting-power-system-flexibility...

compare and contrast with other countries (according to the IEA) and then look at other non IEA big picture summaries.

Renewable energies account for 29% of China's energy production and 21% of US's.

In 2010, this was 19% and 10% respectively.

So, they have a bit of a head start, but are transitioning to renewables just as quickly as the US. Their much larger population does make the overall impact they're having on the environment larger, though, and yes they are still building new coal plants to keep up with rapidly increasing energy needs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_Unit...

As of August 2024, China has 55 nuclear reactors in operation, 25 under construction, and plans for an additional 36 reactors. In August 2024, China’s State Council approved five nuclear power projects comprising 11 new reactors. Overall, China aims to build 150 new nuclear reactors between 2020 and 2035.

China doesn't actually care to much about green energy production, it's more that green energy production just happens to be one of the best ways for China to achieve energy independence.

China doesn't have huge reserves of fossil fuels, and they don't have a truly reliable way of importing them (and any import will always be vulnerable anyway).

So they are left with coal, nuclear, wind, and sun to build energy independence with. This is the primary driver of massive "green" investment (and coal investment too). They want all their energy made in house with what they have, which turns out to be a lot of cheaply accessible sun and wind.

> All I hear about are the dozens of coal plants China builds each year.

I suspect this is partly true and gets repeated a lot, but then nobody follows up with the actual numbers of plants that get built and are producing. I have found these where a lot of the coal plants gets approved but then not actually built, cancelled etc:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sHBsK_Ez7C9XA4HKRQSv...

https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/china-puts-coal-on...

Also China's coal use seems to not grow too much anymore.

Yes and. China is still rapidly expanding their electricity production (because their energy use per capita is still way below US/Europe), and they don't have huge amounts of natural gas like the US does. As such, they are building coal plants that in the near term boost energy production, and in the medium term will be used as peaker plants for when the massive amount of renewables that they're also installing don't meet demand.

They are building more renewable capacity than the rest of the world combined, and have an 86% renewable target for 2050.

What's the US target for 2050?