Say What? China Is Building Ultra Super Critical Coal Fired Power Plants in Just Three Years… « JoNova

Say What? China is building Ultra super critical coal fired power plants in just three years… « JoNova

Lufeng Jiahuwan Coal Plant By Jo Nova The speed of construction would blow a Western political mind China pumped out 78GW of coal fired plants last year, which got me wondering why there was such a boom, especially since the current Chinese coal plants are only working at a bit over half their real capacity. Apparently the boom was instigated after widespread blackouts in late 2020 and 2021 shocked officials into ordering a major ramp up in coal plants to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. By May 2021 China was telling the world that because solar and wind power were intermittent or unstable “they must use coal power .. for flexible adjustment”. A few months later, things were still dire, and two thirds of the nation was rationing power. The thing is though, 2021 was only four years before the big boom of 2025. Could they really build so many plants in so little time? Well, yes. Some of those plants were presumably already “in the pipeline” but many were only given permits in 2022. Two new units were added to Yancheng-Binhai Ultra Super Critical Coal Plant, China The plant Yancheng-Binhai, in [...]