China's Four-Year Energy Spree Has Eclipsed US Power Grid

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-28/china-s-four-year-energy-spree-has-eclipsed-entire-us-power-grid

6•toomuchtodo•1h ago

Comments

toomuchtodo•1h ago

mekdoonggi•1h ago

It's like that old saying with the tree in the forest. If you build a coal plant but it's never needed was it really that bad?

Seems like the plan is to adjust the rates for wind and solar, inducing demand, but then keep coal as a backup so that power is always cheap.

It will be interesting to see how consumption responds to variability of renewables. Grid batteries, production scaling with the sun, EV charging with the sun, etc.

toomuchtodo•1h ago

Energy storage go brrr. Agree that most of these coal plants will never see material utilization. Almost have of total China electricity is coming from low carbon generation current state, last half won't take as long ("As of May 2024, “clean energy” generated a record-high 44% of China’s electricity, according to Carbon Brief analysis").

China’s One Month Lithium Battery Energy Storage Installations Beat America’s One Whole Year - https://carboncredits.com/china-outpaces-u-s-in-lithium-batt... - January 26th, 2026

China BESS installations in December surpass US 2025 total - https://source.benchmarkminerals.com/article/china-bess-inst... - January 7th, 2026

Q&A: How China became the world’s leading market for energy storage - https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-how-china-became-the-worlds-l... - January 23rd, 2025

Global Energy Storage Market Records Biggest Jump Yet - https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-energy/global-energy-s... - April 25th, 2024

mekdoonggi•48m ago

This is just the start too. Already China is pursuing global markets for these, but imagine selling the entirety of Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, India (to an extent) the combo of panels, EV's, and grid batteries.

The sky is literally the limit.

toomuchtodo•39m ago

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