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TremendousJudge | on: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-by-count...

China is the world's top consumer of coal, and accounts for more than 50% of the world's total consumption of coal.

pjc50 | parent | next
People keep forgetting in all the China-posting that China is a country of 1.4 billion people, approximately 256 times the size of the Irish population, and therefore it's not really surprising when it tops a "top consumption" or "top production" list of any kind.

(second most populous after India)

Alternatively, if all Ireland was a city in China, it would not be in the list of top 50 cities by population.

TremendousJudge | root | parent | next
While it's not surprising that's in the top, it's surprising by how much. ~1/7th of the world population, but ~55% of coal consumption is pretty unbalanced IMO. Of course, the real reason why is that China is the world's factory so the energy consumption is huge as well.

I think the real takeaway here is that the world depends on the industrial production of China, which is powered by coal. We are all using that coal to buy cheap Chinese manufactured goods, and the sooner we come to terms with this the better. Whether a single country uses coal or not is irrelevant for tackling carbon emissions, if we're all basically exporting our carbon emissions to China.

throwaway290 | root | parent
India has bigger population than China.

India is building 41 coal plant, China is building 289. India approved 5 more plants, China approved 405. China is building more coal power than all other countries combined including India.

This thread is crazy. guys just look at numbers first...

falcor84 | parent | next
Seems that you're in violent agreement. China is so large that it tops most metrics you throw at it, even when we consider them contradictory.
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