Image by Getty and Unsplash+.
China is leading the green energy transition for the world as the United States tries to force countries to buy US oil and gas. Last year China installed more renewable energy than the rest of the world combined. Meanwhile, the US committed $625 million in taxpayer funds to save and revive the coal industry. Yes, US taxpayers are subsidizing coal production. It should be noted that “clean coal” is so misleading that it reeks of malodorous sulfur.
China is upstaging the United States across the world by tackling climate change head on. According to a brilliant article in YaleEnvironment360 by Isabel Hilton, As U.S. and E.U. Retreat on Climate, China Takes the Leadership Role, November 10, 2025, “China today produces about 80 percent of all solar panels and more than 70 percent of all electric vehicles.” China has reduced the cost barrier for “the rest of the world” by bringing down costs of solar panels by 90% and reducing the overall expenses for renewables by 70%. Furthermore, as the world’s biggest clean energy juggernaut, it builds clean energy factories abroad investing in 54 countries over the past three years alone. This is tackling climate with gusto while the US reverts to the dark ages of grinding away drill bits and steam shovels blackening the atmosphere.
“If history is any guide, the country that dominates energy usually dominates economics and politics, which is why it is not just old war allies that are cozying up to Beijing. Narendra Modi, the president of longtime rival India, visited China for the biggest ever meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization along with dozens of other regional leaders.” (There is Only One Player: Why China is Becoming a World Leader in Green Energy, The Guardian, September 7,2025).
China’s renewable effort is well ahead of expectations. The country has installed capacity of 1,200GW six years ahead of schedule, which is enough to power approximately 1.2 million homes.
Yet, China is still heavily addicted to coal: “Scientists and campaigners say the climate will not be stabilized solely by selling more photovoltaic cells or windmill blades; it is also necessary to phase out fossil fuels. On this half of the balance sheet, China’s record remains ‘highly insufficient’ and its current policies would, if continued, push the planet towards 4C of heating, according to Climate Action Tracker, an independent initiative assessing countries’ compliance with the Paris agreement. It points out that China is off course from the commitments it previously made to ‘strictly limit’ coal use and to reduce energy and carbon intensity by 2025,” Ibid.
The pushback has been most evident in China’s coal sector, where there has been a surge of investment in the past two years to the highest level in a decade. Major domestic coal companies, such as CHN Energy, Jinneng and Shaanxi Coal and Chemical, have considerable political influence. Thus, China, similar to the US, is beholden to rightward leaning politics that override green technology policies, making it nearly impossible to meet nation/state emissions targets set at Paris 2015 to hold global warming to under 2C. This ridiculously dangerous course has, in fact, become a bad joke, not a laughing matter, as the world’s whipsaw climate system thrashes civilization at every turn. The 2020-decade ia the most expressive decade of a worldwide maniac climate system of all time with ocean heat content dangerously hitting all-time records. A major study claims an ocean regime change. This is a serious threat to the entire planetary climate system equivalent to an emergency.
Coal Kills Climate and People
“Despite claims of ‘clean coal’ made by the industry and administration officials, coal is the dirtiest and most polluting fuel on the planet. Every terawatt-hour of electricity from coal emits about 950,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, the primary driver of climate change. Even fracked gas emits only about 57 percent as much CO2. Both the mining and burning of coal also create huge quantities of other pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulates, heavy metals, and fly ash. A 2023 study in the journal Science found that coal particulates are more than twice as deadly as the same-size particulates from other sources and traced over 450,000 deaths to coal pollution since 1999.”(The Real Reason the Feds Want to Revive Coal, Sierra, October 15, 2025)
AI Greets Coal
The real push for coal is coming from another industry with close ties to the Trump administration. Technology companies investing heavily in AI are fostering a boom in data centers nationwide. Data centers took up about 2 percent of the nation’s electrical power pre-2020. By 2023, that share more than doubled to 176 terawatt-hours of power, more than the total power for the State of Illinois. By 2028, data centers are projected to use up to 12 percent of the entire US electrical grid. This spike in power requirements is impacting electrical bills for consumers, and along with Trump policies slowing down or shutting down new renewable power projects, it will require a ramp up in coal and gas. Trump is preying upon this sudden surge in power requirements to endorse coal. The EPA has proposed delays and gutting regulations for wastewater from coal-fired power plants and pledged to gut the Clean Air Act’s Regional Haze Rule as the DOI intends to open 13.1 million acres of federal land for coal mine leasing.
In the biggest step backwards in modern US history, the Trump administration is spoiling both the atmosphere and the nation’s waterways “Expanding mining and spending taxpayer money on burning coal, while rolling back vital health protections, will only exacerbate the deadly pollution and rising electricity bills that communities are facing across the country,” (Earthjustice Responds to Trump Administration Coal Industry Giveaways, Earthjustice, Sept. 26, 2025).
Red States suffer much more from these policies than any other states. They are double-clobbered (1) by loss of Biden Inflation Reduction Aet jobs, e.g. wind and solar, that Trump cancels, decimating climate mitigation policies, axing climate science, firing leading scientists (the “brain drain”) and (2) suffer the biggest impact of deadly pollution as their blackened coal operations revive. They elected Trump and got what he promised to do, destroy renewables and pollute the atmosphere. “Clean coal” is the biggest con in the history of the planet.
Headlines: “Republicans Sell Out Constituents, Vote to Cut Jobs and Raise Energy Costs Nationwide,” Climate Power, May 27, 2025. “About 80 percent of manufacturing investments spurred by a Biden-era climate law have flowed to Republican districts.” (The New York Times, Feb. 11, 2025) Anything with Biden’s name attached is destroyed.
Project 2025 hit the green economy like a tsunami of mass destruction but Red States take the biggest hits; beware of Midterms vomiting up a lame duck presidency.
