I wonder if most of the 4.2% rise is AI training and inference.
Maybe China is in an economic slowdown, so its economy cannot afford to buy as much coal from Australia and petroleum from the Gulf as it used to.
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> International Energy Agency (IEA) figures show Chinese coal consumption falling 2.6% in the first half of the year, largely due to a boom in solar that saw the country add 92 gigawatts of capacity—that’s 92 billion watts—in a single month in May, compared to all-time U.S. installations of 134 GW.