U.S. Emissions Rise 4.2%, China's Fall 2.7%

Is there a future where China uses this as leverage with the rest of the world to put sanctions on the US if we don't transition?

China is doing this for energy independence. Their fossil fuel supply chain is critically vulnerable. They don't care about the climate, but will happily play the optics.

Neither the US cares about the climate amd doesn't care about the optics either.

This is capitalism in action: solar is cheaper than anything else per kwh. The obsession with fossil in the West is due to the fossil fuel lobbies, not because of the rational market forces. China doesn't have that.

China continues to get the bulk of their energy from fossil fuels. 56% from coal. China has double the emissions of the USA and new construction for coal plants reached a 10 year high in 2024:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/chinas-construction-of-new-coal-...

A case study in lying by omission. They build coal plants but they don't use them. In 2024 more than 80% of their energy growth came from solar and wind. As of 2023 solar was already cheaper than coal in China.

What do you gain from lying like this?

https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/china/#:~:tex...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China

Nothing I said was a lie. Its literally the entire picture of their power grid not just the last 12 months of some boom cycle. You omitted the fact that the majority of their power comes from the most polluting fossil fuel in existence: coal. And it continues to grow coal capacity. It's not building these plants for shits and giggles these are capital intensive projects.

It's backup power. The power plants will never pay for themselves, but they enable much wider solar deployment because you can use the plants the 1 day a year when the whole country is cloudy.

You build gas plants to be the backup for that not coal plants. Coal plants get too long to get to temperature to be a backup for renewable energy.