Ah yes, once again we hope that in the future, something is done about climate change.
Except China operates and so far has executed multi year long plans that have been incredibly successful. On top of this they’re the reason green energy is cheap at all, given they’re the world’s producer.
Your words:
coal plants and any other steam generators are easy to convert over to each other once built.
That is hoping that in the future, something is done about climate change.
Building new coal-powered plants as the Earth continues to warm and we know for a fact what such plants do to contribute to that is not justifiable. It doesn’t matter that they are “easy to convert” in the future. The coal is being burnt now.
And they’re easier to set up securely than either renewable or the nuclear plants they’ll likely later become.
Yes, it’d be great if they weren’t sanctioned every other week and threatened with war and could dedicate all of their resources to leap frogging dirty tech… But that’s not the world we live in, the world we live in has people that are rising in quality of life and expecting all the benefits. And they simply have more people than the US and Europe combined while only having the GDP of just the US.
It’s not ideal, they’ve admitted as such, but it’s a necessary step that all western nations took even when better options were on the table, it’s unfair to criticize China when they’re also producing more green energy than the rest of the world.
