About all China is doing is putting a
cap on foreign imports, of 300 million tons. Their
total coal consumption has increased the past few years, and is expected to continue rising next year. That said, the the majority of the imports are from southeast Asia, and the vast majority of their coal is mined domestically.
Yes. The foreign import cap will be reduced to zero over time, which is a deliberate plan to support coal mining jobs in China and to eliminate foreign dependence.
Actually, China's use of coal in power generation
continues to grow, albeit at a slowing pace,
Even this is due to kickbacks and corruption, which happen a lot in a non-market economy. It's cheaper not to use coal, but officials in the provincial government are getting kickbacks not only to build unprofitable coal plants, but to dispatch the overpriced coal plants. Pretty byzantine. It's also not sustainable; the sheer price advantage of wind and solar will eventually give the wind and solar developers more bribe money.
and India
plans to increase their coal-fired power capacity by almost a quarter in the next three years.
The Indian plans are dead on arrival for financial reasons, as has been amply documented in many places. India is slightly more free market than China and the coal plants *cannot* compete. This is being recognized a bit at a time, but trust me, these new plants WILL NOT OPERATE.
In your citation, you've found one guy, the head of the state-run coal power plant operator, who wants to build more coal power plants. The trouble is this:
"Prasad said the growth rate in thermal capacity had outpaced electricity consumption over the last few years, resulting in stranded utility assets across the country."
Prasad, the pro-coal guy, blithely imagines that this is going to reverse. It isn't going to reverse, it's going to get more extreme. Solar & wind development in India is quite sufficient to cover all increases in electricity demand (to be specific, the growth of solar will exceed the growth of electricity demand by 2020 if not earlier), and there's just no place for more coal plants; if they build them they are building stranded assets from day one. Others in the government are recognizing this. Eventually Prasad will be kicked out for being dumb and wasting money.
Another detail here: he's planning to finish 5 GW of worthless coal plants in the next year; whereas there were 10 GW of solar put in in *2018*, and the installations are accelerating. A bunch of contract-breaking moves by state governments (simply refusing to pay under contracts they had previously agreed to) which spooked the solar industry suppressed solar development to a mere 7 GW in the March 2018-March 2019 period, but as that settles down, it'll come roaring back. It certainly won't convince any state government to *overpay* for coal, when they are trying to break contracts to get solar prices further below their already-below-coal prices.
Even beyond that, India has expressed an explicit goal of eliminating coal imports -- originally to be done by substituting domestic coal production, but they're changing their mind and cancelling planned coal mines due to oversupply.
Getting back to Virginia, the met coal market is currently glutted and prices are crashing. Traffic is going to be lighter and lighter.
