The COVID effect on commerce reduced Chinese demand for thermal powered electricity (fossil fuels - coal, oil and natural gas) generation.
Power from wind, solar, nuclear and hydro can't easily be switched on and off, and their costs are mainly fixed. So fossil fuel use was reduced. Q3 electricity was actually up +8% from the same quarter last year.
Half of this 2020 over 2019 increase was supplied by thermal generation, which has increased by 3% year over year. Hydro power is also up, mainly weather related. Wind power was down, while solar power was about unchanged. Wind and solar account for 5% of total electricity generation.
https://chinaenergyportal.org/en/2020-q3-electricity-and-other-energy-statistics/
New thermal capacity added has nearly tripled that of wind power, increasing capacity by 3% from last year.
China claims its CO2 emissions will peak by 2030? They will bring more and more coal and oil fired power stations on line in the next ten years, and then slowly phase out the oldest ones. Meaning China will still be benefiting from lower-cost fossil fuel power while western economies struggle to compete with expensive ‘green’ energy.
The capacity installed does not tell the whole story, because thermal can run at 90% load factor, whereas wind is more like a 25% to 30% load factor. Adjusting for actual output (rather than maximum capacity output), the thermal energy output increase is nearly nine times that of wind.
Xi must be laughing at the total gullibility of the West. The Chinese are encouraging "Green Economic Suicide" in the West, while building anther 400 coal plants, taking their total to over 3,200.
By using lots of coal to power EVs, China will greatly reduce dependence on importing oil from wells thousands of miles away. China has huge coal reserves that are powering ultra-efficient plants using scrubber technology to remove REAL pollutants. Evidently they don’t care about CO2 and secretly laugh at Climate Change propaganda.